Tartan touch does the trick for Alex
SCOTLAND'S First Minister-in-waiting Alex Salmond will adorn his new office at Hollyrood with a black and yellow tartan which has been unearthed in Kilmarnock.
The SNP leader was presented with the Barclay Tartan on a flag-flying mission with new MSP Willie Coffey and the party's leader locally Douglas Reid.
A piece of woven fabric - in the Nats' very own hallmark colours - was a gift from Klin Group managing director Marie Macklin and her husband and business partner Drew Macklin.
They came across the tartan while searching though artefacts for use in the Andrew Barclay Railway Heritage Centre in West Langlands Street.
The centre, which will soon display a steam loco built by Barclays in the 1940s, has become the Klin Group's new headquarters. It is surrounded by 62 apartments built within and around the office building once occupied by Scotland's most famous railway engineers.
The SNP's election team in Kilmarnock had set up the lunch stop to enable Alex Salmond to see at first hand how town centre regeneration could be achieved with input and direction from the private sector.
He was impressed to learn from members of the Kilmarnock regeneration committee that the Barclay House development was solely funded and designed by Klin with no financial contribution from government.
Marie Macklin announced during the lunch that a number of VIPs had toured the centre in readiness for an official opening next month. She was hopeful she said that the project would be seen as a cornerstone in the rebirth of Kilmarnock town centre. She also disclosed that other Klin proposals are about to be unveiled.
At the close of the visit she presented Mr Salmond with honorary membership of the Barclay Heritage Centre.
"I'll try and use it next time I'm in Kilmarnock", he laughed. "And now I've heard what local people have to say I'm certain to be making many more return visits after the election."
He was not to know for sure at the time that an SNP success, nationally and locally, was just a week away.