Charles Bannerman

Thanks Caley D. You have saved me the tedium of once again having to demonstrate how completely wide of the mark this hardy annual is, and indeed has been since before the turn of the millennium.

Do you not mean Grassa went to school with Mike Edwards? :thumb04:

Sorry RiG but you perhaps shouldn't bargain on having ACC facilities of any kind for much longer!

Billy Nelson is still match day announcer at Clach Park and usually takes the opportunity to play the "Westering Home to the Ferry" track from his own CD!

I very much try to avoid commenting on this forum on running stories which I am covering since I have to avoid any potential clash of interest but there has been so much speculation that I feel it would be helpful to give you my understanding of the situation AS AT 1600 BST (things can obviously change) as a result of having been around the club in recent days and of my own deductions. What I am saying here is no more than what I have been reporting through the BBC up to yesterday (Wed) afternoon and I am not aware of any subsequent developments. * It was reported that an offer for Marius Niculae to go to Kaiserslautern for what I believe to be 500,000 POUNDS was made a couple of weeks ago. * The player then asked for leave of absence to go back to Romania and was given this for the "Denmark" week. * Around the same time Marius expressed the preference to move home to Dinamo Bucharest rather than Germany and I understand he has subsequently brokered his personal deal with them by himself. * Bucharest offered 500,000 EUROS (around ?400,000) and Caley Thistle said they would accept this IF the player waived his claim to his cut of the fee. (I don't know exactly how much this is but I could make a ballpark estimate of ?50-70,000) * It is my understanding that Marius initially agreed verbally to this in advance of what was expected to be a more legally binding agreement and negotiations between the clubs continued on that basis. *Accordingly Caley Thistle have refused to sign the deal until they have a legally binding confirmation from Marius that he accepts that arrangement. So far that undertaking has not been received at the Caledonian Stadium (the reasons for the delay are far from clear) so the transfer contract remains unsigned by Caley Thistle and is as a result so far invalid. Marius Niculae therefore remains an Inverness player. * Caley Thistle invoiced Dinamo Bucharest for the transfer fee, payable (older stagers will remember the legal interpretation of that word back in 1995/96!) when the deal became complete - which it is not as yet. They therefore did not expect payment at this stage. * Dinamo Bucharest all the same sent 475,000 euros (the 500,000 minus a 5% levy) to Caley Thistle, possibly implying that they regarded this as a done deal. I am not aware of any plan to "send it back" by 3pm today but equally I am not aware of any active "acceptance" of the cash. * I cannot explain why there have been photos of the player with a pen in his hand on the Dinamo website. * I am assuming that Marius, still a contracted employee of ICT, would have been expected back at training on Tuesday after his agreed leave of absence whereas I understand he is still in Romania. Is he therefore in breach of contract and is he likely to be paid the several hundred pounds a day which his contract, which is still in force, would normally entitle him? I take it he is still training (last seen by me in Inverness on the evening of the St. J game running out Holm Mains). If so, with whom and in the event of injury, who might be liable? That's about it and I really do want to avoid any further comment on what, in my case, is a running story.

I was never any good at playing the game so never played for the Dalneigh team, but they did indeed wear black and red (a bit ironic that the primary school right at the centre of Caley Land should have Jaggie colours but these were the uniform colours as well!) I left Dalneigh in 1965 and that year's team included John Allison and Brian MacBey, both of whom went on to play in the Highland League. Brian Bremner wasn't a bad player either. Crown had Gordy Fyfe whereas Peter Corbett was maybe a year or so older than us, Titchy a year younger. These colours - black and red for Dalneigh, yellow for Hilton, red and blue for Crown etc - persist to this day in sports strips and uniforms. And yes, it was always a dilemma as to how the Merkinchers would react to a defeat and the same went for their "Paramilitary Wing" the 4th BBs. In the early-mid 60s, most sports contests had Dalneigh, Crown and Central as the main protagonists and that included swimming galas and the Inter School Sports which we won in 1965 but in which I once again didn't figure because I didn't start figuring in athletics until I was about 14. Whether my eventual emergence as a runner had anything to do with fleeing the Finlays and the Kirkhams on crossing Laurel Avenue on the way home or not... I wouldn't want to comment. :015:

