Charles Bannerman

Far less still Dougal!

A ladies' toilet at Kinsmills Park? I had no idea the Jags were so gender-considerate And as for the "Keep Clear" notice in the upper photo, was that not the natural order of things anyway at the Jags' turnstiles?

Cherry Island on Loch Ness. But that's very small indeed isn't it?

IHE is certainly slapping photos up on Olde Inverness faster than I can look at them, but seriously I think I could also say that I have been finding the site a little slow as well.

If you had spelt that "Canute" instead of using the (more accurate) Scandinavian anagram of a certain four letter word, the site's swearyword blocker would probably have ignored it

Stupid of me, I'd forgotten this thread's title when I suggested Hilton. The shops in Tomatin Road look the same with tiles on the front and flats above must have been built about the same time, I am sure IHE might have a photo! That's Tomatin Road now and the building is effectively identical to the Laurel Avenue shops. I had always been aware of a similarity but I never until now realised how strong that actually is.

If I had looked more closely I would have seen the small island behind the steamer which rules out Loch Ness. Loch Lomond maybe?

What a complete @rse Highland Council are making of this West Link project. I mean, how long does it take to build a bloody road? Now, in 2015, they still haven't got it as far as the planning permission stage whereas Tesco signed up to providing £340,000 towards it on the assumption that it would be FINISHED by 2011! There has got to be something fundamentally wrong with a system of local government when an urgent need is identified and years later nothing has been done to meet it. Meanwhile I can't make up my mind which is the bigger problem created by the eternal comings and goings over this road - continuing total traffic chaos in Inverness or these tedious, long winded letters in the papers from that guy John West who is fast becoming the Oddquine of the West Link Road

Would that be the Gondolier on Loch Ness?

Except it would have looked a bit smarter in our day. Since the College realised they were going to sell it they really haven't done much maintenance and the exterior looks downright grubby. The paint on the window frames in particular is in a dreadful state. At the back, the huts are now in a pretty bad state and one has been added which is a lot worse and a downright eyesore. I am surprised none of the residents of Crown Circus has complained that this is reducing the value of their half million pound properties.

That's probably because in an earlier era, the other main function of the Friars Street premises was to provide public baths. In the 1930s when the place was built to replace a similar facility on Montague Row, a lot of people didn't have a bath in their house other than a tin tub which could be filled with hot water. So this was a publicly run place where they could go for a proper bath. The actual "baths" were to the left and right before you went into the main swimming pool. As a result the original name was "the baths" and thqt was certainly still the case when i was a kid in the 60s and possibly later.

Orwell wrote the novel in 1948 and simply reversed the last two digits in the title. At the time the dystopian scenario described perhaps didn't seem entirely inconceivable 36 years into the future. I don't think there would be any connection with Caley although the novel was written in scotland on the Isle of Jura.

Stupid of me, I'd forgotten this thread's title when I suggested Hilton. The shops in Tomatin Road look the same with tiles on the front and flats above must have been built about the same time, I am sure IHE might have a photo! There are a few archictectural similarities between Old Hilton and Dalneigh which are both post-war schemes built to address an extreme housing shortage.. For a start, the Tomatin Road and Laurel Avenue shops are pretty similar and so are the respective primary schools. There is also a little similarity between the churches although the houses on the two estates look pretty different. Scarlet - John Paul did eventually become a boffin but not a nuclear one. He did a PhD in Chemistry at Aberdeen. But more than that I really wouldn't know since Clydie The Hoss is a complete blank to me.

Yes indeed - Brown Brothers were the national distributors for Vindec cycles. I worked for them, but not in the days when they sold saddles for horses. Vindec? That was the make of my first trike that I got for Christmas 1956. Maybe Mantis sold it to my dad!

The redcoats were probably CB's ancestors. If that's indicative of your understanding of the six decade campaign to restore the Stuarts, I take it you didn't do History in school then Dougie? But let's leave stuff like that to the Referendum threads and keep to the spirit of this current excellent section of CTO. Apologies, CB, did not realize that you had taken over the internet and banned all good natured craic forthwith. OK Dougie. I will take that in the spirit in which it was intended However the Jacobite rebellions, probably the most misunderstood aspect of British history, are a bit of a sensitive issue with me for reasons irrelevant to and too complex for here.

