Charles Bannerman

According to this wikipedia entry it was a .22 pistol.

I've been saying for some time that I find it astounding that Northern Counties Cricket Club should continue to have such clout with the Northern Meeting Park. Fair enough, they have been there since Johndo was a boy, but Inverness has changed hugely and there are many other demands for this valuable area, use of which becomes even more restricted when you take into account the cricketers' extremely pernickety requirements about people even breathing on their grass. NCCC should have been told long since that they now need to groundshare at Fraser Park with Highland, hence creating far more felxibility for Inverness City and other users. Inverness can't afford to have two precious green spaces devoted so exclusively to a sport which has virtually no following in the place. Secondly, the Jobsworth mentality of the Aberdeen based North Region of the SJFA needs to be looked at very critically - especially their demeanour towards clubs a long way from Aberdeen. Thirdly, I'm going to act as Devil's Advocate and ask why there is so much complaint about Highland Council's provision for football on a website run for fans of a club which received £900,000 no less of Council Common Good cash without which its stadium could not have been built? Once that had been paid over along with £280,000 to buy the Clach Park, maybe the Council felt that football had actually done quite well out of them. I would also add - apparently in empathy with Caley D - that Inverness City had indeed known for years about the problem and no, the Council doesn't automatically owe a living to any football club that wants a home. (Apologies here to Highland News readers who may have noticed a certain similarity between what I have said here and in the paper - most recently and extensively just two weeks ago.)

Metropolitan Police are investigating the theft of a large quantity of costumes from the Battersea HQ of the Ruritanian Comic Light Opera Company in advance of their stage production of Sacha Baron Cohen's "The Dictator". The theives' haul includes a number of uniforms which the RCLOC say are an essential part of their show which is due to open next week. "We would like to interview a Philip Battenberg and a Charles Windsor whom we believe to be father and son and who were last seen heading down the Thames on a barge wearing some of the costumes and in the company of several Corgis and two elderly ladies - one with a flying saucer sticking out of her head and the other wearing a bucket," said the Met's Depute Commissioner P C Plodd. "The suspects are believed to be foreign EU nationals who have been receiving publicly funded benefits and living rent free in state owned accommodation in this country for several years. Battenburg is believed to be of Greek origin but is reluctant to return home for financial reasons." You do have to have a laugh though, don't you!? What are these people like and who do they think they are prancing about in these ridiculous costumes dripping with gongs, baubles and titles they've dished out to each other for fun? I will be really glad when this weekend of grovelling sycophancy and going ballistic about six decades of top dollar freeloading off the public purse is over! Here's one final thought. Now that the Divine Right of Kings has long since been binned WHAT IF just ONE of them over the years happened to be the son or daughter, not of the previous king, but of the footman or the butler? It just needs to happen ONCE - and this lot put it about a whole lot better than most. So where would that then leave their "line of succession" on which the whole thing totally depends?

It's not a case of "spinning the party line". This is a running story which I am actively engaged in reporting on and it has been my consistent policy on here for many years not to comment as a result. This is also why I have been completely circumspect towards the end of my last post.

Yngwie and fraz have got it bang on. Yes, I do realise that throughout football, when a club "comes into money" there is the expectation among some fans that a slice of this will be spent on boosting the player pool. But in practice it is so often the case, as it is here, that the club concerned needs the money merely to continue to operate at current levels - or indeed to reduce the size of cutbacks. In the year to 2011, Caley Thistle lost £190,000. The previous year in the First Division that was £946,000. Also during 2010-11 it was necessary to sell the Social Club which was more or less the last remaining significant asset, and the 2011 accounts also refer to Directors' Loans and state that "a number of existing shareholders purchased 250,000 at £1 each". This is not to be confused with the later Muirfield Mills injection which will presumably now ease the magnitude of losses for the next financial year to 2012 which ended on Thursday. In other words, for Caley Thistle to continue to survive in the SPL - and it looks to me as if even that is in a climate of contracting budgets - it appears to have become necessary to rely on a series of "one off" windfalls like the ones I have mentioned. It's if these begin to dry up that would create a real worry. However I would want to emphasise that all I have done above is to outline what I understrand to be the general financial situation at Caley Thistle. What I have not commented on - partly because I don't know the details - is the series of decision which I assume will have been made about how a reduced player budget is used and allocated among prospective signings/ contract extensions - including, until the end of last week, Ross Tokely.

Yes, his o/h kick v DU and the Tynecastle goal are my two favourites. The o/h kick for me wins by a nose but Ross himself once told me that the Tynecastle goal was his own personal favourite.