Are the Scottish Parliamentary and UK Parliamentary constituency boundaries not the same? And do the list MSPs not include some people like Mary Scanlon who were also rejected by the electorate in the 1st past the post part of the election? Then there's that latter day Vicar of Bray, Peter Peacock, such a staunch Independent when he needed to be Vice Convener, then Convener of the Independent Highland Council. Then, when the Scottish Parliament comes along, suddenly, without as much even as a weekend break in Damascus, Labour is the only party he's ever wanted to be a member of and he pops up as a list MSP! Now, am I therefore correct in saying that Peter Peacock was Minister for Education in a Labour Holyrood administration without anyone, ever having put their "X" in a line that said "Peter Peacock - The Labour Party"? :33:

It was originally Inverness shire as defined by the old Inverness shire County Council boundary, minus the Western Isles from Harris downwards which was, and still is, part of the WI constituency. At that time, until the 83 election, Nairn was part of Moray and Nairn for which the then Secretary of State for Scotland Gordon Campbell was MP. I have to say that my own preference now is for Inverness and the area within about 4-6 miles of the city centre to comprise its own Parliamentary Constituency and have its own City Council.

:015:

Did you also, like me, have your transistor with you, tuned to Radio Luxembourg?

Yup... loved the woman's books as a kid then discovered what a twisted old crone she really was. :015:

AF... it would take someone with much better Kingsmills knowledge than I have (R and BC!) to date that one. I'm afraid even I was very young at the time but R and B seems to have cracked it very quickly.

Between the ages of about 7 and 11 I just couldn't get enough of Enid Blyton. Any chance I got I would get stuck into the secret Seven, the Famous Five, the Adventure series, the Mystery series etc etc. I thought they were wonderful rip roaring yarns and it was only some years later that I became aware of the undercurrents... some of them quite "dark". :009: It was only later in life that it began to dawn on me that the Secret Seven Fuhrer Peter was, in fact, a self important little Fascist and that the "SS" on the door of their hut probably had implications of something a good deal more sinister. And in some respects the Secret Seven were the most normal group of children. They attended day school and seemed to have both parents around, albeit still somewhat "posh". The other series of books all seemed to involve a bunch of patronising, supercilious prats who, used to spend their "hols" from boarding school swanning around either, like the Secret Seven, making the local cops totally redundant or like the Adventure kids intercepting arms shipments trafficked by sinister sounding neo Nazis with squints and dodgy central European accents. Parents seemed to play a peripheral part in their lives if they were there at all and in some cases the poor sods were offloaded on to other relatives during the hols... perhaps because Mummy and Daddy (if he was still around) were away ruling the Raj. One set of parents who did appear were the mad and somewhat sinister scientist Uncle Quentin and the stereotypically subservient Aunt Fanny :015: in the Famous Five. With a background like that, is it any surprise that George was a Gender Bender? Uncle Quentin was probably the high water mark of the negative father figure image which comes through in so many of Blyton's books and which I gather may have been a throwback to her own childhood. (In the Adventure Series that tame and genial MI5 officer Bill Smugs seems to become some kind of surrogate father to the four crimebusters and thatbloody parrot.) It must have been a great life, though, swanning about the countryside on bikes from farmhouse to farmhouse, freeloading massive meals and "lashings of ginger beer" off half witted locals with rustic accents before nipping in there in front of the moronic local cops to solve the mystery and arrest criminals who most of the time were black, gypsies, Cockneys or some kind of Johnny Foreigner. At least senior police officers had the wit to afford these public school balloons (**** was so well named! :015:) the deference they were clearly used to and to understand that they were the greatest crime fighters since Holmes and Watson. Junior cops, such as the overweight and incompetent PC Goon were clearly a lot less perceptive as to the genius of the aforementioned Hooray Henrys. It's actually quite scray to think that I was brought up on this psychologically twisted stuff. All I can say is... thank God I never read Noddy!!!! Any more Blyton views or memories?

You obviously couldn't have been at the final derby at Telford Street in May 1994 where the Jaggies' anti Caley rhetoric was choice! Seriously, though, I would also have to support your contrast between the two on the basis of what I saw at the meetings which both cluibs had during the pre merger process. On the Caley side.... three Battles of Rose Street with a fire alarm set off, a firework thrown in the hall and zoo like behaviour. On the Jags side... I didn't get access to the Jags' meetings but, sitting outside, waiting for the proceedings to end, it was actually difficult to determine whether or not a meeting was going on. Polite to the very end. (As an aside... when the decisive Sept 9th 1993 Caley merger meeting was breaking up, somebody called out "Jags have gone for it by 2 to 1". The quick response from one Howden End wag was, of course "They never had as many as three at their meeting did they!?" So when you cycle home from the town to Hilton, up Old Edinburgh Road, which way do you look down Southside Road for the Neds? Left or right? And did you know there's a "Ban Chavs from the Heathmount" campaign on Facebook? :015:

Sounds a bit like the top of Laurel Avenue!

