Dumfries and Galloway's John McNaught takes a trip down memory lane in Galloway People

dailyrecord.co.uk:

It’s fair to say that retired police inspector John McNaught is a true man of Dumfries and Galloway. Sitting in his luxury static caravan at Southerness, he takes me from Crossmichael – his birthplace in 1948 – to Penpont, Annan and Newton Stewart, where he ended a successful career with the local force at the age of 50.

Along the way he was involved in a huge murder investigation, raised a family, helped run Annan FC and Newton Stewart FC, got a degree from the Open University and was convenor of Loreburn Housing Association.

Over a coffee, John tells me his mum Annie Howe hailed from Keir Mill near Penpont, while his dad Tommy came from Dunscore, where his father John had a farm.

Like so many men of those times, Tommy was a farm worker and the family moved to a farm cottage between the Haugh of Urr and Castle Douglas after he found work at West Logan, John recalls, his memories of childhood scrapes still vivid. “My dad had an old push-bike and set it in an old barn next door,” he recalls. “And of course I climbed up on it, fell off and broke my wrist – I was only four.” Shortly after, John relates, came something much more serious – a horrific household accident which almost cost him his life. “My mother had been boiling new potatoes and I was out in the garden,” he says quietly. “I ran into the house and hit my mother head on with the pan of boiling water straight off the range, which coped right over me. “I was scalded for life in different bits. “In the hospital my mother and father were not allowed in to see me for fear of infection. “They had to speak to me through the window of this confined room. “I was in there for three-and-a-half months. “My mother was demented because it was touch-and-go for