Charles Bannerman

Smee... this is what I've never been sure of!

Oh dear, perhaps one of these instances where you can't see the poster's face, only read the words. I really hope nobody thought I was getting grumpy at Smee's definition of an Invernessian... quite the contrary, I was actually having a semi humourous muse over what I might be if I didn't qualify! Similarly the "apologies to George Orwell" bit was merely a joke along these lines. So was the reference to "long term residence in Chorley". I hope people haven't been taking me too seriously on this thread. (Also, if I fall short on the Granny Count, my one Invernessian granny was a Merkincher and they count double!)

On Smee's criteria I am not an Invernessian since a lived in Wick from 2 weeks old until I was 2 years old and indeed only one of my four grandparents came from Inverness. But if I'm not an Invernessian, what am I? PLEASE don't say Wick!!!! "All Invernessians are equal, but some Invernessians are more equal than others."

Strange thing about Boots' Corner is that I passed it so often (up to four times a day to and from school for a start) but on no occasion was I ever aware of the activities for which it was notorious!

It's strange how simply coming from the other side of the same housing scheme (St. Andrew Drive) makes it an almost different culture. I lived about half a mile away but these things Smee and Scotty have been talking about are completely unfamiliar to me although I do recognise the places they were talking about. I do recognise the route from Bumbers Road to the Cemtery which passed within 20 yards of my house, I do remember the air raid shelters and I also used to put cards on my spokes. But apart from that, mine was a world of football and games of "war" at the "back of Kavvies" (St. Valery Avenue), nicking ther minister's apples, playing on top of the St. Ninian garages, getting up on the roof by shinning up the lamp post (parents must have been frantic with worry), kicking the tin doors to wind up a "Mr. Walker" in the end house who played the drums in The Tenerrife and finding Parade magazines abandoned in the St. Valery undergrowth. I wonder if the Mantis Caley site has got anything on old Telford Street. I remember Willie Ross the grocer who had the shop beside the canal bridge always used to stand on the wall at Greig's Garage watching home games in Telford Street. But indeed, what a change down there!

Perhaps it could be decided by way of fulfilling a certain number of criteria like:- * Born in Inverness. * Resident in Inverness for x years * Resident in Inverness since y years of age. * A certain number of grandparents who were Invernessian. * Adopting Inverness as the sole place with which to identify. * Ability to articulate statements like "Howyadooen" and "Achyerseenitmun howsyersel." Then there's the JFK type of "Ich bin ein Invernessian". In addition there must presumably be various levels of mixed origin. And of course it must be possible to become disqualified from the status through difficulties such as long term residence in Chorley.

You weren't born at the time!? Don't give us that cr@p! You were taking the entrance money at the stand that day with your ex schoolmate Dunc MacGregor! However in 1954 what Charles Bannerman actually did was to bounce out of his pram and over that wall to collect a bottle of National Dried Milk. As for grandstands, I find it intriguing that the those at Telford Street (1950), Grant Street (1988) and Kingsmills (1995) all suffered the same fate of burning down. I find the Grant Street episode seems to come up in conversation in the Social Club every so often with Hamish Munro and Brian "Striker" Munro post match on a Saturday night, most recently just over a week ago. Interesting to see that this Celtic game was almost a prototype for the fightback against St. Johnstone 38 years later. Alex Main... in glorious retirement in the Black Isle and also one of the best editors the Courier ever had. Wonder what Malcolm Baillie's doing with himself these days?!

Twigg did indeed knock Airdrie's goal in from short range... a loose ball from a ruck of players after a goalbound shot had come off the keeper's leg. County's equaliser came after Don Cowie sent in a free kick from wide left and it rebounded vigorously off DP's head into the goal. I did hear the comment made was that the only more convincing OG scored into that net was Mark McCulloch's in a certain local derby! Otherwise I thought Proctor did not too badly and had the bottle to head away other clearances. He also had the bottle to come in for a post match interview for which I respect him. He told us during that interview that he's prepared to go back to Tannadice and fight for his place. I thought Mark McCulloch's sending off was harsh since it looked to me as if the Airdrie player came in at least as hard to him. The "sitter" referred to must have been Twigg's latish on. What a bloomer! I have to say I wasn't that impressed by Alan Morgan today, certainly less so than on previous appearances for County. Credit to County for holding out for 15 minutes with 9 men. As I said in my full time report of the time they played with nine men "Suddenly the barbed wire confronting the Ross County motor bike became 10 feet higher." Steve McQueen has two more attempts to get over that wire... Livi away ... where Robbo will be desperate to beat them... and Gretna at home ... where they will either have won the title and will therefore probably be rubbish or they will desperately need a result to win access to the SPL.

