Tuesday in Alloa, Scotland

First thing this morning , I did some washing, and with my 'King Midas in reverse' touch, managed to make the washing machine pump cease to operate. It needed manual draining into a flat tray, good thing the floor was tiled. In Carrick-on-Shannon the dishwasher capacitor start broke, requiring 1.5 hours of a serviceman at dinner time, and I have managed to make two Boeing 747 screens require 'Control-Alt-Delete'. Ho, hum.....



Following damage control, we headed into Alloa for a look around. This is the town where many of the Snaddons lived. My great-grandfather, Walter was actually born a few miles away in Sauchie (pronounced Sockie).

Alloa is a very interesting old town. We set out on foot to look for churchyards but found that the churches here did not have them. Eventually we did found a very old, locked churchyard attached to a boarded up church. People running a mission drop-in centre directed us to the town registrar.

We found the Registry (births, deaths, marriages) Office. The lady there gave us a remarkable service for an hour, finding and printing out Snaddon and Patterson births, deaths, marriages, census results back to the 1700s.



After lunch, Doug took a photo of these autumn leaves, then had a discussion with the local kids who wanted to know "What kind of camera is that?" "How many megapixels?"It was neat to hear them singing a funny little ditty as they played on the swing.



The registrar told us who to contact to get the key and a plan for the old Alloa graveyard. There we found 12 Snaddons and Pattersons. I still need to sift through all this information - it's looking interesting! Many of the graves from the 1700s had these skull and crossbones, an hourglass and the sextons's tools. A warning to future generations perhaps?





We ended the day with a trip through the National Trust Alloa Tower, a remarkable old structure from about 1394 with walls that were metres thick.

And here to finish off this post is a poem by "Sandy the Post" Snaddon, who delivered the mail until 1904 at the age of 61.(We found this collection at the local library.)

THE BRAW LASSIE THAT LIVES IN OOR TOON

There is a braw kimmer wha lives in oor toon,
Jist twenty-six years come the first day o' June;
The lads by the dizen are a' after her,
and stick tae the lass like a green hagen bur.

Nae doot she is bonnie, baith tidy and clean,
As straping a lassie that ever I've seen;
They'll aye be weel aff wah ever she gets,
A weel daein' hizzie without any bad debts.



Lovely, isn't it!