Entry for 10th October, 2008 - Brodie Castle and Ghosts

I was on holiday in Nairn last week with my Significant Other and the two small round faced people. During the week we paid a visit to Brodie Castle, which is a stately home quite near to Inverness. It’s held by the National Trust now, so that it will be held in stasis for all time coming, like a prehistoric mosquito in a lump of amber.
The story of the place is the same as lots of other stately homes I suppose – the family couldn’t afford the upkeep of the place now that they are not permitted to live high on the sweat of the working classes, and passed the house into the hands of the National Trust. The last Lord Brodie’s portrait still hangs on the wall as you go in. He commissioned the picture himself, and I cannot help but feel that he did so just to remind everyone whose house this really is. He looks rather sad and old up there in his faded old kilt, his brows lined with the worry of betraying 15 generations of his family.
“This house is my house” he seems to be saying as the fat Americans stroll past him with their Japanese cameras. “I might be dead and my grandchildren may now be living in a council flat in Slough, but the days of bonded serfdom will return one day, and we will reclaim what is rightfully ours.”