Fergus 09

Andrew and me

Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series with me and the Saltire
Me out front of our clan tent


We went up to the Fergus Highland games this year to do the MacKinnon Clan tent, my wife (I still get butterflies when I say that.) is a MacKinnon and on the board of directors. This was my first time at a Clan Tent, I must say it is a different experience being in a clan tent. We decided to bake shortbread for the visitors to our tent, they were very well received.

We arrived Friday as we had weekend passes, however we were the only clan there at the time, and had to wait as the staff for the games were making last minute preparations. It was decided to go see Pete from Canadian Casual Kilts and Robert from RKilts. It was at this point that I scared Pete by coming into his booth when his back was turned, He turned faster than I've ever seen him move with a raised fist, when he realized who it was he dropped his hand and we both caught our breath.

Shortly after we made our way back over to the Avenue of the Clans or in this case the clan, on the way we stopped to watch some of the Heavy Events that were already underway.

Saturday we lined up for the march and there was some confusion as they decided to do the march in a reverse alphabetical order. As were standing in line we were hit with the smell of cigarette smoke, now for me this is nothing more than a minor annoyance, however Catherine suffers from asthma as such we were unable to do the clan march. I can not fathom how you are supposed to represent your clan while smoking, it is one thing to smoke outdoors, however smoking in a line when you know the smoke is drifting into others faces is something else entirely.

The rain was moving in and both Catherine and myself came down with migraine headaches, it was a good thing we left when we did as I had to stop half way home so that Catherine could take over driving, I could not do it any longer.