NEWS

This is a new events and news page to keep our members and friends up to date with what is happening. It’s an edition to the monthly Eletters and the Newsletters we produce. To get in touch with members or find out more about the events, contact the Editor, G B Fraser.  

GREAT NEWS

A dinner/get together is being organised by Jonathan Kersting, get in touch with him now to book your place.

CFSS&UK say “Look at this”
I am writing to advise you, that the Dinner you have all been asking for, is now planned for Saturday 16th October 2010, and everything indicates we will get an excellent attendance.
However, there are only 40 places at the table, so do book a.s.a.p.
As Jon Kersting has been arranging a series of dinners to raise money for Headley Court, he seemed the natural choice to arrange one for the Society, and when approached was delighted to take this on. He also emphasized he will be happy to act as tour guide, for all those travelling to his part of the country.
The location for the Dinner is Bhim’s Gurkha Heaven Restaurant, at 46 Murray Street, Llanelli. Carmarthenshire. SA15 1DJ, and Jon would not recommend this, unless he knew it was really good.
If you are coming by train, remember to book two weeks in advance, and by doing so you will save quite a bit.
There is a number of hotels quite near, and once Jon knows the numbers coming he will negotiate a good price.
Graeme, Gil, Michael, Chris, Jean and Jon will be there, so can you afford to miss out. Dress will be informal but Michael and Graeme will be in kilts and Jonathan his faithful trews.
e-mail jk.ontherun@virgin.net or telephone 01554 755014 to book.

ABOYNE 20010: Ken Fraser and his wife have applied for a tent at the Aboyne Games and have no reason to think we won’t get one BUT have not had official confirmation as yet !!! They normally take place on the first Saturday in August.

HOMECOMING 2009

Edinburgh Gathering:- We all now know how successful the whole event was and the possible repeat in 2014. My pictures and those of other members are now on the net at Edinburgh, Aboyne and Beauly Gatherings

Beauly Gathering & Aboyne Gatherings:- A good time was had by all.

Newsletter:- The Xmas Newsletter is now out, here's a small part of it, join the Society now to ensure your copy.

THE CHRISTIAN WATT PAPERS
A Review Michael A. Fraser

Bookshelves in Waterstones are groaning with memoirs, autobiographies and commentaries on transitory personalities, many of whom are seeking to extend their time in the public’s eye by persuading us with enticing covers and titles that their story is worth prolonged consideration. On the other hand, there are a few whose lives have been lived way beyond the public view, troubled by decades of tribulation and tragedy, but whose stories, when uncovered, reveal personalities with so much integrity and life that it is a privilege to have met them, albeit at a distance in the pages of a book.
One such remarkable lady’s life has been “rescued” by the research and scholarship of her descendants and one of our members, General Sir David Fraser. (The Christian Watt Papers edited with an introduction by David Fraser, Birlinn Ltd, Edinburgh, 2004 – ISBN 1 84158 308 1 £7.99 in paperback) Christian’s story should be required reading, not only for all Frasers, but as a primary source for students interested in social and industrial life for the working men and women in the north-east of Scotland in Victorian times. Christian Watt was born in 1833, a member of a long established fishing family in Broadsea, a village that has now becomes swallowed up by Fraserburgh. As Sir David points out, she started work as a domestic servant at the age of eight and a half, and “thenceforth seldom knew rest or peace. At ten, Christian had learned to gut fish. She spent much of her life selling, in the landward parts of the country, fish which she and her family had bought, caught or cured.”
In 1880, at the age of 47, Christian, broken by the disasters and tragedies that struck her and her family so relentlessly, became an inmate of the Cornhill Infirmary for those suffering from mental disorders in Aberdeen. In the enlightened regime there, Christian started to write down, in her firm hand in pencil – pen and ink were not allowed (Health and Safety played a part in our lives even then!!) – her recollections. These papers form the bulk of this book, which is, once you get into it, unputdownable. Certainly, both Graeme and I can claim to have read it in one sitting, so riveting is her story and her indomitable and fiery personality that couldn’t tolerate pretension, snobbery and injustice, however it was disguised by “manners” and the current standards of Society.
She describes in intense detail; so many episodes, some bringing tears to the eyes as we share gut-wrenching family losses at sea, and others where we cheer her on as she stands her ground against her supposed betters. As she told the Master of Lovat, when he became intrigued by her after she paid back the overseer at Strichen House when he insolently flicked her with his riding crop so “I flew at him, attacking him like a ferocious wounded animal, I kicked his shins and with a resounding smack sent the fire flying from his face, first one side then the other. He fled in fear. A deafening cheer went up from the park in front of the gardener’s house”  Shemmy had said it amazed him “how we could educate ourselves and preserve all the decencies in a but and ben. I said, ‘That is a very specialised education you have never learned. If you suddenly lost all this how would you go about it? (He said the thought had never crossed his mind.)” The scene when Christian is summonsed by Lord and Lady Lovat in order to prevent the relationship with their son going any further is a delight as her instant and biting responses to the pretensions of Tam and his wife reduced Lord Lovat to a “habbering” wreck: “He said, ‘This is a democracy, with reasonable opportunity for all,’ I said, ‘That is the biggest load of dirt since the dung cart went round the Broch gathering the dry closets yesterday.”

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