The best laid plans...

Exactly two weeks ago I said that Lorna was doing a small plastering job in the ladies loo and that it would be finished the next day. She's still at it. A portion of the plaster had fallen off some years earlier and instead of repairing it, someone had the splendid idea of putting battens on the wall and nailing plywood onto them. The battens had rotted to powder and L has had a much bigger plastering job to do as a result.

When we removed the mirror from the ladies toilet this fluttered out from behind it. "Bob" Broystedt owned the Spread Eagle between 1964 and 1974. Cath and Charlie Smibert sold it to him. The brochure says that the main railway line runs within five miles of the town. That would be the Waverley line which closed in 1969, so the brochure must be before then. The hanging sign above the eagle has gone, but otherwise the place looks similar. Broystedt is remembered amongst the older locals by his habit of announcing opening time on Sunday by going out into the High Street and blowing a bugle (very badly by all accounts). Most of the fixtures and fittings in the hotel disappeared during his tenure and the original railings on the main stair "got broken when someone fell on them" in this period too. Clearly Saturday nights were a bit livelier then!