Points of View
Monimaskit is Montrose
It is beyond any doubt in my mind that Monimaskit is really Montrose. I recognised many of the less admirable
characteristics of the local worthies immediately. I have not visited Montrose for many years, having emigrated to
Canada to better myself in the 1960s, but I remember reading about a minister there called Mac-something who came to a
Bad End. I believe he later became an anarchist and an alcoholic. Surely this is proof positive that I am right.
G.S., Burlington, Ontario
Monimaskit is not Montrose
There is no question of Monimaskit being Montrose, which differs in many ways from the town described in The Testament of Gideon Mack. I believe Monimaskit to be, as Mr Patrick Walker wrote in the Epilogue to that book, 'the product of 'a mind terminally damaged by a cheerless upbringing, an unfulfilled marriage, unrequited love, religious confusion and the stress and injury of a near-fatal accident'. In other words, a total fabrication.
K.P., Monymusk, Aberdeenshire
Ferry Unlikely
Could Monimaskit by any chance be Broughty Ferry?
L.W., Broughty Ferry, Dundee
No Such Place
I gather some people think that the name Monimaskit is merely a coded substitute for Montrose, Arbroath, Monifieth or
some other such community on the east coast. Haivers! There is no such place. The topographical evidence as supplied in
the Gazetteer of Scotland and by Gideon Mack in his ‘testament’ is contradictory and downright misleading. The coastline
seems somehow to have shifted inland to nestle almost in the shadow of the Grampians. Either that or the mountains have
moved to within a few miles of the North Sea. I suggest anyone attempting to prove the true identity of ‘Monimaskit’
check out the OS co-ordinates given in the Gazetteer. They will find that these supply a chilly and damp restorative to
the senses!
D.P., Kirriemuir, Angus
One Who Upholds the Truth but Quotes from Fiction
It is interesting, is it not, that ‘One Who Upholds the Truth’ has lifted entire sections of his or her potted biography
of Gideon Mack from the pages of The Testament of Gideon Mack, the very book which he or she then goes on to denounce.
This looks like very slipshod work – or a red herring thrown into already murky waters, perhaps by those very ‘persons
in whose interests it is to make dubious assertions about Mr Mack’ against whom ‘One Who Upholds the Truth’ rages.
N.McD., Inverness
Collessie Bagged?
Sir - So, Monimaskit is surmised to be either Montrose or Broughty Ferry. Do your readers know nothing of their
country? Surely I am not alone in noticing the heavy similarity with the Fife village of Collessie whose nearby standing stone is still frequented by the more lunatic fringe?
B. M. Assynt, Cupar, Fife
Shooting the Messenger
Is Gideon Mack the same minister whose virulent hatred for "that fat fraud in a red suit" led him to discharge a
small firearm at the electrical Santa adorning the chimney stack of his neighbour? I seem to recall a small piece in
the Press and Journal in which he promised to pay for a new illumination if charges were dropped, so long as
the replacement was a representation of something associated with the nativity. The householder accepted, and put in an order for an illuminated sheep.
U. N. Ramsbottom, Aberdeen
