MUM and dad with a tartan rug over their knees - could be any family out for a Sunday run in Scotland. This though is the Royal Family in August, 1939, with King George VI, his wife the future Queen Mother, and their daughters Elizabeth and Margaret in an open carriage going from Balmoral Castle to Crathie Kirk for the Sunday service.

The King, who seemed a nice cove, has put on a checked suit for the occasion and a Scottish style bonnet. The future Queen Mother is smiling sweetly for the tourists and photographers. A Herald snapper once told me that she was a joy to photograph as she unerringly knew, without having to look, where the photographers would be stationed and always gave them a smile and a wave which would be the composition making the newspapers.

The princesses look very sweet, and it is impossible to tell whether there were any tantrums that morning about having to get up and dressed for church.

What makes the picture so poignant is that days later, war was declared with Germany, and the world was thrown into abject bloody turmoil.

Crathie Kirk was the church that Queen Victoria first visited in 1848 while visiting Balmoral, and it's a Royal Family tradition to visit it while on holiday at nearby Balmoral, that continues to this day.

THE great American country rock band Dr Hook, with Ray Sawyer and Dennis Locorriere, appearing at the Glasgow Apollo in the late seventies. They must have liked the Apollo as they headlined there at least five times. It really was a legendary place, with the upstairs balcony frighteningly swaying up and down when the crowd was jumping. And the bouncers...you never wanted to mess with the bouncers who would use a rowdy person's head to open the emergency exit if they were going to eject them.

Actually, we don't have too many archive pictures of acts at the Apollo as the Herald in the seventies did not review many rock bands, preferring to give space to the classics. If only they knew then that Dr Hook was a classic as well. Altogether now...Sylvia's mother.

NOW this looks like a still picture from an early film version of Sunset Song, but it is in fact the harvest being taken in near Balfron in 1957, which doesn't seem that long ago. Well, to me it doesn't. Of course, for all we know there was a combine harvester just out of shot which the photographer was ignoring as he was going for this timeless portrait.

Of course women were doing a lot of farm-work during the war, replacing farmhands who had been called up, so perhaps these ladies just carried on with the heavy toil even after the war had finished.

Or perhaps they are the Balfron Players publicising their stage version of Sunset Song. Alas the information on the back merely says "Harvest being taken in near Balfron" and that's all we know. Beautiful picture though.