Pagan - Once Bitten, Twice Fined
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- Book:Once Bitten, Twice Fined
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- Publisher:Birlinn
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- Year:2013
- City:New York
- Rating:4 / 5
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Once Bitten, Twice Fined: summary, description and annotation
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This lively book is an account of Graeme Pagans encounters and experiences in over forty years of legal practice in Oban. It is a lively mixture of the humorous and the sad, the significant and the trivial, the intentional and the serendipitous and paints an entertaining and informative picture of the life in this beautiful part of western Scotland. Graeme Pagan was involved professionally with an enormously wide range of cases in his long and varied career. But this is not a book just for those interested in the law; it is full of human interest and the peculiarities of life in the Highlands.;Once Bitten, Twice Fined; Title Page; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Foreword; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1: Highland Exhilarations; 2: From the Beaches of Tiree to the Nightspots of Nairn; 3: Damn and blast you to hell. . .; 4: Try a redhead next time; 5: For Justice and Decency; 6: In Every Court in the Land; 7: The Power of the Fiscal; 8: Dad Would Have Laughed; 9: Never a Lost Cause; 10: We know whats best for them; 11: We had a dream; 12: Mysteries of the Air; 13: Death is not extinguishing the light ... ; 14: After 300 Years -- One Minute Late; 15: Through Lifes Changes.
Pagan: author's other books
Who wrote Once Bitten, Twice Fined? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Pagan
Graeme Gibson
Ellen Evert Hopman
Goldsworthy Graeme
Higginbotham Joyce
Graeme Pearson
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Contents
Foreword
Most lawyers memoris are mince. I know; Ive written mine. Yet now and again you come across a stunner. Graeme Pagans is such a book. Try this test. Open the book at random and start reading. I guarantee that ten minutes later youll still be reading, maybe with a glance over your shoulder in case the sales assistant thinks youre in a for a freebie. Whether its skill or a knack I dont know. With the merest twist of a sentence, the author can create a character and bring him to stand talking beside you. This is not a quaint book full of teuchters. The people in it are real people. The dialogue is real. The situations are real. The questions people ask are real. The whole book reeks of experience, legal and otherwise. You are entitled to ask how a country solicitor, in a small practice, in a small town can manage such things, but he has. When I hear he was writing a book I groaned. When I was asked to write a foreword I broke into a sweat. Ive read judges books and laughed at judges stories, but all from sycophancy. Dont listen to judges jokes and dont buy their books; buy this one.
The author is something of an oddity. He is a small fish in a small pool but his powers of observation are universal. He sees far beyond his own horizons, and now and again speaks for all humanity. His sparse comments on his duties as a Fiscal give us an insight into how such a job must be animated by a passion for justice. Above all he excels at bringing ordinary people to life and making them noble. He fails only when he tries to do this with his Liberal party colleagues. Mary Shelley herself would have found breathing life into Liberals harder than creating Frankensteins monster. From this remark you will see that I dont share the authors politics. Nor am I a particular friend. I am quite disinterested when I say this is a fine book.
When I first spoke to Mr Pagan it was to tap him for a fiver. He refused. I have waited with exasperated affection for thirty-one years to write this next sentence. Graeme Pagan is a miserly bastard, but he has written a cracker of a book.
Ian Hamilton
March 2004
March 2004
Introduction
Many people have said to many over the years, You should write a book. During my nearly fifty years experience of practising law, almost all of it in a small community and dealing with all sorts of people, and because of my involvement in many other things, people have often said the same thing to me. It was when three separate ladies, in a space of ten days towards the end of 2001, said it to me that I thought I must do something. Particularly so when I realized that none of the ladies knew each other and that their ages were very different one was in her eighties, one in her sixties and one in her forties. When the younger one added, before it is too late, I was really spurred into action.
