No I’m sorry but I can’t be expected to cater for you all the time, you’ll just have to cope by yourselves for once. Normal service will be resumed next week hopefully.
This is near enough the view from the place I’m staying at:
“Menstrie Castle, a three-storey castellated house, was home to a branch of the Clan MacAllister who anglicised their name to Alexander.
Sir William Alexander (1557 – 1644) was to become 1st Earl of Stirling in 1633. In 1626, he had been appointed as Principal Secretary of State for Scotland and entrusted with the establishment of a Scottish colony in Nova Scotia in Canada.
He advised King James VI to found the Order of Baronets of Nova Scotia as a money making scheme. For the payment of 1,000 merks, new baronets were granted a 16,000 acre estate in the developing colony. The scheme failed and in 1631, Charles I ceded the lands to Louis XIII of France, and ordered the 4 settlers to burn their buildings. After the failure of the scheme, William died bankrupt in London in 1644. His embalmed body was brought North and interred in the family vault in the High Kirk of Stirling.
There are still about 100 Baronets of Nova Scotia in existence. Many of them are descended from ancestors who once nominally owned territory which they would never see.”
The library also used to be there when I were a lad.