Today Mona's picture sits in a new frame, so, that, once again, she can admire her handsome and brave husband, and he can smile back. Lest we forget..

Joe's hand held mine when he taught wee me to draw. He smelled of mint humbugs and cigars. The two pictures, of the two young lovers, one seen, one unseen, had been together in the frame for over 100 years.

Joe, a young architect went off to war with his teacher and mentor, from Glasgow School of Art, Eugene Bourdon - Eugene to the French army, Joe to the Royal Engineers. Joe came back. Eugene fell.

Mona sent the picture to Grandpa Joe in January 1918, writing on the back: 'To my husband', and he carried it with him on the Western Front through the last months of that terrible war.

Meet the granny I never knew, she died long before I was born: South African-born, Mona Ramsay. Sometimes, when you least expect it, history extends its hand, and lays it on your shoulder.

Anyway, a few years ago, our late cat, Shadow, knocked Joe's picture over. No harm done, although the image had slipped in its mount. Imagine my surprise, when I took the back off the frame, to discover it contained not one but two pictures!

I've known this picture all my life. It was the one Joe gave to his young wife in 1915, before he went off to the Western Front. When my parents' old house was broken up, Grandpa Joe's picture came to live with me; he's watching over me now as I write.

Over 100 years since it ended, the Great War still has stories to tell us, and secrets to reveal. Meet my paternal grandfather, Glasgow architect Joseph Wilson. Doesn't he look handsome and dashing in his uniform?

No, like all the best dugs, I'm a mongrel, Aberdonian, Glasgow, Irish, South African. The more stripes to our tartan, the stronger the plaid.

They took oor our pipes and drums from us,

Magic - in Scotland when they banned the pipes, in 1745, they also banned the drums. We lost our drum culture.

You're only as tall as yer shadow...