Last month, we reported the death, far too soon, of our secretary Gail Riekie, and we promised ourselves a longer tribute would follow.The plain facts of Gail’s membership of the Pushing Out the Boat team are simple. She became our secretary in 2016 and served us diligently until pancreatic cancer was discovered in Autumn 2024 and took cruel and rapid control of her body. She was also a trustee of our charity. In a small group of volunteers, which is what we are, you can give someone a job title. But the truth is that the effective colleague turns their hand to many things, and Gail did, with goodwill and only the occasional wry smile at the shortcomings of others.

One of Gail’s tasks was giving the good news to contributors who had their submissions to the magazine accepted. She asked them to provide a 30-word biography to include in the magazine. If they complied with the brief, and on time, collating their contributions was easy enough. Alas, a minority not only needed chasing to deliver, but would offer up 45, 70 or more words with the glib advice ‘Feel free to edit’, or worse, ‘You can find my biography on my website’. Undaunted, Gail distilled the essence from these offerings, cutting the words, though never the authors and artists, down to size.

Gail’s brother Max and his family organised a celebration of Gail’s life on 24 January in Aberdeen that brought home to us how wide-ranging her talents and interests were. She was not only a scientist and a geologist with a long career in the oil industry, but also a lover of nature, a keen walker and even keener lifelong cyclist, a speaker of German, a former chair of an Amnesty group, a family historian (Nottingham-born, she described how she’d found family graves in Fife’s St Monans kirkyard), and a dog owner, latterly of her fox terriers Bertie and then Nobby. Nobby joined our last meeting that Gail was able to attend in October, via Zoom, sitting patiently and poignantly with her on the sofa as she watched our proceedings at a distance.

And so we come full circle to Pushing Out the Boat’s purpose – giving a platform to fine writing and art, especially from but not confined to North East Scotland. It was through first Bertie’s and then Nobby’s blog (Nice Nobby, Naughty Nobby) that we came to know Gail was also a photographer and writer, albeit in the furry guises of Bertie and Nobby.

What her many friends from those other parts of her life may not know is that Gail also wrote poetry. She submitted (anonymously, as everyone does) a poem for the next issue of our magazine. It is a fine and touching piece, and we’re pleased to say it will be published along with much other fine writing and art, in May.

We feel privileged to have known and worked with Gail and count her as a friend. She was a kind and gentle person, perceptive and calmly efficient, and always interesting to talk to. She will be sorely missed by us all.

In the meantime, we cannot do much better than quote words read by Gail’s friend Yvonne Millman at the celebration of her life, from the poem I, may I rest in peace by Yehuda Amichai:

I don’t want to wait like that pious man who wished for one leg
of the golden chair of Paradise, I want a four-legged chair
right here, a plain wooden chair.