2110-8-8-2

BANKHEAD BALERNO MIDLOTHIAN

2nd August 1937

My dear John,

I have been long in answering the last of your ever welcome letters, that of 19th June. I went to Glasserton for 10 days on the 24th of June in the hope inter alia of getting a day on the hills, Shalloch on Minnoch for preference. Young Robin Johnston Stewart was quite keen. But it rained in buckets all the time. The heuchs above the sea were sodden, walking a drench for the feet & altogether, if it hadn't been for the food, it would have been rather a flat affair. There wasn't one day when a visit to the hills would have repaid the trouble of getting there and the exertion of climbing.

Then came the preparations for the prolonged pageantry that seemed almost too much of a good thing. Our only festivity was the garden party & it didn't come off for us. We got caught in the terrible thunder plump but thanks to umbrellas and the L.N.E.R. bridge

over Abbeymount we escaped complete ruin to togs, though well splashed. A red "burn" cataracted down the steps from the little garden through which we had walked from Regent Road & then a black spout came over the wall of the railway embankment & the combined streams flooded the streets & threatened to invade the pavement. Providence decreed a high water mark just short of that & we did not have to stand in water. There was a lull & we made a bolt for my office but got caught again. I never saw anything like the water pouring down the Calton Hill steps. We had tea at home, but many people in cars or early arrivals sheltered in the palace or sat it out in the squelching park till the rain stopped & they could pick uneasy steps into the garden.

I had one clear evening on the Bathgate hills 11th July. The Glasgow Fair

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accounted for an absence of smoke & I enjoyed the spectacle of the Bass Rock on one side of Scotland and Arran on the other & John Burnet of Barns was worthily represented by Cardon, Bradlaw, C.C. & Dollar Law. On Sunday, a week syne, we took a hurl by West Calder & up the brae towards Lanark & then walked to the Levenseat (where my ancestor was alleged to have attended a proscribed conventicle) from which over a foreground of forbidding hideousness - Fauldhouse, Benhar, Armadale, etc there is a grand panorama of the Highlands but not as fine as from the Knock or Cavin-Papple (nr. Bathgate).

We are not going anywhere in particular this year. I am on duty

at the office all August. It is very nice getting the fruit & vegetables out of the garden & the children can bathe in Threipmuir & at Glenpark in the Water of Leith. It is very nice having Isabella home. She is to be head of her house for two terms at St Andrews & then be finished off somewhere, before, I hope, studying at Edin^h University with a view to agriculture. She is, alas, not a dab at exams but we hope she has passed her Oxford & Cambridge Certificate. We'll hear in September.

Alec Maitland looks much better not exactly the old Alec - different but quite robust-looking. But I never see him for more than a second at a time in the club. He seems like Noel Skelton in the later phase, always passing on to someone else. Johnnie

[continued from next page:] Austria & the various coups d'état such as the occupation of the Rhine area. Well I'm beginning to haver & it's time I stopped. Love to Susie & our very best wishes to you both & your family. Yours ever Stair A. Gillon.

[continued from previous page:] & I meet regularly on Fridays & he "Croles" away about the war to finish civilization & the ruin of the British Empire.

In front of me is the portrait of the Red Indian Chief of the Stony - a grim relentless Radamanthine profile with a touch of the awesome. But it is the governor & his doings that most interest me. Some day you will, no doubt, indicate to me what exactly is the "troubled water" in Quebec. What can the French Canadians have to grumble at? The Tweedsmuir Reserve sounds thrilling. Fancy there being parts of the Rockies still unexplored. Your travels make ones mouth water - the variety of it all.

I hope it isn't too