Charles Bannerman

Oh, you mean it was the Qualifying Cup first round tie at Kingsmills at the start of that last HL season 1993-94.... where Thistle put Caley out?

Maybe in John Buchan's - unless Christian and Great Heart were also characters in the 39 Steps!

Do you not think that fans would miss more games due to being on holiday than they would due to winter postponements and if you're away, you're away and missed it, whereas there will be a fair chance you will still be able to go on the rearranged date if postponed?

There are 73 on the Raining Stairs just across Castle Street from the pic of the cars.

The Square in Byoolee where the Highland Cross finishes. I will not tempt the correction of IBM by suggesting early 1980s on the basis of the motors. Could be Charles but more likely to be mid to late 70's. The small brown one coming out of the square is a Simca 1000, the white one behind the Mini is an Austin/Morris 1800 which was a big flop for British Leyland, the yellow Austin Maxi was a revolution in the late 60's a hatchback with 5 doors and folding rear seats but the build quality of BL let it down. The yellow Reliant Scimitar across the road was a great performance car in contrast with its baby brother the Robin! The light blue van at the front is a Hillman Imp built in Linwood. I'll go with that. I simply guess on the basis of what the cars sort of look like. You know what they all are!

Is that CB in disguise dancing with that maiden? No, I wasn't nearly as big an asset to the No Thanks campaign as that guy was

It's sort of also saying "Drumnadrochit" to me. Left hand side after you turn left going south?

Dalneigh in general has pretty big gardens... even the newer part like St Andrew Drive. I remember the Stagecoach/ Inverness Traction business. I'm not sure that modern competition legislation would allow behaviour like that nowadays.

That's Kenny righteenuff! What's the game? Last derby at Kingsmills?

There's an atricle in today's Courier (which I haven't had time to read yet) about the American minelayers/sweepers in Inverness and one of them who married a local girl.

Bellfield Park. Top to bottom - Carig Dunain, the RNI, the Bellfield Pavilion and the Tennis Courts. the Craig is intereresting because the trees across the top which were such a feature when I was a kid in the 60s aren't even there so this must be a very old one indeed.

As the actress said to the bishop!

You mean stocked with Four Crown, Buckie, Pomagne, Don Cortez, Scotsmac etc etc? I have to say that in the current Politically Correct era, a van like that would be instantly denounced by the PC Thought Police.

The Square in Byoolee where the Highland Cross finishes. I will not tempt the correction of IBM by suggesting early 1980s on the basis of the motors.

I did meet SP once but he didn't really look quite as old as that!

That's exactly what I first thought but, assuming something relatively local, began to drift towards the Aviemore area. I have to say IBM, apart from his encyclopaedic knowledge of old motors, is pretty sharp at identifying bits of Sneck!

Yngwie... I'm trying to keep out of this thread because I really had exposure to far more politics than I really wanted to know about in the years running up to 18.9.14. However I do have to comment on the utter ineffectiveness of Labour in general and Ed Milliband in particular. Here we have a party leader who looks and sounds like Mr Bean and, when he speaks, comes over like a schoolboy in a Fourth Form debating club. I actually think that the more exposure he gets the more the public will realise what an totally ineffectual and unelectable individual he is. I think I have said before that the Labour Party's problems go back to the Donkey Jacket era where liabilities like Michael Foot made them unelectable. So, to become electable, they had to invent New Labour. Sod the Socialist principles on which the Labour Party was founded. Let's just find a set of "beliefs" that can get us elected... even if it means "Slippery" Tony Blair nicking Tory policies and attempting to rebrand them as New Labour. Meanwhile the Labour Party continued to take Scotland for granted as their personal fiefdom. For more than a decade the illusion worked and Scottish voters continued to render their X in the (New) Labour box, even though (New) Labour had long since abandoned any semblance of Socialism. Do they still sing the Red Flag at conferences by the way? But eventually chickens came home to roost and credit must be given to the SNP (SIC ) for spotting the political vacuum and, despite Nationalist parties traditionally adopting a Rightist agenda, also adopting the politics of convenience and filling the Leftist gap, whereupon hordes of voters who had been taken for granted by (New) Labour have, over the last three or four years, defected - at which the Labour Party duly defecated! Electoral dynamics in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are a bit different but up here Labour party presumption and complacency have been well and truly shattered. Add to that the fact that the SNP have replaced Salmond (who retreated to write his Referendum memoirs, delightfully dubbed "Mein Banff" ) by Nicola Sturgeon. I don't especially like the woman but the switch can only be of benefit to the forces of Nationalism.

