MACIYE

I was born in 1308 in the Strathnaver region of the Highlands of Scotland, now part of the County of Sutherland. At the age of six I fought at the Battle of Banockburn where I saved Robert the Bruce's spider from the hands of the English. I was on holiday at John 'O Groat's House beyond the Highlands in the northernmost settlement of Scotland in 1513 so I missed being killed at the Battle of Flodden Field. In 1745 I  was back in time to take part in the Jacobite Rebellion although by then I was 437 years old so I wasn't much help. My son James MacIye emigrated to America shortly after Bonnie Prince Charlie escaped to Skye as he wanted to get away from the clan fighting but got caught up in the American Revolution of 1776 and ended up fighting the English again. After a few years of this James returned to Scotland only to find his family had been kicked out of their Highland  croft by the absentee landlords who decided to bring in the Cheviot sheep to all their holdings and put an end to the cofter's way of life. He found his family in Melness on the Kyle of Tongue where they were scraping a living by herring fishing but was unable to stand the life of a fisherman which made him sick so he travelled to  Edinburgh, Scotland's capital city, where he made a living making shoes for the gentry of the New Town. My grandson ( also James) helped to discover pennicillin when he took the lid off some old petri dishes that Alexander Fleming had been experimenting with . Meanwhile I had finally retired to  a flagstone house on the Caithness coast at Dunnet Head where I manged to exercise every morning on a trampoline which seems to keep the blood flowing in my ancient limbs.