Gina Davidson: Grim story has message for all

THERE is still an awful lot we don't know about Heather Stacey, who, no matter what she achieved in her life, will be forever known in Edinburgh now as the "head-in-a-bag" woman.

The investigation into her terrible death is still ongoing but what has become sadly apparent is that no-one seemed to notice she was missing and no-one seemed to care. It's a sad indictment on the way we live that a 44-year-old mother of four children – admittedly, two now grown up – can disappear and there's not a soul who wonders where she might be.

Police believe she may well have been killed in November 2007, so why were no alarm bills ringing before now? Why did it take a horrific discovery by a stranger for her whereabouts to have become all too apparent?

Apparently, according to her brother Tim, who lives in Wiltshire, she had battled with depression and alcohol problems since she was the victim of a slashing attack by her first husband Michael Williamson, when she lived in Dingwall. But she was receiving professional help for these problems, so surely there must be a catalogue of missed appointments with doctors or therapists? They may well have tried to contact her to no avail. At what point should that have been reported to the police given the state of her mental health?

She was also estranged from her second husband, Dougie Woolard, who lives in Lasswade. But they had a son and daughter together, who are still under the age of ten. Surely if someone was going to wonder about how Heather was, it would be her children and their father? He's not talking, so no-one knows what the state of their relationship was, but it's hard to believe that a mother would willingly have no contact with her kids. And yet he did not report her as missing.

Similarly, when her mother died last year and her family tried to contact her, they were unable to find her. And still no-one called the police.

Both her brother and her aunt, who lives in Dunfermline, have admitted to reading the stories about the grisly discovery but failed to imagine that it might be Heather who had been so hideously dismembered. But why would they when they hadn't even given a single thought to the fact that they hadn't seen or heard from her in over a year?

Families can be so disparate and disjointed these days, whether it be through divorce or job opportunities forcing people to move. And even though there are so many ways of staying in touch, from phone to e-mail, the death of Heather Stacey brings home to all of us just how easy it is for time to pass and for contact to stop.

If there's anything we can all learn from her awful story it's to pick up the phone, no matter the length of time which has passed, and say hello.

A big fuss over nothing
Don't get me wrong. It's not that I think the whole Year of Homecoming is a bad thing. Indeed, taking pride in and celebrating the many things Scotland has given to the world is a great idea and long overdue. But the whole stushie around the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns' birth is leaving me rather cold.

I understand that there's a whole swathe of Scottish society – home and abroad – which likes nothing better than reciting To a Haggis and Tam O'Shanter every January 25 and I've always thought it a fine tradition if you like that sort of thing. It's a good night out in a rather dreary month, after all.

But since this anniversary was announced, there have been countless new books published and television programmes made about the Ayrshire farmer-turned-poet (or the drunk, misogynist, racist philanderer as he's recently been described by historian Michael Fry) and still I just don't understand what the fuss is all about.

It might be that I'm just a product of the generation when the use of Scots language was decried as ignorant and Scottish history and literature were mainly absent from the curriculum. And to be honest, I'd probably need a glossary to read most of his poems.

So while I can appreciate the sentiments of A Man's A Man and Ae Fond Kiss and Auld Lang Syne can bring a tear to the eye at Hogmanay, I'm still desperately seeking for a reason to care.

I can't wait for the whole furore to be over so we can move on to celebrating other Scots who are perhaps more relevant to the nation as a whole and not just a poet who, it seems to me, has been over-intellectualised and over-sentimentalised.

Close book on subject
I used to work in a library. Not that I was ever a librarian, more a deliverer of books. Reading Room Assistant I think was the actual job title, which was pretty apt. To reach the giddy heights of being able to call yourself the L word meant years of study and an uncanny ability to move around a room without emitting a sound.

Those who were real librarians took great pride in their job and the knowledge they were able to access. As one said to me, "it's not about what you know, but about knowing how to find out what you don't". That's what librarians are – fountains of information sources. They don't just stamp your books or feed your microfiche into the reading slot for you.

What they are most definitely not are "audience development officers". They don't work in the Playhouse or the Festival Theatre. They don't have an audience but readers, who use a vital public service. Librarians should be allowed to get on with their jobs in peace and quiet and without interference from management consultants.