Aye, and Brother Walfrid was a card carrying member of the Orange Lodge Lighten up mun! You're beginning to sound as if you've been for a two month holiday with that queen of PC Harriet Harman. Interesting feature of modern living though. Say or do something somebody doesn't like and you instantly get denounced for crimes against Political Correctness or Eflin Safety. I'll get ma coat now and head for the Lubyanka to save you sending the NKVD round

The "Duke of York" as he was there in 1920 eventually in 1936 became George VI, he of the mega stutter and the King's Speech. Interestingly the date in 1920 is September so I would guess that Albert.... which was his real name before he called himself King George.... was there for the Northern Meeting which was an annual late summer gathering of sundry toffs, Hooray Henries and chinless wonders. A lot of grouse shooting would have been involved and in fact Geordie Boy and the Queen Mum were absolutely obsessed with blasting away brainlessly for hours on end at anything that moved. There was one world tour that they went on (at the taxpayers' expense) where they dropped off at sundry exotic destinations to commit major slaughter among various areas' wildlife.

I don't think so Scarlet. Regarding your first statement, Ruthven Barracks were built after the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion, about 40 years before Telford was born. I've now actually checked Wikipedia and Ruthven Barracks stand on General Wade's road built between Dunkeld and Inverness between 1728-30, so the barracks had a road long before Telford was born. And apart from Cromwell's garrison in Inverness in the 1650s, I'm not aware of any English "invaders" ever having reached the Highlands... or much of the rest of Scotland for that matter. Regarding your second statement, Telford wasn't operating until the late 18th/early 19th century, by which time the "pacification" of the Highlands was a distant memory. In fact his most famous work in the Highlands, the Caledonian Canal, was to a large extent commissioned to regenerate the Highlands after the Jacobite rebellions and the subsequent pacification etc.

Dochgarroch Primary?

surely that applies to 'England' too Charles? or are you being selective in conferring the right to be the main FIFA member within the UK on the English FA with the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish being happy to pick up the scraps from the table? However, you are also fundamentally wrong .... at last count there were 23 non-sovereign 'countries' who were members of FIFA and 7 sovereign ones who are not ! (and before anyone comments on the list below, Gibraltar are not FIFA members, just UEFA) Non-sovereign nations that are current FIFA members American Samoa (USA) Anguilla (UK) Aruba (Netherlands) Bermuda (UK) British Virgin Islands (UK) Cayman Islands (UK) Chinese Taipei (China) Curaçao (Netherlands) England (UK) Faroe Islands (Denmark) Guam (USA) Hong Kong (China) Macau (China) Montserrat (UK) New Caledonia (France) Northern Ireland (UK) Palestine Puerto Rico (USA) Scotland (UK) Tahiti (France) Turks and Caicos Islands (UK) US Virgin Islands (USA) Wales (UK) Less ambiguously, I should, rather than "they alone", have said "the UK home countries alone". But as far as twitchiness is concerned, that indeed does seem principally to be confined to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The English don't seem to feel all that chippy about it. In the second instance, I wasn't really legislating for geographical fragments like Hong Kong, Montserrat and New Caledonia which are, through one status or another, relics of various countries' imperial pasts, although the concise way I tried to put it does invite their inclusion. So perhaps I could, perhaps somewhat more legalistically, rewrite the quoted passage as follows - But what gets the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish so twitchy is that the UK countries alone have preferred, separate status within FIFA and UEFA as constituent parts of a sovereign nation whilst not being sovereign nations themselves. What it boils down to is that, as far as I can see, no country in the world other than the UK has multiple representation in international football for its constituent bits (as opposed to separate representation for certain elements of its imperial past). This, as already stated, is a consequence of the unique "grandfather rights" which the UK enjoys because international football started here among its constituent bits. Given that constituent bits of other countries, such as Bavaria and Tuscany which were politically autonomous much later than Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales ever were, don't have this separate representation, it's unsurprising that this is an arrangement which could, potentially, be looked at critically by FIFA and UEFA. Since I began writing this Kingsmills has, however, reiterated what to me is the central viewpoint here - that Olympic football is a complete irrelevance and not worth bothering about. I note that the Vatican is one sovereign nation which is non a FIFA member and the famous Dave Allen sketch of the hammer throwing Bishop instantly comes to mind Presumably the Vatican feels adequately represented at club level in the East End of Glasgow.

Is it Aldourie photographed from the rear? if it is then the photographer is standing almost exactly where I once let off a chemical volcano to amuse a class there!

You must have been thinking of the Marzine when you wrote that I think what happened was that my mother next went into the Post Office next door to buy stamps, didn't realise that it was IHE who was serving behind the counter and let me lick them and put them on the envelopes. That entire day has been addled in my brain ever since!

Yes I've just realised I've told the story the wrong way round! The Sunbeam Talbot was outside the Queensgate Cafe which I therefore called The Queensgate Talbot.