You've got plenty time to do your own bloody garden now!!! :lol:

Do you not mean "je continue mon silence" Scarlet? "Contient" is the third person singular (the bit you use with "il" or "elle") of the verb "contenir" - to contain. You're looking for the first person singular of the present tense of "continuer" - to continue.

Human or otherwise?

Yes indeed "last night" is a real favourite of newspapers when they try to kid the public that they're not really hours behind more rapid response media such internet, radio and TV. For instance you might get something like: "Ex Rangers stopper Terry Butcher LAST NIGHT swooped from his secret Highland hideaway to snap up crack Dutch hit man Ruud Boogers on a one year deal. The Highlanders' boss, who has been ordered to appear before Hampden beaks following his latest rant against Scottish whistlers, had been tracking the busty goal ace since the flying Dutchman issued a 'come and get me' plea just before the last transfer window slammed shut. The England legend has now signed Boogers from under the nose of his old mate and fellow Ibrox legend Coisty, whose derisory wage offer of 50p a week was described by Boogers' agent Dick van Dyke as 'woeful, but I suppose it's the best they can afford'." Now what this really means is that LAST NIGHT, Terry was actually at home in Abriachan enjoying a glass or red wine and reflectiing over his latest signing who had put pen to paper first thing that morning, as reported throughout the day by broadcasters and internet.

In other realms of life, pupils in schools do not have a teacher. They have either a "sir" or a "miss" who - if they teach a Science - will also be a "boffin". And the most popular score in the Olympic Beach Volleyball is sure to be "PHWOAR - NIL".

I am sure there must be a character just like this in Shameless! If there's not, then there ought to be!

IHE... if I ever came across you handcuffed to Granville I would have an irresisitble urge to give out a very loud "BAAAAAA" and wait for GP's amorous reaction!

Have Rangers Supporters in the guise of the Rangers Supporters' Assembly (why do they have always to be so triumphalistically grandiose - why can't they just have a Supporters' Club or Trust like everyone else?) not actually themselves provided a substantial argument for the SPL not to allow Rangers to remain a member club? What the RSA has said is that Rangers fans should boycott away games against other clubs if the SFA's sanctions are upheld. So, given that the main argument for allowing Rangers to remain in the SPL is that they provide revenue for other clubs, then has that not therefore been removed by the RSA's statement?

Pretty unremarkable I thought. Just a straightforward case of a sad Cybernat taking time out from spamming various newspapers' "Independence Yes or No" polls so he can add to his wish list of Union inclined organisations he would like to see the back of. In fact I would suggest that this kind of response on that kind of forum is about as predictable as a Flute Band playing The Sash!

Montecatini was wonderful! The first friendly also produced theee club records - biggest score, fastest goal and smallest crowd. I forget the numbers now, but when the game kicked off there were about 11 members of the public in the ground. The atmosphere was extremely strange since there was no crowd noise at all. It was only players shouting at each other in English and Italian and the constant whine of demented bumble bees outside as the local boy racers whizzed about on their scooters. But the most memorable part of that trip was that it coincided with a semi finals and the final of the 2006 World Cup and the Italians went absolutely mental when their team won, going round and round the town centre (which included the ICT team hotel) honking hooters, playing trumpets, three on a scooter, four on a scooter drinking beer etc etc. Unforgettable.

Suspect Terry has had a "loose end" for a while!

You mean the wives will be getting a visit from John Terry while the boys are at the game?

I have to say that on going into into Brattisanis in Newington when I was in Freshers' Week, this Highlander was totally confused by the question - "Salt and Sauce"? But anyway... Eddanburry's buzzan ken! Aye - jumpan. Eh! So what are the predictions for this mass migration from the Captial to Hampden Park? I'm going to predict that Hibs' 110 year wait will be extended on a 2-1 Hearts scoreline, but the first scorer will be.....Hiya Leigh... hiya pal! (Teckle!) Any more takers?

Yes, absolutely no doubt about there having been a Forty Pockets but the inconsistency seems to be that the web article I linked to above seemd to claim that the character in the mural was not Forty Pockets, as is otherwise fairly widely accepted, but an ex serviceman who hence might have hints of Rod the Fish about the description. However I am also fairly sure that the mural design is based on a quite well known photo of Old Inverness, which is probably in one of the Courier books and where FP is pictured at the Greig Street Bridge. Interesting also what you say about patients being employed at various points about the hospital because I am sure my uncle and aunt got help about their house from one. That was one of the smaller houses on the Craig Phadrig side while Martin Whittet had the "big house" for the gaffter opposite the duck pond. Similarly when my uncle became the occupant of the "big house" at Dykebar there was a patient there every day doing the domestic stuff. (And as far as I am aware, when we went there for our holidays, it WAS steak we got in the pies and not human remains! )

