A quiet event, labelled a ‘people’s ceremony’, was held at the Stonehaven War Monument on the city’s Black Hill this November. The Remembrance occasion coincided with the monument’s 100^th anniversary year. 

The event included some performances from a local singer and poet. 

Gloria Potter sang MacCrimmon’s Lament – a Jacobite-era song that was originally written to lament the loss of a piper in the 1745-46 uprising. 

Poet Marka Rifat read one of her own poems, The Hours of Our Days, which epitomised the importance of Remembrance. 

A portion of this poem reads as follows:

 

We greet the world at quarter to three, flat on our little backs.

Soon it is three, then our mothers chase to catch us travelling fast at quarter past.

Then time is steady it seems.

For the most part, we are at noon upright, learning, living, creating little clocks of our own, forgetting too often that time does not stand still. 

We mean to register the ticks of our hours, to treasure them until the very last.

To do our best to make amends while we can.

To respect, forgive and care, until the very last.

And then, time has moved on but those who knew us will mark our fine moments here.

 

The event concluded with the laying of a wreath by Phil Mills-Bishop, the chair of Stonehaven and North East Scotland Twinning (SNEST) Group and Daniel Veltman, the vice-chair.