The Duke of Buccleuch declared open our village hall in a happy little ceremony this weekend.
His Grace made a perfect light soufflé of a speech which alternately made as sad then laugh. There is no school for Dukedomship. He must just have attained this ability to charm and amuse by diligent practice.
He astonished us that he had last entered the building in 1948 but, casting his eyes about, chuckled he could see no faces he recalled from that day.
He had us all clapping with his insight that the Romans managed signal stations to warn the officers at Trimontium if the natives were getting restless or if a big bear had been spotted marauding. Yet Vodafone cannot manage any signal stations in today's glen, so nobody can get a mobile signal to the disbelief of all townies.
Do distinguished noblemen have to attend 'functions' every weekend? How does His Grace keep his good humour? It is a great mystery.

One of my treats is the annual thump on the mat of the exceedingly learned journal Britannia, the harvest of scholarship of studies of our Roman past in Britain.
By excavation of sites and refining understanding of texts we continue to be able to piece together ever more of the shattered remnants of the astonishing achievement that was the Roman Empire. Britannia is compiled by the clever people at the Hunterian in Glasgow.
I cannot help myself but form the false assumption that Selkirk must be an echo of the Borders tribal name Selgovae. The other tribal entities, the Damnonae, the Novantae and the Brigantes are difficult to place with any precision. Perhaps their boundaries were quite fluid.
The journal attributes names familiar to us to the names employed by the Romans. Castledykes = Clindum or Lindum. Broomholm = Croucingo. Easter Happrew at Lyne = Carbantium. The Roman name for Berwick is new to me – Olei Clavis, itself a corruption of Horrea Classis, meaning a naval stores base. Truculensis ought to be Hawick, home of the ever-truculent Cymrae, but it seems it is not.
Britannia lists some recent Borders finds. In Peebles they discovered a copper alloy statuette of Jupiter. At Wolfelee, near Roxburgh, a trumpet brooch and iron axe head were found by metal detectors. At the Lyne fort a piece of slabbing was unearthed, showing how Roman stonework was dismantled and used by the natives for their less elegant structures. At Oxnam a broken silver brooch was found by the road at Cappuck fort.
My favourite is of a wild boar tablet found near Melrose. The boar was the regimental symbol of the Legion Victoria Victrix. The XXth was raised in the sunshine of Provence. What can they have thought of a Borders winter?
Because we know so much more about the military spine to the Roman presence, I think we see it through false eyes. The day-to-day reality must have been trading rather than fighting. The Romans would scarcely bother with the Borders if it was not profitable for them. No doubt Selgovae women were handsome, but Empires depend on transactions. Our pretty counties do not represent mineral wealth. It can only have been food we traded.
We have almost no insights into the Borders mind of the past. I suspect there was a great quantity of superstition and religion, and of great dexterity at skills we no longer have.
We know the Romans termed our hairy unsophisticated ancestors as the 'Britaniculae' and thought their Latin less than accomplished – implying but not proving – the schools were run by local authorities even then.
Without copies of The Southern Reporter how did they know what was going on? It has to have been gossip.

I wonder if I can get treatment for my problem? I have a fascination with stationery and office equipment. I can get quite animated in a stationery store.
There is one in Galashiels where I just stand and stroke the lovely different papers. I dream of having a huge laminating machine and, of course, a guillotine for getting the straight cuts scissors can never give me.
I cannot help myself. Wherever I go I gather envelopes and sellotapes. A fellow sufferer seems to be Mr Ian Helford 'Chairman Emeritus' of Viking Direct – "your favourite office products – overnight!"
It is true. If I get a sudden urge for some correcting fluid, fax rolls or sticky labels they arrive the next morning. There is really little more pleasure to be attained than a box of high grade A4 paper. I buy it faster than I can use it.
I know from the high success rate of Viking and other stationery intermediaries that I am not the only sufferer or enjoyer of this fetish. Yet I cannot ever meet those who share my slightly odd enthusiasm.
Prime Minister Gladstone took a tactile delight in Downing Street's paper clips – then a newly-invented supplement to the forces of bureaucracy. I suppose stamp collectors of the obsessive sort have affinities with my problem, but fine stamps can masquerade as an investment. Piles of stationery give me delight but they do not grow in value.
I read endlessly that the days of paper are over. Soon we will all be digital and online and paperless. I do not believe it.