Saturday, July 2, 2011

Pittenweem

Ian Andrew Robert Stewart was born July 18, 1938 at his mother's family farm (Kirklatch) in Pittenweem, East Neuk, Fife, Scotland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittenweem). His father, John Stewart, an architect, and mother, Annie Black, were Scots who were required - because of John's work for the Army - to live in Surrey, England, but they were so determined that Ian should be able to call himself 100% Scottish that Annie traveled north for the birth.

“Stu himself was immensely proud of his roots,” says William Nash, editor of Stu, a privately published tribute to Ian Stewart (http://www.out-take.co.uk/the-stu-project/). He’s collected masses of anecdotes from those who knew him, among those his widow Cynthia Dilane, who reveals that as a boy he spent all his holidays on the farm helping his uncle Jack. “The interesting thing was that in the parlour, as they called it, the front room, which was very rarely ever used, there was an old piano".

Nash also tracks down Stewart’s cousin Marianne Meldrum, who recalls him “thumping away” on a tune he’d picked up in an instant. “I always used to tell him to stop making that terrible noise. I remember our grandmother saying: ‘Ian will never be a musician. Fetch me some cotton wool for my ears".

Source: Scotland On Sunday, April 16, 2004.

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