An Orbituary to Hugh McAnoo; 1971-2007

An Obituary to Hugh McAnoo; 1971-2007


Hugh McAnoo was a quite unremarkable man from the small town of Kinross whose life was punctuated by an extraordinary series of events.  He is survived by his wife and two children.

Born the son of a fisherman and a fish wife, Hugh was no different from any other youngster in the Perth and Kinross area in the 1970's.  His primary school teachers would write of a playful and shy young boy in report cards, "with no aptitude for the intellectual or the physical nature of school life and an insufferable fear of mangoes."

Despite this, Hugh somehow obtained a place studying the effects of Latin on the north-east sheep population at the University of Aberdeen.  What makes this feat all the more incredible was the fact that Hugh hadn't even applied for a place on the Degree course and without speaking a single word of Latin he became a Doctor in sheep psychology in 1994.

This outstanding achievement was made all the more unlikely considering the mis-fortune which would befall the young McAnoo in the Autumn of 1992 when, aged twenty-one, he was captured by officials representing the government of the United States of America and arrested on suspicion of working as a Soviet informant during the Cold War.  Taken to an un-disclosed location, of which Hugh refused to discuss for the rest of his days, he was interrogated daily until his eventual release in 1995.  His family sent several bottled messages in the hope that they would wash ashore on the eastern sea-board of the USA, but they infact ended up in Norway.  For some months following his eventual release there was confusion as to who the real Hugh McAnoo was, with a Norweigan kid assuming his identity upon finding the letters.

The American's were consistant in their belief that Hugh was an agent working on behalf of the Kremlin, regardless of his persistant denials that he even knew where Moscow was - his belief was that it was a rare-breed of Highland Cow - and his ignorance of the Cold War.  The timid Scot bravely withstood the firmest of questioning methods employed by his captors every day for three years, with the American's finally relenting in December 1995 when they sat McAnoo in a room filled with bottle upon bottle of 100% proof Smirnoff Vodka, returning hours later to find not a drop of it consumed.  Not only did this convince the American government that Hugh wasn't a Russian informant, it also convinced them that he wasn't Scottish.

His release from an American facility came not a day too soon for Hugh McAnoo as the thought of giving himself in had crossed his mind, simply because he had become attracted to the idea of being photographed wearing a Kossack.  As it turned out he was released on the 18th of December 1995, without a Kossack or a bottle of Vodka, to return home on the 29th of December 1995.  Despite his wrongful arrest, Hugh was still left to hitch-hike his way home to Kinross.

It was upon his return home that he would meet his wife Jacqueline.  Though the couple were never strictly married, nor indeed did they exchange many words of conversation, they had an understanding of which most people can only dream.

Arriving back at his croft in Kinross on the 29th of December, Hugh found that his house had been occupied by a middle-aged woman in his absence.  Not wanting to disturb her peace he snuck in the back door and slept in the laundry room un-noticed for five years.  It was one Spring Tuesday in the first year of the new Millennium that Jacqueline stumbled upon the man squatting in his own home when she found that she couldn't fit another load of washing in the machine because of the 5'5" gentleman who was curled up in the spin.  Once the initial shock had waned, the pair resolved the situation like sensible adults - feigning marriage for tax reasons, a fact which has only this minute come to light at this editorial desk.

Hugh and Jacqueline would soon become immensely proud parents to Iain, 14, and Jasmine, 29 who both wandered into the McAnoo house one afternoon believing that it was a shelter for stray cats.  Nobody asked any questions and so the family lived in blissful ignorance of one-anothers existance for the next six years.

Employment didn't come easy for Mr. McAnoo in the years that followed. With potential employers dis-believing that he held a degree in the effects of Latin on north-eastern sheep Hugh was often mocked and ridiculed at job interviews.  He spent thirteen weeks as a Cashmere sweater model before the itching eventually drove him temporarily insane.  Other jobs would see him working as a check-out operator at the local supermarket, waiting tables and posing as live bait for fishermen.

It was this last term of employment which would prove fatal for the enthusiastic worker, with a tragic accident one day resulting in a halibut becoming stuck in Hugh's eye.  Following an unsuccessful seven hour operation to remove the trapped fish, Hugh McAnoo was pronounced dead on the operating table.  The halibut went on to live a fulfilling life.