Charles Bannerman

Thank you buckett. I'd forgotten the details of that one. I'm wondering if the version I saw involved the "guard" throwing a ball up in the air and catching it again at the end of the turn... to take their eyes off the encroaching challengers a bit more. "War" to us baby boomers was, of course, an inevitable extrapolation of what our fathers had done to the Germans or the Japs depending on which theatre they'd been in. The best War games I ever had were at the "back of Kavvies" (Kavvies later becoming as noted Caley Rebel) in the waste ground behind St. Valery Ave in among the whin bushes. Sometimes it was the Japs, sometimes it was the Huns but, like John Wayne (except when he was at The Alamo) the good guys always won. I was never very good at impersonating a machine gun - which, unlike most Brtish infantrymen, we all seemed to carry, none of your crappy 303s - but ur,ur,ur,ur,ur,ur seemed just about to do it. Remember in Commando comics when Germans used to die with an "Aargh" but with Japs it was "Aieee".

FW just got excited at the thought of F8 putting the holes in the donuts!

Yup.. thought that one would provoke a few questions. I can't quite remember the details but I think it involved someone going out to the front and facing the rest of the group and turning through 360 degrees whilst incanting "123 Victoria". I think a ball may have been thrown or people had to move out of place quickly and unseen but I'm a bit hazy on the details. That's possibly because it may have been a "girlie" game and, honest, I wasn't too much into them (the games I mean).

Skeechie... 123 Victoria.... British Bulldogs.... Kerbie.... Hide and Seek.... One Potato, Two Potato.... Paper, Scissors, Stone.... Tig (sometimes known as It)...

Thought a pair of shoes would be better, given the ones you walked back to your hotel in on Friday night! (On the other hand your apparent reluctance to sit down perhaps also indicates why you need a cushion.)

Or alternatively, Beachcomber, an Invernessian is some who, on a nice summer day, takes "the burn to Nurn!"

Got you Alternative ... I remember it now! Not the most refined place in Inverness. Godness me, for a mere youngster you have a rare memory!

According to Ian Broadfoot's impeccable statistics, that was Richard's third goal for Caley Thistle, the other two having come in something of a scoring spree in October and November 1995. So that was the first time he'd scored since he was a teenager... not bad for a man who turns 30 and reaches his 300th appearance this weekend.

I remember when we lived at No 70 Kenneth Street, sitting on the edge of the pavement (what mother would allow her 3 year old to do that these days?!) watching the orange horsedrawn Stratton wagon go up the street. I can still almost smell the horse! In these days horse poo on the street was fairly common. Do you remember the horse trough at the junction of Wells St., Kenneth St and Telford St?

Latviaman... if you don't mind, I'll correct your "demensure" to "dementia"! The Market (aka Post Offce) Steps now have a lot of commercial outlets such as a record shop, a florist and indeed a new hairdresser. At the bottom of the Market Steps, facing upwards, the premises on the left which used to be the Globe shoe shop is now HBOS. On the right on the old Post Office site is the RBS. I believe there's been a dentist on Castle Street for a number of years and it's been through a fair number of hands. The door is just to the right of what used to be, I think, Thomson Brown Brothers, then the West End Furniture Store and now Reilly's Snooker Club.

Alternative... for someone who "followed" me into the teaching profession, you seem to have a better memory than I do, even though I may have been around a little longer. I recollect a Mayfair Cafe but I just can't remember where it was. Can you remind me? I'm indeed not old enough to remember Inverness in the incarnation you show but it's quite fascinating to see these maps. However the Ageist Comment of the Week has to come from another thread where one IHE is referred to as "the old man who got all the applause when he was escorted from the ground." Wonderful!

Sophia.... Les Munro perhaps? He was the ex husband of Louise Munro, well known personality with Inverness Opera Company and The Florians and for many years school secretary at Inverness Royal Academy. He used to wear dark rimmed glasses I think. I believe they used to live in the "Electric Flats" in St. Valery Avenue. Tom Anderson was Head of Music at Millburn for many years and organist at St. Columba High Church. I always thought it was quite ironic that on a Saturday night Tom would be playing in a pub and on Sunday morning in a church just 100 yards away. I believe it was Ted Walker the drummer who worked at AI Welders.. simply known as "the Welders"... in Rose Street. He lived in the part of St. Ninian Drive beside the garages, away from the main cul de sac. When we were kids we used to wind him up no end by hammering with our heels on the tin doors of these garages. His own kids, who were younger, would be trying to sleep so he went ballistic which of course made us worse. I think he was even playing in that trio in these days... before alcohol ever passed my lips. I first saw and heard the Tenerife Trio in the days when closing time was 10pm and you really had to deck your last few drinks at enormous speed... before going home because there was nothing else to do in Inverness unless you were going downstairs to "The Caley" which was never a favourite with me. PS - AI Welders certainly did their bit for the war effort during WW2. They played a big part in the construction of PLUTO ...PipeLine Under The Ocean... which in 1944 carried fuel from the UK to Normandy before the Allies captured a proper port after the invasion.

Sophia... you seem to be commendably well informed on a very wide range of issues! (And I can't remember the last time I spotted the word "allegorical" on this forum.)

