Sandy's Blog
Why Stories Matter
by Casagrandeblog - 17:11 on 13 March 2013
What makes a community? Size has something to do with it. Big cities tend to be collections of individuals, where few know their neighbours and folk tend to mingle only with like-minded companions in specific contexts - workmates, members of your social club, people in your church group.
With fewer than 800 people, Cromarty's not like that. I doubt if anyone here knows everybody - I certainly don't -
but it's impossible to walk along the street or go into the baker's or the post office or the Cromarty Stores or the Arms or the Royal, and not say hello to someone. And all these people have stories: about working at Nigg in the 70s and 80s; about gala weeks and raft races; about picnics at the Camps on the Sutor. And these stories make up the shared fabric of Cromarty life. They help to make us a community, and they are as important as the streets and the buildings in defining Cromarty and making it a place that lives in people's memories.
We are really lucky in Cromarty. We have our excellent Courthouse Museum and the beautifully restored East Kirk. We also have Eric Malcolm's two books - of Cromarty life in the 1930s and 'Cromarty Heroes' - as well as David Alston's scholarly history 'My Little Town of Cromarty'. But the 'unofficial history' matters too, and that's what we get in the stories that live inside people's heads. It's for all of us who care about Cromarty - whether born and bred here or a recent incomer. And it is especially important for the children. In time they will add their own stories - their own threads to the fabric - and they will make sure that they are passed down through the generations. We have lost some important story tellers in recent years. Let's make sure that their stories don't die with them.
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