Who needs electricity, Pot Noodles, medicine or mobile communications when you've got wicker Bread baskets, Spinning Jennies and bucolic influenza? Over ten years ago, redecorating, I stripped back some wallpaper to bare plaster and found written an ancient pencil scrawl announcing, ' Thomas Gilfillan, Painter, 24/07/81'.Thomas Gilfillan, Painter, Ardrossan.
Died February 14th, 1900 - Aged 70. His legacy standing before me on weathered red sandstone grave as lonely as the US Apollo flag planted on the surface of the moon.'
HeHE'
He'd been there - in my house in 1881 -
papering and dodging death. His elaborate tombstone encapsulates a family history of tragedy reading like a true-life Tammy Wynette ballad involving a dead wife at 44; three infant children dead within a few horrible years, leading to an elaborate grave unvisited since 1938.

On the brighter side, at the turn of the century, when the town was expanding like a white dwarf everyone who was anyone got a street named after them - as long as they had a penis. He got a road up the top end of Saltcoats named after him - so it didn't turn out all bad.

down deeper | back to the light