A
Lucky Chap – Orra
Loon to Lord Lieutenant, by Sir Maitland Mackie. £11.95 pp free UK.
This
is the finest collections of anecdotes about life in Aberdeenshire in
the 20th century. There is humour in every page. His
grandfather gained a reputation as an engineer because he kicked one of
the new fangled binders dislodging a stone and so getting the machine to
go. His father threw the hammer with the men in the summer evenings. His
horror at opening a box on the kitchen table to find his dead granny.
Mackie was born in 1912 and he describes farm life, going to Tarves
school, then the secondary at Methlick, the Grammar School in Aberdeen,
and finally the University. He tells of his blunders at the mart. By his
early twenties he had fine farms of his own at Rothienorman and Huntly
and helped his father build up Mackie’s Aberdeen Dairy Co. supplying
milk to the Northeast.
As
Lord Lieutenant of Aberdeenshire Mackie had close encounters with the
Royals and he provides unique insight into the British honours system as
year after year he tried to get an honour for Fred Green the mullert of
Oldmeldrum.
Hardback.
Pp271. 4 photos and 6 illustrations by Ruth Smythe.