Take a look about half way down this..... http://www.bbc.co.uk...slands-18038328 and there's an apparent contradiction. I think it's pretty well established that the mural in question is of the ancient Inverness worthy Forty Pockets to whom IHE refers as Jimmy and who appears to have died maybe 30 years ago. However this item says it's an Angus MacPhee from the Western Isles who died in 1997 but that doesn't seem to fit. The other intriguing thing is that the description of the scenario here isn't all that far away from Rod the Fish with the WW2 angle to it. Any thoughts? I'm also intrigued to read even further down the piece that it seems that, despite the urgent necessity to secure Adolf Hitler's downfall, we seeemd during WW2 to have Lovat Scouts to spare for the purposes of guarding a bunch of Germans at Balmoral!

Yes the surrounds of the hospital are (or rather were until they started developing them) absoutely lovely. Used to take the kids and a large bag of breadcrumbs up to the duckpond from time to time on a Sunday and they had the time of their lives. Nearby there's the dog cemetery and then later on we found the real hospital cemetery in the back. Bughtmaster, the golf course has become a building site and housing estate but I was told by my father, who played the odd round there with my uncle, that it was a decent 9 hole course, albeit challenging due to being on the side of a hill. On the Inverness New Year's day run to the top of Craig Dunain Hill, one of the rituals used to be a sprint down the golf course from the edge of the forest to the hospital road. Nowadays, in my view, the surroundings of Craig Dunain hospital have been absolutely ruined and if you think of the entire tract of land starting from the Torvean Bridge and stretching right up to Leachkin Road, you could say the same thing. Long gone are the days of cross country races over what became the second 9 at Torvean which then had various houses built beside it etc etc. In fact the area enclosed by the Torvean Bridge - Kilvean cemetery - top of Piggery Hill triangle has changed massively in the last 35-40 years! One further comment on Craig Dunain - occasionally there used to be the odd escape from the hospital where the poor soul in question would be found dead in the surrounding area. Indeed I believe I heard of more than one suicide by hanging. Oh, and in the case of those who needed to "dry out" was that just Dunain House that dealt with these cases or did the Craig do its share too? I certainly remember occasions when I would hear my mother and her friends indulging in furtive "Les Dawson" like whispers of "he's in Dunain House!" which I didn't understand at the time - nor was I meant to.

Yes it's interesting to take a look back at attitudes to mental illness several decades ago and also to the kind of dread and fear that it inspired. In Inverness the situation probably wasn't helped by the fact that the local mental hospital sat on a hill glowering over the town - almost a reminder of the kind of fate that might have been awaiting prospective inmates, or indeed those left behind if a relative did disappear into its bowels. My uncle was Depute Physician Superintendent at Craig Dunain in the late 50s and early 60s before moving on to be Superintendent at Dykebar near Paisley. As a result when I was young I found myself on the edge of conversations involving psychiatry and remember some of the vocabulary which was quite common in these days but which has long since gone the way of PC. Terms like "defectives", "lunatics", "sub normal", "asylum", "locked wards" etc were all in standard use in an era where there was still a huge stigma attached to mental illness. Indeed it's not all that long ago that unmarried mothers had been known to be confined to what my granny never called anything other than "The Lunatic Asylum".... homosexuals as well. alan Turing the brilliant mathematician was more or less forced to undergo a course of chemical castration in the 50s since his homosexuality was regarded as a disease and a liability. Similarly anyone else opting out of an orthodox lifestyle - such as people we would call "tramps" - might also have been liable for a spell in Craig Dunain or a similar institution, although of course it's entirely possible that psychiatric help was actually needed in a number of cases. Yes we now live in different days when you can write "disabled" and get told that you should really be writing "differently abled".

I often wondered how Sergei's ongoing efforts to improve his English were affected by typical Telford Street greetings like "Howyadooeensergmun"? As it happens we were just talking in the Social Club on Saturday night about the extremely civilised manner in which Sergei was sacked along the lines of "Sergei is standing down because he wants to spend more time with his family in Perth but we have asked him to stay on for the last three games of the season and are pleased that he has agreed to do so." I also sometimes wonder how Dougal spends the rest of his life? Playing with Rubik Cubes and Action Men toys..... watching episodes of Crossroads on his Betamax video..... ironing his flares and combing his perm?

Sorry Culduthel but that one is more or less a complete blank to me. Maybe the vaguest recollection of this chap about the town centre but no more than that. This does seem a very unfortunate story though.