‘Now the real work begins’, he thought to himself, extracting a well-used A3 sketch pad and pencil from his shoulder bag. 10 minutes on a small cluster of weeds on the bank. 15 on the treetops. And another few on the rippling river. Hastily capturing snippets of the Autumn Day in doodles and scrawls. Details which would feed into the whole, to capture the scene and paint the vivid images of Tam’s race across the bridge. He could almost hear the screech of the witches and ghouls pursuing Tam and trusty Meg as they fled across the ancient stones. Hooves clattering on the cobbles.

And his mind wandered back to a tale he often told his three children. Of an Isobel Gowdie, a Nairn woman who confessed to witchcraft in 1662, immortalised in the symphony ‘The Confession of Isobel Gowdie’ by James MacMillan. Surely, she was a relation!

Alexander was fond of telling stories, especially the creepy and macabre. Scaring his son Lachlan on a Sunday trip to Girvan with tales of the bloated body found by the lonely lighthouse on the water’s edge. As an art teacher he would start his classes with a vivid tale to stir the imagination, leading some parents to complain he was giving their children nightmares!

But no story he told would inspire his own art as much as the apocryphal Tam o’Shanter poem, “a gothic tale, strewn with vivid and awesome images”, which had captured his imagination since childhood. Capturing these scenes in all their grim and haunting glory would be a challenge, one he would relish.

This research trip had been successful, he thought to himself. And there would be many more to come… But, now to Troon for a family Seafood feast of lobster – and a tall glass of white wine to swirl visions of hooves on stone, stormy nights, and devilish beasts through his mind.