Charles Bannerman

As it happens I met Allan at the game on Saturday and he confirmed that he had shops at 16 and then 68 Eastgate. The mealstore part of his business came about when the owner of the original meal shop was killed in a car accident and Allan was asked to add this to his original lines. Then he moved into the Health Food side of things, eventually ending up in Baron Taylor's St where he bought the shop there from Burnetts the Bakers. His son Martin now runs the shop. I made the point that the Health Shop is a sole beacon of good living in Baron Taylor St which also has two bars (including the less than salubrious Moray and Keg(?) as well as two bookies. In fact if you add to that the boarded up former Arnotts (Benzie and Millers or Young and Chapman if you're even older!) and the defunct Thistle Social Club along with the less than healthy looking people who stand outside smoking fags (with the smell of smoke filling the street!)... then Baron Taylor's St. has to be about the most depressing thoroughfare in Inverness.

Allan Sellar's mealstore may well be before my time but you are very possibly right. You are definitely right about him having the Health Shop. Allan was also instrumental in his role as a Councillor and Provost in getting the Caledonian Stadium where it is and he had the honour of doing the official "kick off" at the first SFL game there v Albion Rovers (good strike too if I remember!) He is in addition a member of the ICT Trust which owns the Caledonian Stadium.

The Sunday Post regularly publishes a "Half Time Table" of how the SPL would look if games had stopped at half time. For a while ICT were actually top and I have a feeling that the last placing I saw was second, so that would appear to contradict what may well be a subjective observation that ICT play better in the second half.

Because only machines in England are programmed to discriminate in the way which I have described. By the way, apart from using the code 1707 to override this system and, as Spectre has reminded us, 1066 for sterling in France, everybody in Larkhall has the same PIN number - which is 1690.

"The English are not a very spiritual people. So to give themselves some idea of eternity.... they invented cricket." (George Bernard Shaw)

Wow shops like that went out with the ark , but one thing i do remember as a bairn is getting Broken biscuits in Woolies When I was a kid, Woolies' broken buscuits could be purchased for 1d (0.4p) a large bag. As for the cloth sacks, I think that was something which just about went out as the 50s became the 60s. I just remember them. I think on Boys' Brigade threads I've already explained how Lamont Grtaham the former Captain of the 5th Company got the nickname "Scoobies". When Lamont was a young trainee grocer in a place on Queensgate the name of which has escaped my memory, the message boys (bouchers) used to hide the scoop which he used to fill the customers' brown paper bags from the sacks. Under such circumstances, Lamont would ne heard to bemoan "Where's my scoobies?".... and a legend was born. Few in the BBs knew him as anything other than "Scoobs".

Obviously... because we don't have Scottish euros so the machines abroad don't distinguish between Scottish and English plastic cards. Machines in the UK do and are loaded up with Scottish and English notes in separate compartments to respond to Scottish or English cards. The system can be overridden by keying in the code 1707 before making your request for cash.

I'm afrid it won't. If you insert a card from a Scottish bank into a machine, it's programmed to issue Scottish notes only.

Do I detect a whiff of cynicism there :thumb04: Ah but I was 26 when I came in so 7 years (tops) left for me Cynicism only just begins to define my perception of CFE (sorry CfE). Did you hear the one about the CfE History class when the wee boy put his hand up and said "Excuse me sir, but what do you think might have been the implications for the post Revolutionary Soviet Union if Trotsky and not Stalin had gained power on the death of Lenin?" To which the teacher replied - "Never mind about that sonny, just keep colouring the men in on your poster!"

You poor sod! That means you're going to have to put up with the Curriculum for Excellence for quite a few years before you escape. You'd better refine your poster making skills then.

Shouldn't be all that difficult?

"Chunky" Hamilton left in 1991 to become Head of PE at the International School in Brussels. As a result, instead of away games at Millburn, IHS or if you were lucky Gordonstoun or The Abbey, his very quickly became Switzerland, Germany, Holland etc etc. He has just retired and will be staying in Belgium. He was back over a few months ago and I had a good reunion with him. "The other one... with the big mop" was probably Gerry Finnegan but since I'm not sure exactly how old you are, it might just have been George Gray. Gerry left many years ago to become Principal Teacher of PE soemwhere down south. Caley D... when I was playing it was often against William Webb Ellis himself! :thumb04: It was 3 points for a try, a penalty goal and a drop goal and 2 for a conversion .... yes that long ago. In fact the IHS were just starting rugby at that time so weren't all that good although they got a lot better later on. Our main local rivals were Millburn Junior Secondary School... a title which seems to have been airbrushed out of recently related folklore. :018:

Your time may well yet come!

Moved from 93 Kenneth St. to 70 Kenneth St. to St. Andrew Drive to Dores Avenue to Cullaird Rd. to Torbreck Rd to Holm Dell Place. Always been quite happy in Inverness!

First time I played rugby for the IRA we didn't go to the IHS because they didn't even have a rugby pitch so we played them at the Bught instead and absolutely hammered them! (And in these days it was just 3 points for a try.)