The redcoats were probably CB's ancestors. If that's indicative of your understanding of the six decade campaign to restore the Stuarts, I take it you didn't do History in school then Dougie? But let's leave stuff like that to the Referendum threads and keep to the spirit of this current excellent section of CTO.

And here was I still believing that it took the combined armies of Eisenhower and Alexander to invade France and Italy whereas it was nothing more than a simple taks for a few boys from the Ferry!!

Stupid of me, I'd forgotten this thread's title when I suggested Hilton. The way some of these Olde Inverness threads have been going, titles have been long forgotten - but that's what has made them so good!

For someone who 'doesn't need to bother' you rather seem to have gone to the bother of bothering... But without bothering nearly to the extent to which, for instance, Oddquine tends to bother!

If that is the Hedgefield Hostel, I do believe that it is currently owned and being developed by Tullochs. After WW1 a War Memorial fund was set up by the Royal Academy and the proceeds, combined with donations of shares in the former Gentlemen's College next to the Nortern Meeting Park, allowed the school to purchase that brown sandstone building as a War Memorial Hostel for girls which was opened in 1921. The fund also paid for the War Memorial tablet which used to be on the main stairs in the oldest part of the Midmills building but since 1979 has been outside the theatre at Culduthel. In the 1930s a deal was done whereby Inverness County Council took over the hostel as the County Buildings and the school got Hedgefield House in Culduthel Road instead. When that was no longer needed as a school hostel it was used by Highland Council run Inverness College. When Colleges became privatised in the 90s, legislation allowed them to acquire free of charge all publicly owned premises they occupied and then when the building became surplus to the College's requirements a few years ago it was sold to Tullochs. However the original asset belonged to Inverness Royal Academy as part of a War Memorial Fund so the school has been done at some point!

Is the guy on the right Roger Moore?

No Charles it was the north end where I used to live! IHE is putting on so many you are getting confused Yes I've got you now. Both are Laurel Ave looking North, but at different points. #84 is taken at the Dalneigh Road roundabout while #123 is taken from the junction with Bruce Gardens. The most obvious differences are the bend in the road in #123 while #84 is straight and hence also gives a better view of Ord Hill. These are quite recent shots, as is #128 of the Laurel Avenue shops. When I was a kid the first one was a sort of grocer's (Munro's or MacKenzie's?) and I think the second one was the Post Office which also did excellent ha'penny, penny and twopenny boxes out of old biscuit tins. I can't remember what the third one was but I believe the fourth one was a butcher's. My pal John Paul used to live in one of the houses above the shops but moved to the corner of LA and Dalneigh Road - which was a lot nearer that "OK Corral" at the south end of LA where a number of quite scary residents included a certain gentleman who is currently a guest of Her Majesty following a firearms incident in Hilton!

That one is in Inverness Remembered ?IX. It's from the redevelopment of Bridge St in the mid 60s and scares me just about as much as the one from the skyscrapers! I'm just not seeing any means of restraint at all which would probably be illegal in the current era of Elfin Safety.

Is that Caley v Rangers in 1984? Bob Summers and Billy MacDonald are there was well as Billy and indeed the Rangers player does look a bit like Herchie! Check the Kestrel Lager advert! The thing that's making me doubt the "Rangers 1984" theory is that on the far right there is an advert whuich seems to say Caley "Something" Club. It could, for instance, be Social, but if it's Centenary then that didn't appear until 1986. I was sort of wondering about Urquhart's testimonial which was against Rangers in 1992 but that was in the summer so the pitch would have been drier and by that time MacRae and Dick were the shirt sponsors.

Nope, I don't actually need to bother because the further the Reverend Whinge Over Skintland inserts himself into the same pigeonhole as The Krankies, The Alexander Brothers and See You Jimmy Wigs, the bigger the favour he does the Union all on his own, without any assistance from me. So I'm just spending time instead on the highly entertaining CTO Olde Inverness forum and running about town on cut price fuel following the plunge in oil prices from Salmond's delusional $113 a barrel to the kind of level where this supposed infinite cash cow is now needing government tax concessions to make its exploration viable.