I am not sure exactly what she meant but if she was thinking of a failing memory as the years went by, she was right. I have not kept diaries and although I have access to some papers and to my own scrapbook, most of this book is from memory. I hope I shall be forgiven for any historical inaccuracies or confusions with names which will inevitably have crept in. Many of my experiences have been amusing, many sad and many interesting, but I have always believed in trying to make people laugh and I hope that will help this book to be entertaining. I also think it is important to pass on to others some of the experiences I have been privileged to have been part of and experiences which others may never encounter. Some of the sadder occasions may help most of us to realize how lucky we are. Some of them will also, I hope, help people to cope a bit better if they are having to face similar difficulties.
I once read a very inspiring book called The Good Women of China. Xinran had had many harrowing experiences in helping women subjected to violence, abuse and general deprivation in many parts of China and she passed on what someone had once said to her about writing things down. Writing is a kind of repository and can help create a space for the accommodation of new thoughts and feelings. If you dont write these stories down, your heart will be filled up and broken by them. There is something of that here as well.
Everything that is in this book is true and a lot of names are real, but obviously for reasons of professional and personal confidentiality, I have sometimes had to change names and on one or two occasions to disguise the stories altogether. Some of the experiences go back several decades and some of the episodes reflect attitudes and ways of life which are no longer appropriate. But I have no wish to disguise the way things used to be. A lady I knew, who herself had been a victim of the countrys appalling housing situation, told me that she was very glad to hear that I was writing a book. People should not be allowed to forget how things used to be, were her words.
I have been lucky and privileged in many ways and I hope my experiences can help or entertain others, perhaps both. I think it would be a waste to take those experiences to my grave. I have never believed they were intended only for me.
Finally, I gladly acknowledge the debt I owe to Heather and the rest of my supportive family present and future.
Highland Exhilarations
A police torch was flashed into my eyes. It was 3 oclock in the morning and there was a pause as I sat at the wheel of my car before hearing the very welcome words, Och! Its yourself carry on home. Where else, I wondered, could someone be 37 miles from home and get such a welcome from the local police. It was all the more surprising because, at the time, I had only been living in Oban for two weeks. It was no wonder that when I again passed through Tyndrum at the same sort of time two weeks later, I felt a warm glow on seeing the Argyll sign at the roadside. Im home, I felt with a secure and satisfied emotion.
Despite the security of my upbringing, I was in a sense a bit of a nomad, having been at boarding school since the age of eight and then at school in England and then, after that, going on to university in Edinburgh. I had not really had the chance to put my roots down in my original home patch of Cupar.
It was one of lifes happy coincidences which had brought me to Oban and the Highlands in the first place. With hindsight it was clearly something which had been mapped out for me. In the late 1920s, when my father was himself studying law at Edinburgh University, he was aware of a fellow student but it was some time before they ever spoke to each other. For a while they had simply acknowledged one another by raising their bowler hats as they passed each other in Charlotte Square, which they did regularly. However, at last, they found themselves sitting next to each other in a barbers shop at which coffee was served and magazines provided while they were waiting their turn for the chair. The other man was looking through the Punch magazine when, without even looking at Dad, he suddenly said, No relation of mine, unfortunately.
Dad looked across at the magazine the other man was reading and saw an advert for John Harveys Bristol Cream Sherry.
I presume by that, that you are introducing yourself to me as Harvey.
Not only Harvey, also John, he said, thereby inviting Dad to go onto Christian name terms immediately, which was not usual in those days. From that there began a family friendship which lasted near enough seventy years.
John Harvey, in fact, became virtually part of the family because he married comparatively late in life. Typically, having been Dads best man, he chose the same date for his own wedding twenty-seven years later. We therefore had his company at home on many occasions during my childhood, including New Year and other holidays. By another happy chance, in the summer of 1957, John, who by then was the senior partner of the solicitors firm Hosack & Sutherland in Oban, was spending the weekend at my parents home immediately after my graduation. I told him that I had two weeks holiday with nothing particular to do for the first time in many years and asked if he had any suggestions.
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