THE Dux Girl from 72 years ago was among the special guests at this year’s festivities in Innerleithen.

Nan Crozier is the great aunt of Ally Norman, this year’s Dux Boy, and his twin brother Robbie, who played the role of a Monk during the St Ronan’s Border Games and Cleikum Ceremonies.

And she revealed she was proud to join in the celebrations after the festivities were curtailed in 1943 because of the war.

Speaking to the Peeblesshire News, Nan said: “It’s nice to be here. I live in Yorkshire now but when my niece phoned me to say Ally was Dux Boy I had to come.

“It’s wonderful, it really is, and it’s different from all the other Borders festivals.

“I was Dux Girl in 1943 but it was during the war so there was actually no ceremony at all. The Headmaster came into the classroom and gave the Dux Boy and I our medals and he shook our hands - and that was it, there was nothing else.” When asked what Innerleithen was like during the war, Nan, whose Dux Boy Bill Eaton was another twin, continued: “Quite a lot of evacuees had come down from Edinburgh, the Ballantyne mill was closed - it was just a sort of maintenance staff left in there; we weren’t much affected by the war really, it was a quiet place.

“We carried gas masks to school every day, I dropped mine in the Leithen (Water) and it probably never worked after that.” But she added: “I never told my mother!”