I can almost hear Bimbi's anguish

This is my beautiful grandmother, Elspeth Mary Drummond, on her wedding day, 7th February 1935, in Bangalore. She had been born in Berkshire, the eldest daughter of two accomplished artists and musicians. Educated in Dumfries, she could trace her ancestry back many generations to Scottish kings and always rued what she regarded as the huge misfortune of having been born in England. As a young woman, after working for a while as a governess in Austria, she felt called to become a nun and joined a Benedictine convent in Scotland, only to leave before taking her final vows to marry her childhood sweetheart. (I can't help thinking of The Sound of Music at this point!)

My Scottish grandfather's parents had lived in India when he was growing up (though the children were sent home to Scotland for their health and education). He followed the family tradition and he and his bride were married in Bangalore before departing for Mysore, where they spent their honeymoon. They lived in Calcutta and Delhi, having a daughter (my mother) and then five sons, two of whom died tragically in infancy. In 1946, they left India and returned to England. Their youngest child, my aunt, was born in Dumfries in the middle of a snowstorm in February 1947 and from that point the family moved northwards, finally settling in Argyll, where my grandparents remained living until their deaths in 1982 and 1986 respectively. I was the first of their 16 grandchildren and am now the mother of their eldest great-grandchild, of whom there are 26.

Scottish nationalism and independence were fierce passions with my grandmother. She would have been so disappointed by the result of today's Referendum - I can almost hear the stamping and gnashing of teeth! I've been watching the results come in all day, as the red NO bar on the BBC website inched slowly ahead and I just couldn't help thinking about Bimbi, as we called her. (I had dreamed this name up when I was a toddler; it seemed odd when I discovered at one stage that Bartolomeo Bimbi had been a Florentine painter, and my grandmother was the daughter of a well-known painter). I tried to find a nice photo of her but the best one I have of her as I remember her, in her 60s or 70s, is in Bahrain. So here is a photo of her on her wedding day, together with a little handmade lace cross that lives in her Bible, which I have.

And now, it’s off to the polls for Kiwis tomorrow in our own General Election.