Today’s Berwickshire is a less riveting a read-at least for Huttonian. Full as it is: three pages in the news section and half a page in the sports section- of the Duns Summer Festival. There is limit of the number of Wynsome Maydes, Reivers and Reivers’ Lasses which one can take at one read. The Sports page features the Hand Ba’ which is semi controlled riot involving a team of married men playing against a team of bachelors trying to get the ball into one of the two goals formed by corners of the market square. It was abandoned in the 19th century because of associated drunkenness but has been revived to bolster the festival. The organisers of the festival have a habit of producing strange abbreviations in their literature-Hand Ba’ is one but that is I suppose what it has always been called –worse is the Openin’ Ceremony balanced by the Closin’ Ceremony. Did people swallow their ‘gs’ in times gone by? It is all very irritatin’.
Anyhow Sheriff Kevin had a quiet week. Only one oddity. A woman from Newcastle was sentenced to 80 hours community service for carrying a locking flick knife in her hand bag. Her defence was that she had carried the knife for protection since an assault in her teens-had never used it.
She is now 25.