FW it's "Magdalene". College .... (in Oxford)

Sophia: "death throes of shop stewardism and red cronyism". ? I'm not so sure about that. I think most of these things are dead anyway. Maggie Thatcher more or less saw off "shop stewardism" in the 80s although I admit that this analysis perhaps somewhat reduces any relish of the demise! As for the "red" bit, I think New Labour largely got rid of that ("means of production and distribution" etc) in the run up to the 97 election when they nicked Tory policies so they (New Labour) could become electable. That leaves the "cronyism" bit and you very probably have a point there. It's an interesting irony indeed that both sides of the Old Firm should sign up to the "protect the Union" ticket. Predictable on one side, less so on the other. It's also an interesting point you make about Tommy Gemmell's attempts to keep Inverness out of the Scottish League. That's also a very good illustration of the kind of attitude the Central Belt has to the Highlands which makes me, as a Highlander, rather wary of independence and indeed of what the scottish parliament might get up to. This sort of impinges on the Culloden thread which was running here a few weeks ago. Historically we in the Highlands have never really had any favours from the central belt. Indeed wasn't it one Master of Stair who was up to his armpits in the engineering of the Massacre of Glencoe? Quite frankly I'm sometimes a bit less suspicious of the English than I am of the Cenrtal Scotland Mafia - with the conspicuous exception of when the English won't shut up about 1966, which is presumably now going to be revisited with gusto every time one of that team expires! I didn't hear any of Radio Scotland's election night coverage because I was watching TV but I'm sure it wasn't all that bad. I would certainly say that election coverage, by its very nature, tends to be a bit "shambolic" or at least Seat of the Pants, made more so by the utterly shambolic nature of the count itself. Coverage of the results from the Highlands and Islands in the Friday morning local Highland bulletins was excellent. Clacher... I was just quoting a few well known examples of the Scots having delusions of canine testicles and thrn messing up big time.

Looks like a stunning victory for the SPP... the Spoiled Papers Party. It seems the tradition of Flodden, Darien and Argentina 78 lives on!

Scotty... I'm not entirely convinced that ICT has taken things all that slowly. If you consider the timescale from 1994-2006 which I detailed further up this thread, I think that's pretty rapid progress from the Highland League to the SPL in about a decade. After all, everybody thought Dougie McGilvray was off his head when he bet Tam Cowan that ICT would be in the SPL by 2004. Inded some (especially David Sutherland) have criticised Dougie for pushing on too fast. I will pass no personal judgement either way on that but, for instance, it has been claimed that 1997 was too early to go full time. OK, Caley Thistle have got away with it, but by 2000 had spent a couple of million more than it had earned and the receivers would have been in had that debt (which presumably still exists in some form) not been spirited away into the Trust (at which point we wonder yet again what actually happened to that particular liability!) But yes, players become surplus to means at Leeds who are virtually on their uppers and, in front of the ICT backdrop which we've been discussing, people demand that ICT splashes out cash it doesn't have to get them to Inverness. Ironic indeed!!

On the other hand, with forward thinking like yours, you WILL be back in the Highland League... if you're lucky!

roscoe.... 1994 - Inverness Thistle and Caledonian FC, playing in front of a few hundred fans, both fail to win the Highland League. 1995 - Caledonian Thistle progress to Division 3 of the Scottish League and finish 6th. 1996 - Caledonian Thistle reach the quarter finals of the Scottish Cup. 1997 - Inverness Caledonian Thistle win the Third Division and go up to Division 2. 1999 - Promotion to Division 1, losing out on the Division 2 title at the last gasp. 2000 - ICT survives a major financial crisis due to overstretching. Just avoid the receiver thanks to the setting up of the ICT Trust to sideline over £2M of debt and a huge investment by Tulloch. 2003 - semi finals of the Scottish Cup. 2004 - Semi finals of the Scottish Cup, challenge Cup winners, Division 1 title winners and promotion to the SPL. 2005 - ICT hotly tipped for relegation but survive in the end quite comfortably. SPL football brought to Inverness by the construction of two stands, borrowing £1.2M in the process. 2006 - just miss the split. Finish seventh. I suspect you may be just that little bit too young to have a full overview of the progress Caley Thistle has made in the last 13 years and therefore don't understand that the club is actually quite fortunate to have come as far as it has in that time. Further progress, especially major, would require a whole lot more money. How much of that would you be prepared to provide by a huge increase in the cost of a season ticket? Or do you expect some mystery businessman to step in and subsidise your fantasy of taking Leeds United players to Inverness?

For those who don't know (not many since they've had quite a lot of coverage) Inverness City already exists. The title, which was firmly rejected by Caley Thistle, was then snapped up last year by a new team under the managership of Stevie Graham which has just finished its first season in the North Caledonian League. They've done very well indeed.. not far away from winning the league but did win a couple of cups, beating Golspie Sutherland (where former ICT player Robbie Benson is asst manager) in both finals. PS - I hear Alex Bone is going to be signing for Golspie.

Better get that roll of toilet paper into the fridge for the next morning then!

I don't suppose the fact that the dog's owner happens to be a regular contributor to the publication in question is significant here, is it? So what do we have now? A dog as North Personality of the Year and the non existent "Loch Ness Monster" as Highland Icon. Big Brother Watchers and Sunreaders throughout the Highlands clearly can't get rid of that voting habit. Never mind. It all means we should waken up to an interesting set of election results next Friday morning!

Heilandee... all I can say is you've got better eyesight than I have. Even on maximum magnification, I can only now make that out as Bellslea Bar after you've told me what it actually says. Last night without that info, I could make nothing of it at all. On the other hand I suppose nobody can "discover" a drinking place like a Dundonian!

I THINK you're at Bellslea Park Fraserburgh... not that I've ever been there but if you blow up the picture you can just see billboards for Faithlie Net Makers and Findlay's Hotel. It doesn't take too much Googling to pin these down to The Broch. I was initially tempted to suggest Peterhead on the strength of a 01779 phone number on one of the boards but that's outweighed by the two Broch boards and I think Balmooor is probably a bit more sophisticated than that. I suppose the 01779 is a bit like Inverness businesses which advertise at Ross County.

17 was kind of old for going to Blue wasn't it?