Cheeky Sod. :020: Similarly "the G and T ghetto" epitomises "up the hill" to us lot from Dalneigh! :015: In Dalneigh there is, or at least was, a genuine "no man's land" which divided the "hard as nails" top of Laurel Avenue from the rest of the scheme. This was the Dalneigh Road roundabout and when you cycled across that on your way home, you always looked LEFT to check that you were unlikely to be chased home by members of certain families from that end of Laurel avenue. I suppose Grant Street performs a similar role elsewhere in the town. So to which side of Union Road do the Crown Chavs live? :015:

I was brought up in the era when you were banned for life if you acepted threepence at the Sunday School picnic. (Now it seems it's difficult to be banned for life if you are an out and out drugs cheat who has made a mockery of sport but that's not what we're talking about here. I can only wait in hope until Thursday's court verdict.) Things have changed drastically within the Olympic movement since that earlier Alf Tupper generation and effectively most participants are professional sportspeople. Apart from football as mentioned, professional tennis stars also take part and (as opposed to Gullikson and Gullikson ) we will now have Murray and Murray representing GB in the Games. When Baron de Coubertin founded the modern Games in 1896, this was an era when the upper classes kept the proles in their places by imposing a totally "amateur" closed shop on sport. This was still very much the case in many sports when I was growing up in the 60s but over the last 30 years or so the whole situation, including the Olympic movement which has become highly financially motivated, has changed. Nowadays overprivileged Oxbridge Twats who don't have to work for a living don't have the same advantage over the Man in the Street who fixes people's cars before buying his fish supper and heading for the track where, after a dramatic sprint finish, crosses the line with the immortal words "I run 'im"! In fact Tough of the Track was an early statement against this Corinthian exclusivity and in the Alf Tupper cartoons the posh guys were always supercilious cheating gits who usually came out on top... except when our Alf "run 'em". (Occasionally, on a more Jingoistic note Alf instead "run" slightly dodgy Johnny Foreigners who were just as capable of sharp practice.) Anyway, I digress. Without going into the down sides of professionalised sport (such as an enhanced temptation to take drugs when money is at stake), changes like this have certainly opened up opportunities to the genuinely talented from whatever background, rather than favour Lord Snooty and his pals.

Which side of the "no man's land"which is the Dalneigh Road roundabout is that? :015:

"What a great game golf is...... even with a set of man boobs like mine you can still make a fortune." :015:

Is "veritas" not an adequate defence in a defamation action? :015:

Richard Castro is now part of the Kingsmills Dental Practice across the road from the Heathmount where anaesthesia can be administered by the pint, possibly - even at Heathmount prices - more cheaply than in a dentist's.

The way he explained it to me was that, as a boy, he only went to the Kingsmills terraces since he couldn't afford entry to the stand. :015:

I suspect there were over 6000 for the St. Johnstone game in 1992 although that may not have been made plain to the cops! Certainly there was an official 4950 in there midweek early in 1996 for a rearranged D3 Highland derby and this was a D3 record at the time. I would imagine that games like Rangers (1984), St. Mirren (1987) and Airdrie (1991) would have had similar crowds along with goodness knows how many in days gone by. For a while when the embryonic ICT looked as if it might fall short on the cash front, I used to worry that my failure to pay my 9d some 30 years earlier would haver been a contributory factor. :015: However I was by no means solely guilty. One fellow Dalneigh Kid who used to jump over the same gate was one M. Shewan, for many years now a pillar of the ICT Management Committee establishment.

Scarlet... you used to PAY to get into Telford Street!? ... yerramug! The time honoured method was to take the then unmetalled Balnacraig (Bumber's) Road as far as the rear left corner of the Howden End, climb the gate and Bob's your uncle. I'm speaking of an era somewhat later than yours since entry had inflated to 9d (3.75p for those who don't remember pre 1971) but the principle is the same. It then got better. At the risk of boring longstanding users of this forum, we then used to trawl the ground for empty MacKintosh's lemonade bottles and cash them in at the shop for 3d each. On a good day you could make 1s 6d to 2s which was enough to get you a bag of Smiths crisps with the blue salt sachet inside plus a bar of Cow Toffee or three HUGE penny dainties and STILL have enough to pay you into the front stalls at the La Scala the following Saturday when Caley would be away.

Couldn't resist "le pun"! But I bet Murray's post match interview will still sound like a tranquillised Dalek.