The 100th anniversary of Ian Fleming is being celebrated widely. I have always felt his creation, James Bond, was nasty and brutish. At least both were Scottish.
I once met his wife, Ann Charteris, Lady Rothermere. She let drop the James Bond series was conceived at Barns House on the banks of the Tweed, one of her Wemyss family homes.
If true, this is an important little footnote to history. All the biographies attribute the Bond genre as originating at Goldeneye, Fleming's house in Jamaica. A Borders origin could be fun. For all his grievous flaws, he outsells Sir Walter Scott and probably Allan Massie and Alistair Moffat too.
Yet my recollection is that Barns was rented out by the Wemyss estates as a school, which was eventually disgraced for fiddling its exam results.
I wonder if Lady Rothermere could have meant The Glen near Traquair? That was her mother's family home.
I feel Borders ghosts would make Barns House more prominent as it so affected the imagination of John Buchan, whose espionage figures were far more gentlemanly, complex and subtle than Bond.
There are several claimants to being the figure who inspired the James Bond creation. One was Sir Fitzroy Maclean. Another a gallant Scots soldier called Patrick Dalziel Job. My own hunch is Bond was the romanticised fabrication of Fleming's self-image and not based on any living person.
Could more research be accomplished on this obscure piece of intelligence from the late Ann Charteris? The connection could add lustre to the Borders.
Sean Connery is a devoted Scot Nat. He could scarcely refuse to open a Bond museum or statue to be confected in or around Peebles.

I took myself to Hawick to my dentist to have some minor repairs done. I have never had an experience that makes you feel both so mortal and dim as trying to make conversation with the amiable Mr Lavery as he pokes around my gaping mouth.
It would overstate it to say I enjoy my visits to the Teviot practice, but the repartee is of a high standard even if rather one-sided.
I am assured the broad dental health of Greater Hawick is improving. What I find intriguing is not only that it has ceased to be a routine of extractions and fillings, but that the money and fun, if that isn't too incongruous, is cosmetic artistry. Ugly teeth can be made regular, shiny and white.
The more dextrous dentist can now drill platinum screws into your jaw bone and plant new artificial teeth where only a grim hole was previously possible.
Just over the horizon of dentistry is the near miracle of stem cell techniques where they will be able to grow new teeth from a bit donated from your own body.
There are several jobs I could never imagine performing. Looking into stranger's mouths day after day strikes me as wildly unattractive, but there is no denying Mr Neville and Mr Lavery seem to think it all very merry.
I feel they deserve every penny of profit.

ONE of my great heroes is the Reverend Sydney Smith. He has me chuckling over the two centuries since his end.
One of his proposals that outraged polite society, though I cannot see why, was the erection of 'universal scratching posts'.
He proposed that: "As all animals have a passion for scratching their backbones: they break down gates and palings to effect this. Look, there is my universal scratcher, a sharp-edged pole resting on a high and low post, adapted to every height from a horse to a lamb. You can have no idea how popular it will be."
Smith commemorated this admirable notion by playing on Virgil:
That learned scratching pole that yonder stands
Owes its existence to my curious hands;
Framed for all animals, great or small,
It perfect satisfaction gives to all;
Their rumps, their tails, their flea-bit backs confess
How e'en in scratching poles a priest may bless
Smith could never have imagined the creation of telephones and the need for scratching poles every 25 years or so, supplied by BT.