Stepping down after 27 years at Holyrood - Christine Grahame

Work, of course, continues and the government has had us sitting very late to push through legislation. I’ll be frank, sitting till 10pm to be in the next day for a 9am meeting is not my cup of tea, especially with a grumpy back, but there you go.

The Borders Railway has been a success story

Back to May 1999 and in an instant from being a solicitor I am a politician, in name only at the time. We had our offices in the former regional offices at the top of the Royal Mile, and mine overlooked Deacon Brodies.

Mail was delivered four times a day bundled up, so Jimmy and Robert the posties were familiar sights. We had to cross the road to the General Assembly past demonstrators to debate. I liked that.

I recall 9/11 when the kamikaze planes flew into the Twin Towers and suspending the Justice Committee meeting to follow the dreadful footage.

There are many highlights but I recall too the 17,000 signature strong petition to the Scottish Parliament to reinstate the Borders railway. As another campaigner I was determined that it should be rebuilt, so in 2000 I set up the cross party group for return of the line. I still get a thrill journeying on it.

I remember that first journey when the crowds cheered, waved saltires from bedecked bridges and a horseman raced the train across the fields at Heriot. I wore a ridiculously huge hat which took a whole seat to itself.

The railway was so significant that engineers came from across Europe to study the construction of the line. One day, that train will cross the Border bringing Newtongrange and Gorebridge to Carlisle and England.

Both towns have exploded in population and that was part of the basis upon which the railway returned.

Next there were two of my own Acts of the Scottish Parliament : The Control of Dogs (Scotland) Act 2010 which put the blame where it belongs with the hand at the end of the lead, the deed not the breed.

Just as I retire The Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Act 2026 with its Code of Practice “Paws” for short will be published. It is to deter buying a puppy on-line, often transported here from miserable puppy factory farms.

Big bucks and serious criminal activity which the public can tackle by researching where that puppy came from, seeing it with its siblings and so on.

Letters have thinned out to a trickle with now a flood of emails, at least 50 a day. My office checked the number of “live” cases in February and it was 170. Away from the hurly burly of First Ministers Questions that is a side of politics which matters most.

Indeed, during the Covid years my home office, as with my staff, was at its busiest with even more emails at the beginning seeking guidance on what you could do and where you could go to later help businesses access financial support.

Come this April after nearly three decades it’s back to civvy life. Now where have I left my gardening gloves and secateurs?