In a diary by the proprietor of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland, irritating patrons are named and shamed, and I have just been convicted for the innocent crime of whistling. “Sadly this type… is a man (it is always a man) who is so blissfully ignorant of the fact that this habit can be deeply irritating, particularly when it is completely tuneless (it is always tuneless), that he fails to notice quite how much the people around him dislike it.” Ouch!

I would pay the shop a visit if I ever went to Wigtown (if only to whistle Scotland the Brave out of tune), but there would be a higher priority on my list of sights to see. The Martyrs Stake. In 1685, two ladies were drowned to death for holding onto their religious convictions. Margaret the Older (63) and Margaret the Younger (18), who refused to acknowledge James the Head of the Church. King of the land, yes, but not Head of the Church.

And so they were tied to stakes to be drowned by the incoming tide. But with this cruel twist: Margaret the Older was positioned further out in the bay, to be drowned first, in the hope that Margaret the Younger would be shocked into recanting her position. The ploy failed, and the Younger went to glory in the middle of a hymn, drowned out by the world, but amplified in heaven. ‘I will whistle for them and gather them in.’ (Zechariah 10:8a NKJV))