One Sunday, while I was still preening myself as a result of my elevation to Ross and Cromarty District Council (all those years ago) an elderly couple came to see me and to make a complaint.
It was unusual for constituents to contact their elected representatives on a Sunday, in the Highlands at any rate. So I was initially surprised to see the couple, who I semi-recognised, at the door; but I invited them in, sat them down, and asked them to share their problems with me.
They told me that they were retired and that they had come from Zimbabwe (they still called it Rhodesia) to live a quiet life in Scotland. They were white, genteel, of modest means and very polite - and I was appalled by what they told me.
The previous night there had been a dance near where they lived, and at a ludicrously late hour the youngsters had come pouring out into the street. The noise was intolerable, the drunkenness and filthy language intolerable, and these two poor people had had to endure all of this while nervously comforting each other behind their locked front door.
The police did nothing. They had just turned a blind eye. They were completely unconcerned by the disturbance. Wasn't this awful - and could I do anything to help them? Couldn't these dreadful dances be stopped, particularly in the early hours of a Sunday morning.
I was indignant. This was totally unacceptable behaviour (on the part of the police, as well as the youngsters) and yes, I most certainly would do something for them. I would raise this at the very highest level. I would write to the Chief Constable.
They thanked me profusely and sincerely. At last someone had listened and was prepared to actually do something. As they took their leave I felt pleased that I was able to take decisive action
"Dear Chief Constable, As an elected Ross-shire councillor night in question do you really feel that this is the standard of policing what use of special constables people have a right to peaceful lives" etc etc, and so it went on.
I posted the letter with the flourish of a veritable verbal swordsman. Northern Constabulary's Inverness HQ would tremble when the post arrived.
And then there was a silence. A week went by, then a month, and then two months. Still nothing back from the police - and then I rather forgot about it all. "Look here, Jamie, it's about my broken toilet seat" other pressing casework soon took over my thoughts and time.
But then one morning the telephone rang. It was Sergeant Magnus Mackay at the Tain police station: "Jamie, would you have a couple of minutes to pop up here?"
Checking my tax disc as I went (can't be too careful!) I hopped in the car. At the station, after the customary pleasantries, Magnus got down to business.
"Now Jamie, you wrote the Chief about an incident following a dance"
I squared my shoulders, my jaw and my resolve: I might know and like Magnus, but I was the champion of the people and if that meant being firm with the police, then so be it. I frowned and looked him in the eye.
"Yes - hmm - well this big book here is the station log book - and I'd like you to read the entry for the night that you wrote to the Chief about."
Huh! An old one, that one! But all the same I looked down and read.
What!?! I was indignant at what the old couple had originally told me - but now I was astonished. Indeed, I was flabbergasted.
"You see it written there, Jamie - that night it was the man who came to see you that had been blazing drunk and swearing at the youngsters - came out of his house like a jack-in-the-box and two of us had to physically restrain him. He was in a hellish state and in the end we had to put him in the cells; he would have come to see you some time after he was released on the Sunday"
Over the next day or two I made cautious enquiries about my complainers, only to discover that they had decided that after all the Highlands were not for them and that several months back they had gone to live in South Africa.
I also discovered that my man, when he had been living and working in Zimbabwe, had been a copper - a full colonel in the Southern Rhodesian Constabulary, no less.
Things are not always what they seem.
