My first tradesman Jock Duthie died last month. He was in his late 80s and looking back its fair to say that I hated every single minute of the four or five years I worked with him.

To be fair, I got off to a bad start on my first day when I blackened his finger..... (1)

(2)....nail after dropping paving slab on him. He was a hard man to please. I once got a severe rollicking for something someone else later admitted. He never apologised, instead he told me it would be for the next time I got something wrong - which was often. Someone once ...

(3) ...opined that he was maybe harder on those he liked – I wasn’t convinced.  

He work with L. Grandison & Son of Peebles for most of his adult life, except whilst on National Service and a brief time working in Yorkshire. For some reason he always seemed to wear ....
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(4)...old army clothing to his work which gave an added fear factor. Despite his fearsome reputation among apprentices, he was a modest man, a very good tradesman and was possibly one of last around who served his apprenticeship during 1940s when lath and plaster was still in ...

(5)...day-to-day use. He was very clever and seemed impossibly good at everything. His work survives on many historic (and not so historic) buildings throughout south and central Scotland. He even met the Queen- that’s her looking at a plaster cast of Mary Queen of Scots death..

(6)...mask with Jock looking in the opposite direction.

I learned a lot from Jock. It was he who encouraged me to go to college when I finished my apprenticeship (to get rid of me I suspect) and I will always be grateful to him for that. I got on better with him after I left...

(7).. and I think I may even have sent him a card when he retired. He'd stop for a blether while I was doing jobbing work as a student mostly to make sure I was doing it right, but always to ask how my studies or new job was going. I liked that. He was a good guy really was Jock.