It was a baking hot day and we were fighting the heat on a wide and seemingly endless street. Dressed top to toe in heavy red and black tartan, I was marching in elegant but thoroughly unsuitable high shoes through the centre of Chatanooga, Missisippi. I was following the red-faced pipers behind the Chief and his upright banner-bearers, sandwiched between them and 100 loyal MacGregors of all shapes, sizes and colours. As the clansmen moved in step, ancient kilts swinging and shiny medals clinking, the horns began to pomp; onlookers giggled and taxi drivers hung from their cabs to shout encouragement.

It was a Saturday afternoon and I would normally be either shopping, or cooking, or walking the dogs at home in south-west Scotland. I looked up and noticed the street name; we were on Martin Luther Boulevard. This was last year and it was one of those unforgettable 138 www.scottishfield.co.uk The chiefly life A chance meeting in Alaska led broadcaster Fiona Armstrong to becoming the wife of a clan chief. In the first of her regular columns, she reflects on the ways life has changed words fiona armstrong illustration jerry neville ‘how did I get here?’ moments.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. For the last 27 years I have worked as a broadcaster and writer, and in that time I’ve been lucky in that I have rarely had a dull moment. My work in magazines, radio and TV has taken me to places in Europe, Africa and North America and I have interviewed all sorts of characters – from dukes to dentists, from wrestlers to roadsweepers. No day has ever been the same, which makes for a pretty good job. Chance meeting Some years ago, I had the even better fortune to stumble upon MacGregor the Younger, now MacGregor of MacGregor. Not at some jolly clan gathering or ceilidh, nor on a heather-strewn grouse moor. No, this was a chance meeting on the other side of the world, the moment we locked eyes on the banks of a river in Alaska.

He was doing his job as a professional photographer – taking pictures of wild places; I was sort of doing mine and indulging a passion at the same time – fishing for salmon. We had in common our cameras and a love of all things Scottish. As it turned out we both caught more than we had bargained for… Since then things have been, well, different. I am still doing my job as a reporter – my last assignment was a trip to Cambodia to find out about removing landmines – but there is now another side to my life, a Chiefly side which involves traditional and bizarre things happening all at once MacGregor is not the first clan chief I have come across. As the former Chairman of a very active Clan Society, the Clan Armstrong Trust, I have met the great and the good of the clan world.

As a TV producer and presenter I have made more than 20 films on Scottish clans and families, and have regularly interviewed them on their wild and often whiskery histories. Grahams, Jardines, Scotts, Elliots and Moffats, and others, have all been committed to video. I have seen a real cross-section of chiefly life and like to think I am well prepared for any eccentricities. (And let’s face it: you cannot be a clan chief without some sort of strange twitch or habit). Most quirks are harmless, but there is that deep sense of family and survival which sets a clan chief apart. Some like to fight old battles and continue long-forgotten feuds; others have a fondness for whisky. One I know sleeps with a sword at the ready.

The character of my own Chief will no doubt emerge in future columns. But whatever peculiarities exist, the thing that generally prevails is an attachment to roots and a determination to further a knowledge of Scottish history and the clan system