I remember the original court case. We were doing a pub quiz in the Grass market, Edinburgh and decided our team name would be “Hawick women want a ride”. We couldn’t understand why our team name was getting cheered every time our lowly scores were read out. At the end of the quiz a couple of young ladies came over and thanked us for supporting the cause, we were rather ignorant young students and said the team name was just a bit of a laugh, they didn’t see the funny side. I thought they were going to set about us. After they’d gone my mate told us his dad was representing the the two ladies in the case. I spent my high school years near Duns which also.has a common riding, it always seemed to me to be an excuse to get absolutely hammered every night for a week. It was also a time when car loads of lads from Eyemouth, Kelso, Coldstream etc would congregate on a Friday or Saturday night and have running battles, on Monday morning there was usually one or two places that had boarded up windows. I couldn’t wait to get away from the Border town mentality, “a day away frae Hawick is a day wasted”.
