Three years ago, there was an infamous incident in the world of curling when the Scottish women's team ended up playing their concluding games at the World Championship with only three players. What had seemingly happened was that the skip Gail Munro had been dropped from the team, her third Lyndsay Wilson had refused to play without her, and Munro had subsequently refused to re-enter the team to fill the gap left by Wilson. Yesterday, however, Munro won a defamation case against the then-national coach Derek Brown, and it is now clear that everything was not quite as it appeared.
Leaving aside the catastrophic breakdown in the relationship between the players and the coaching staff, what leapt out at me from the judge's ruling was this extraordinary account of how the public had reacted to Munro on the basis of false information -
"Some of the local population where she lived had sympathised with her, but others had not. By way of illustration she described having been out for lunch recently and overhearing her name mentioned. When she had turned round an older gentleman had looked her in the eye and said "Aye, ye dinnae ken me but I ken you. You're the lass that didnae play for your country"."
Even if that hadn't turned out to be untrue, it has to be asked - what is with some people that they think they have a God-given right to intrude into the lives of strangers like that? I think if I'd been in Munro's position I'd have been tempted to reply - "Don't you think there's probably a very good reason why I dinnae ken you?"
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