shewhomust | On memory and forgetting

One of the questions in the pub quiz last Wednesday (in a round of questions about blood) was: "Which town in Scotland is known for its black pudding?" I had no idea. It rang no bells at all: surely black pudding comes from Bury, in Lancashire? The team discussed it, and nobody knew the answer. Eventually, the majority vote went for Dundee. I wasn't convinced: surely jam, jute and journalism are enough industries for one town? Besides, Dundee felt too big, I wanted a smaller town... But since I couldn't come up with a better answer, we handed in our sheet for marking, and it was returned to us with a cross beside that answer. We carried on kicking it back and forth, while we waited for all the papers to be marked, and somebody said "Tomintoul", not because he thought it was the answer but because it was a good Scottish town-name. Something about the metre of it threw a switch in my mind, and, dammit!, I knew perfectly well where it was, of course I knew -

Stornoway! Of course it was Stornoway! Hadn't landladies in B&Bs across the Western Isles been offering us Stornoway black pudding as an option with our breakfast? How could I not have remembered that? Or rather, how could I not have remembered it so utterly that I didn't even feel the itch of something not remembered?

What is my memory trying to hide from me? Feelings of guilt about not having posted about our visit to Stornoway, possibly?

I don't have any photos of the black pudding. My favourite of my photos of Stornoway was taking inside a very chaotic tweed shop, full of beautiful tweeds and random offcuts and balls of wool: