Keep the peace the Daltons are here

I should really be doing more about 1820 but I'm going to take a breather and think about the next project. I enjoy the village stories in Oakhaven and Cairndhu but need to do a rewrite to get them to flow more easily. I want to do them in short story form so that people can read them on the way to work or listen to them in the car. Something that a retired person can read for half an hour just before putting the light out. I'm drawn to the idea because I so enjoyed the Para Handy and his puffer, the Vital Spark, stories of Neil Munro. You get to know the characters and enjoy half an hour in their company. I think I can do the same with Broon and Jinks and Miss Kirkhope, characters from Best in Show set in Cairndhu. I've written two but they need a bot of work.
What has caused this turn of thought is this latest set of riots and demonstrations which will end up like the 1820 insurrection with a clamp down by those entrusted with keeping the peace. For some reason people are reluctant to accept that the police are a mixture of ordinary people like the rest of us, some lazy and some over zealous but all human and likely to make mistakes. It's the same with doctors, they've read more pages of the medical journal than the rest of us but the journal deals with a kind of average metabolism and none of us is 'average' and might not be in the journal at all. It's this need to find a culprit that is frustrating - I am perfect so it must be someone else's fault is the rule. One of the things I enjoy about being a story teller is that it's always the bad guys fault and I can make sure the goodies win.

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As well as teachers, there were other professionals in the village.

I was surprised the other day to learn that medical research had discovered a direct connection between the smell of a person’s wind release and certain ailments. Why it surprised me is that sixty years ago Dr George McPheat told the women in our village that they must not clean and 'air' the sick room before he came as he could tell the moment he smelt the air what the patient was likely to be suffering from.

Dr George was quite a character, when my father went into the local cottage hospital for a minor operation sixty years ago, one of the men in the ward developed stomach cramps. While he was examining the man, Dr George asked the matron what the patient had eaten and was told stiffly, “Nothing that would do him any harm, Doctor. The food is very nutritious and he's had a spoon of castor oil to keep his bowels moving.”

“Ah,” said the doctor, “it’s a great thing the castor oil , I take it regularly myself, ---------------- once a year.”       

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