Queen of the South

Dumfries is a small farming town in South West Scotland best known for the fact that Robert Burns lived and died there, the bicycle (voted the most significant invention of the past 2000 years) was invented there and J.M. Barrie and explorer Joseph Thomson (no relation apart from the fact that we are all “Jock Tamson’s bairns”) also lived there for a while.

Me and Jamie at Celtic Park before the big game.

The local football team is Queen of the South among whose claims to fame are that they are the “only team in the Bible” and that they were the first British team to win an international trophy (I’d want proof of that).

They also made it to the Scottish Cup final last year (2008) for the first time in their history and I (and half the people who ever lived in Dumfries) flew back for the final. Me, my son Jamie and my niece’s husband Kenny had lunch at at a special “do” at Celtic Park before racing over to Hampden Park. Celtic had just won the league two nights earlier (Jamie and I watched both Celtic and Rangers’ matches in a pub in Soho) so this was happy times. When Queens came back from 2-0 down at half time to be level …

Just before kick off - QoS players nearest the camera.

well, they should have just stopped the clocks. I didn’t go down to Dumfries for the big parade that they were always going to have the next day, win or lose. I wish I had.
Musician (and my hero) Richard Thompson’s father’s family is from Dumfries, his surname having acquired the erroneous P due to a mistake made in a nameplate for his grandfather’s house. To my eternal shame I once unfairly slagged him off – RT, not his grandfather – in a piece for the local paper. It’s a cringe-making regret I carry with me to this day.
Apart from that, Dumfries was once voted the best place to live in Britain. As my older sister said at the time “they didnae ask us”.