Would the lawyer in question possibly be Giovanni di Stefano who was involved with Dundee for a a short time? Italian guy who spoke quite good English although with a cockney accent which made him sound a bit dodgy. I think he was briefly a director at Dundee. His greatest claim to fame was that he was apparently a friend of Saddam which of course led to quips that he was going to fund a brand new Saddam Hussein Stand at Dens Park. I think di Stefano was part of the regime at Dens Park which got Dundee seriously into debt.

It was going great until the last direction (sod the swimming... minor inconvenience). I fully expected them to say FOURTH turn off the Friars Bridge, heading for Telford Street Park but instead they said Kenneth Street. Who on earth would want to go to Kenneth Street (where I lived in two different houses between the ages of 3 and 5) when you could head for the Howden End?!

I remember the first time "The Lodge" attempted to impose itself on the good people of Inverness in 1976. Very few locals, including myself, had ever seen one of these things and it seemed to unravel itself along Academy Street in a number of phases. First you heard the band. Then you smelled the drink. Then these strange people with umbrellas, rather comical orange upper body garments and bowler hats pranced by with this strange gait which made you wonder if they'd all done a great big whoopsie in their trousers. Then you noticed that there were ministers and women among them. The most conspicuous feature of the women was that they looked twice as hard as the men - Hatchet Faced didn't begin to describe it, despite there being some pretty rough looking blokes there too. And ministers... of that Christian "love thy neighbour" persuasion? Do these people really preach the Love of God on a Sunday? Past they went, the smell of drink lingered a little longer and that was it. On they marched - bigotry on the hoof. The good people of Inverness looked at each other as if there had been a visitation from another planet - to some extent there had - and then got on with their lives. There was the inevitable correspondence in the local press - all of it strongly negative with the possibly predictable exception of someone of the Free Presbyterian persuasion. And that was it for about ten years when they tried again - even more abortively. I think that was the last bit of bile inflicted on Inverness until tomorrow's "occurrence" which, if society as a whole was as intolerant as these people are, would have been instantly banned. So what can we expect tomorrow? Thundering indifference I hope. I understand this is being organised by a local taxi driver Stewart MacColl. I must find out which company he works for and either make sure I don't get this driver or, to make life simpler, not use this company at all. I hope other decent local citizens will do the same. If this individual wants to impose this kind of bile on a respectable non sectarian community, he doesn't deserve to make a living out of that community. One further thought. This walk is due to end at The Portland Club which of course is a sort of "home" to Rangers supporters in Inverness. Coincidence? I actually do believe that David Murray genuinely wants to rid Rangers of their sectarian baggage (without the club losing any money as a result I'm sure) and I applaud his efforts in that direction. But what we are seeing here is just another piece of evidence that, irrespective of how far you go away from bigotry's West Central heartland, extreme sectarianism and a faction of the Rangers support are inextricably linked and will not easily be parted. One thing we can almost certainly rely on. Given the season Rangers have had, I'm sure they'll all once again be marching as if they've done that jumbo whoopsie in their pants!

The news broke yesterday afternoon. It has been covered on radio and on the front pages of today's Courier and P and J. Apparently tghe march is to "celebrate" the formation of a new Chapter of Intolerance (aka local branch of the Apprentice Boys of Derry) in Inverness. The route is from the Green Drive hall to.... and this is no windup.... THE PORTLAND CLUB!

I'm a little bit off the pace here because I'm just back from a few days' holiday (during which time I understand it's been announced that Inverness is to have an Apprentice Boys' march inflicted upon it!) but I thought this was perhaps what Weesite was referring to. Harold Wilson resigned in 1976 and was succeeded by Jim Callghan during whose premiership the devolution referendum etc did indeed take place.

Come to think of it, that must be how Jock Watt got to Australia in the first place!

Kipper... touche! I am not going to live that one down in a hurry but for the record I WASN'T reporting on that particular friendly v Blackpool, I was only there for a pre season nose around! However I do freely admit that I fell asleep during half time and only woke at the shout for a goal at about 51 minutes. To my credit, I did manage to stay awake for the entire duration of one particularly notorious Inverness Cup Final between ICT and Clach at the stadium about 8 years ago so my conscience is clear.