The sons of the Prophet are brave men and bold and quite unaccustomed to fear, But the bravest by far in the ranks of the shah, Was Abdul Abulbul Amir. Does hat quote on Drochiit Blue's posts (it probably has a technical name like "avatar") (EDIT...I've just discovered it's called a "signature") remind anybody else of the 1960s George Chisholm adverts for McEwans? The introductory little rhyme ended "...Abdul Abulbul Abeer" and then went on to.. "McEwans is the best buy, the best buy the best buy. McEwans is the best buy - the best buy in beer."

Oh well, the penchant for hypeprbole doesn't seem to have receded these last 15 years! PS - congratulations on reaching your 100 posts!

Quite happy for BNP's post to be kept there, especially since I think it contributes far more to the fundamental credibility of the general point than any number of words from me could. The quote in question from Deryck Beaumont, who was the Caley Rebels' official solicitor and very frequent spokesman (including on that night) was made at the end of a meeting in the then Caley Social Club on 26th January 1994. The quote I have provided is on P47 of Against All Odds and was taken directly from a BBC interview which Beaumont gave after the meeting and which I still have on tape. The meeting in question came a few days after Caley Thistle had been elected to the SFL. Any thought of Caley going it alone had long since gone (since the previous October 1st in fact). After the December 1993 discussions between Norman Cordiner and the Caley Rebels and Committee, the Rebels declared a truce since they realised that the only way Inverness was going to get into the SFL in any form was now through a merged bid and in an atmosphere which suggested peace and stability in the Highlands. As we know, CT did get in and the January 26th meeting was to see if any longer lasting peace could be brokered. At this point (although I didn't say so in the book) I actually played something of a part myself since it was I who at that meeting suggested that if the Committee could see their way to lifting the suspensions on the Rothes pitch invaders (which was a VERY sore point) then the Rebels could see their way to agreeing to the proposed format of 3 Committee reps and 2 Members' reps on the new CT Board and to suspending their efforts to remove the main office bearers. The Committee retired and returned to say they agreed, and the Rebels also did so without dissent. It therefore looked as if the environment could be there for CT to proceed in some kind of order and the meeting broke up, whereupon Deryck Beaumont gave the interview in question, including this quote: "Knowing the people I've been acting for I think they always wanted it to happen deep down, and tonight seems to have removed a lot of the anxiety that existed and I think things will go through a lot more straightforwardly." However, although the suspensions were never reimposed, the Rebel side of the agreement only survived for three weeks (well actually less than that because they were talking about breaking it within a week) until the Second Battle of Rose Street on February 16th. Those who were there will also remember that Rose Street 2 was formally brought to a close by Norman Miller but some of the Rebels stayed on, declared the Caley Committee deposed from office and Deryck Beaumont was declared Chairman. (At this point, for "Cleansing of the Temple"... read "Arrival at the Finland Station"!) I have to say that made excellent listening across the nation the next morning since I had a running tape throughout! The other event of the following morning was of course the interdict which prevented Beaumont from acting in any capacity at all in relation to Caley. I would, however, suggest that one of the reasons for BNP's recollections of that period being a little mistaken is that by this stage he didn't appear quite to be in the loop of Rebel affairs to the extent that he had previously been since, even by the standards of the more hard line among them, he was regarded as something of a liability or, to quote the phrase I used in Against All Odds, a "loose cannon." BOOM!

The run up to the meeting of 16th February 1994 was as I described above. However on 16th February the Rebels did a U turn and went for all five Caley places on the CT Board. They were largely unsuccessful. What they did achieve was to get David MacDonald (Dots) on to the Board in the members category and to thereby exclude their main hate target Jimmy Falconer in the committee category, securing the election of their own "insider" Jock Price instead. Given that Jock Price is long dead, defamation isn't an issue here (and it isn't in any case since this is totally true). Jock was basically the Rebels' "man on the inside" and was a completely unlikely member of the Board but was elected because the Rebels concentrated their second votes on him. He eventually stood down after being caught with his hand in the till (mods please notice - not only is this true, Jock Price is dead) a short time after he took his seat. On the night, Jimmy Falconer was the apparent loser but it's intersting to see that, as football secretary, which he became a few months later after Scott Byrnes left the area, he is now by far the longest serving individual on Caley Thistle's "inner circle".

Donnie Mann was the locksmith if I remember correctly but I can's get a mind's eye picture of his premises. However I have a feeling that these MAY also have been in Hamiltion Street.

On that subject, I think these financial indices have just GOT to be female. In fact today they have been positively premenstrual!

I'm glad that many of the desperate of the diasporate find themselves better served this season.

I'm actually beginning to wonder! After all BNP seems to be spending an awful lot of time on this forum, to the extent that he's actually become VPP... Very Practised Poster. He'll be rolling up to buy a season ticket mext!

I actually think you're right. Years ago Tennents was my standard tipple and it was stuff like Skol that you had to watch (was Skol along with the massive queues at the bar not the down side of the Hayloft?). On the other hand there wasn't so much choice in these days and I remember when the Glenmhor got Heineken around 1971 the reaction was... WOW!! But yes, I do agree that Tennents was definitely better in days gone by than the anaemic rubbish it has lately become.