Off with the dog collar as Margaret pens a cat's tale

Retired minister's first literary outing introduces young readers to a feisty city feline who had a major bearing on her life.

THE two female parishioners stood nervously in front of Reverend Margaret Forrester at her church, St Michael's in Slateford.

The couple were in a loving relationship and wanted nothing more than for their union to be blessed in the church they both attended. Back in 1993, it was a bold move for a Kirk minister to openly give a seal of approval to a lesbian relationship. But Margaret knew the depth of the women's feelings for one another and decided to go ahead with the ceremony.

It was a decision that was condemned by conservative sections of the Church and one which would come back to haunt her when, in the mid-90s, she was passed over, many felt unjustly, for the role of Kirk Moderator.

Margaret would have been the first woman to have held the position and while there were accusations of sexism by the Church, others believed it was her controversial decision to give her blessing to a gay couple that cost her the job.

It's a subject Margaret isn't keen to discuss today at her home in Roseburn, where she is promoting her new book. She says: "It's water under the bridge. I'm delighted they have had two women since and I don't really know what happened because it's a closed committee that doesn't report. My name was put forward three times. According to the front page of The Scotsman I was equal with the other person who got it. But there was another vote and they went for the man. No hard feelings," she adds diplomatically.

She says: "There were two members of my congregation who lived together and I was very happy to do it because I thought their relationship had the qualities of a good marriage.

"I was impressed by the enormous support I received from all over Scotland. I didn't have a single letter against what I'd done, which indicates that the Church was out of step with society. Some people within the Church thought I was wrong. But it seemed to me the right thing to do, so I did it."

Now a sprightly 70 and retired, Margaret is a doting grandmother-of-five

who is much more comfortable talking about her love of writing. Indeed her first children's book, The Cat Who Decided: The almost true story of an Edinburgh cat, has just been published by Floris.

The book is based on the cat she inherited when she bought a house in Murrayfield Avenue in 1978. On visiting the property for the first time, Margaret was greeted by an elderly lady who demanded to know, before she was even allowed through the door, whether she liked cats.

After showing her round, the old woman offered her a coffee in the one room she had left out of her tour, the ground floor drawing room. As she threw open the door, there in the bay window sat the largest, most beautiful tabby cat Margaret had ever seen, a 13-year-old named Mac.

Three decades on, Margaret recalls with a smile: "She said: 'I'm only going to sell the house to someone who will take the cat'. It jumped up on the table and came towards me and I thought: 'Mac please like me because I love this place'. He sat close beside me and started to purr. I looked up at the owner and I knew then that the house was sold."

Margaret, her husband Duncan and their teenage children, Catriona and Donald, moved in immediately to the house, which they shared happily with Mac the cat until he died of old age in 1986.

As she reminisces about Mac, she smiles and says: "He was the most entertaining, feistiest pet we ever had. He had such a strong personality."

The book mentions many familiar Edinburgh landmarks, such as Arthur's Seat, the Scott Monument and Blackford Hill. But while her children are referred to by their actual names, the others have been changed. "The publisher insisted," she confides.

Though she is already busy penning her second book, a whodunnit novel set in Edinburgh, it is in the Capital's church circles where Margaret is still best known.

She taught with her husband in India from 1964 to 1970, before returning to the UK and being ordained at Telscombe Cliffs, Sussex. The family moved north in 1978 when Duncan was appointed professor of practical theology at New College, Edinburgh.

On her return to the city of her birth, Margaret worked at St George's West Church for 18 months as an assistant minister before becoming parish minister of St Michael's on Slateford Road, where she remained for the next 23 years.

A gutsy pioneer, who trained to be a minister at a time before women had won the right to be ordained, she rose to become Moderator of the Edinburgh Presbytery and the first female convener of the Board of World Mission.

"I was so certain it was God's call that I felt the Church would change its mind about women ministers – and it did," she asserts.

It was a long way from India, where their children were born. "India was a formative experience," she admits. "It wasn't terribly long after independence and we taught at Madras Christian College. It was a very special place."

The young family became aware of the great poverty around them and got used to making their own sacrifices like having to store tap water, which was rationed to 90 minutes a day. One year the rice crop failed and there was a mini-famine.

Out driving, they spotted a man lying dazed with hunger on the road. They picked him up and brought him home and gave him food, money and a bed for the night on the veranda.

"He was a farmer and the rice crop had failed and he was walking to the city to look for work. We told him to go back to his village but he just carried on," recalls Margaret rather sadly.

"All ministers who have worked in the developing world can never forget it. It's something that changed our lives."

Though retired, she is still doing regular "pulpit supply", and keeps busy going to writing classes, gardening and playing bridge. She is also soon to start giving talks in primary schools about her book.

With plenty of experience writing for the parish magazine, penning homilies for funerals and even authoring a volume of sermons entitled Touch and Go, the minister is delighted to have finally published her children's book, which she began after her retirement in 2003.

"I've always liked writing and telling stories to the children. Storytelling is a part of my life. The most important things in my life have been my vocation, marriage and family, the Indian experience and now I love writing."

The Cat Who Decided is aimed at six to nine-year-olds, but the author says playfully it is also being "lapped up by cat-lovers".

So is it likely this new dawn as an author could spell the end of her career with the church? Margaret shakes her head firmly. "You never give up being a minister. It's for life. I think you just fade away."

A trail-blazer for women in the Church, as feisty as the cat she writes about, it seems unlikely that this determined woman will fade away anytime soon.