Like most of you I tend to ignore the remarks I was not supposed to hear (and I've heard quite a few) but sometimes that is hard.

For instance, I was in a local supermarket shopping for vegetables when I overheard a 10 year old girl, standing with her mother alongside me but a few steps away, say to her mother "Why have you stopped picking up the carrots?". "Because I was just admiring the beautiful kilt that man's wearing over there," said her Mum. I could not suppress a smile.

That was a Blue Ramsay day. Last Saturday it was a Loud MacLeod (Bumbee) tartan day and that certainly got me quite a few admiring comments straight to my face. My daughter, though, strongly disapproved (on purely aesthetic grounds, she says) so, instead of walking with me she was deliberately a few steps ahead. Afterwards she said she'd picked up talk of "cross-dressing" from those coming towards me. I heard nothing of this and saw no specially antagonistic reactions either. Now was she deliberately reporting this to discourage me from ever wearing said Loud MacLeod in her presence again? Or is there really something outrageous about that tartan?