ROTARY CLUB OF PRESTWICK -
“REVISITING THE PAST
WITH THE PEN”
I was delighted to be asked back to talk to Prestwick Rotary in 2021.
With the country continuing to be in the grip of coronavirus, like so many groups and organisations, Prestwick Rotary were continuing to ‘meet’ on Zoom.
My talk, on Thursday 15th April 2021, was entitled Revisiting the Past with the Pen.
From Ayr’s Auld Brig history to World War II memories,
and lots more …
I put together a twenty minute PowerPoint presentation to accompany my talk which focused on the large part historical influences have played in my published writing.
Apart from an update on my journey to the publication of my social history book, I provided a snapshot of other historical subjects I’ve written about.
Subjects have been as diverse as Ayr’s Auld Brig, an 18th century sea captain, World War II fundraising efforts by school children, and a special toy from one hundred years ago.
I finished off by giving a taster of subjects I am currently working on.
ROTARY CLUB OF PRESTWICK -
“FINDING OCULEUS” 2018
I was pleased to be invited to talk to Prestwick Rotary, about my social history project, on OCULEUS, back in February 2018.
At the time, I was continuing to research and write what was to become my 12-chapter social history book, based on a year’s worth of columns written by my great grandfather, William Gilmour Wallace, under the pseudonym OCULEUS, for The Ayrshire Post, in 1898.
Meet the Family!
The talk featured several extracts from the columns, along with information I had uncovered in the course of my research.
The final slide in my PowerPoint, featured one of the few photographs of OCULEUS in old age.
The photograph was taken on the occasion of the 50th Wedding anniversary of my great grandparents, in the garden of their home in Dongola Road, Ayr, and shows four of their five children, some spouses and two grandchildren.
My mother, Allison, was eleven at the time. Little did she know that her safe-keeping of the family scrapbook, containing those newspaper columns, would become so important to her elder daughter (me!) at the start of the 21st century.
My mother remembers the day well!