If you'd been listening to the BBC yesterday morning you would have heard that Tullochs provided the 600K to give to the Council, thus doubling what's owed to them for the upgrading project to £1.2 million. Also, it was actually the Inverness Caldonian Thistle Trust, the body which owns the Stadium, which was involved here, not the Supporters' Trust which is a different organisation.

Mantis... complete agreement. Herchie's contribution both to Caley's latter days and to the early history of (I)CT was massive. Only to mention CT's first hat trick v Arbroath and a vital goal v Livingston in the Cup campaign which ended in the quarter finals against Rangers is almost to **** the man with faint praise. (PS - respect to anyone who can apply the difference between factorising and expansion AND use the "is" form of the verb after "none"!) I would also have to agree with Kingsmills about Brian Thomson. There were so many from that era. From the early Caley Thistle days - Herchie, Thomson, Christie, Calder, Teasdale, MacArthur, Noble, Cherry...... And then there were the likes of the Black brothers, Corbett, Roshie, Milroy for whom Caley Thistle came just too late but who did inverness football proud in the years immediately before the merger. Finally, there are guys like Urquhart, Robertson and Danny MacDonald who tasted the early days but whose careers ended either due to age or injury just as things took off with Pele in 1995. Caley Thistle "Masters" (Veterans) XI anyone? Calder, MacArthur, ???, Noble, Milroy, Cherry, Teasdale, Thomson, Urquhart, Christie, Hercher. (Struggling a bit for a left back, despite the temptation(?) to back Johndo and go for Vetle!) PPS - Barry Wilson... you will be next to be inducted into this Hall of Fame!

Weestie what's the Harold Wilson connection?

MASTERS!? What a load of transatlantic politically correct nonsense. The appropriate term is VETERANS. After all the essential element of a competition like this is that those taking part are OLD.... and no disrespect to them for that. We've been through this pantomime in athletics already. For decades, athletics for old people was accurately entitled Veteran competition. Then some PC prat from across the pond decided to euphemise the situation and call it "Masters". It's almost as if, in the best PC tradition, they're in denial about getting old and about labelling people in that sense so they've tried to confer some degree of competence on the situation instead. I never really was all that good at running so just because I've become old, that shouldn't entitle me to be called a Master, but by God I am a Veteran. Now as it happens, people like Jimmy Calder, Charlie, Parkie, Brewster etc (IHE's suggestion of Vetle is of course to be viewed like most IHE suggestions of this nature) are also genuine masters. I would also like to add my own nomination of Herchie as a Master as well as a Veteran. In fact there are so many worthy bearers of the title from the era when Inverness underwent its transition from Highland to Scottish Football League. But I digress here and let's not allow what I've said there to obscure the silliness of the title as a whole. As a generality, the term Masters is nonsensical. Lets say it as it really is. These are games for old footballers, some more masterful than others, and let's not lose sight of that.

Yngwie.... where was the third one?!

No problem Donmac! Takes Mantis to sort it out, eh? Churchill gives an intriguing account of the post Pearl Harbour hours in Volume 3 of his Second World War where, after news got through of the attack, he admits he "slept the sleep of the saved and the thankful". Britain also tried to warn the Soviet Union of the impending German attack in June 1941, which they knew about from Enigma decrypts but Stalin ignored the warning. No doubt, though, these two events saved our backsides in the war.

Ah! Mantis is obviously far better at interpretation than either Donmac or I. I now, although I hadn't until "Sir's" intervention, follow that Donmac understood my reference to "hot air" to mean him, Donmac. However what I did indeed mean was that it was Churchill, Eden...... Major, Blair who collectively generated it.

Well you've done a whole lot better than I have!

I bumped into Jimmy (46) on Saturday night and he challenged me to work out within three guesses which team hed been playing for that afternoon or buy him a drink. His was a vodka. We had a great blether about it and I've done a piece for this week's Highland News. Without revealing too much, Jimmy had the misfortune of having his head sh@t on by a Peterhead seagull but I suppose compared with some of the abuse he's had in his time from the Jail End, that's pretty tame.

Donmac... that's scared me when I think back and realise that I was born when Winston Churchill was PM (his SECOND ministry I'd hasten to add) and I've seen NINE Prime Ministers come and go (well eight if you allow for the fact that Churchill had already "came" and Blair has not yet "went" as we say in football.) That's a lot of hot air.