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"Right Up Stephen's Brae"


Charles Bannerman

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Some forum users may remember the two "Up Stephen's Brae" books which I published for Inverness Royal Academy on either side of "Against All Odds".

Well I am now on the point of completing the trilogy and "Right Up Stephen's Brae" - which is a novel about the Royal Academy and about Inverness - is due to be launched on October 28th.

The original "Up Stephen's Brae" (1995) was an account of my own Inverness Royal Academy schooldays. "Further Up Stephen's Brae" (1999) was an anecdotal history of the school during the 84 years it was at Midmills.

Now, "Right Up Stephen's Brae" is a novel which (without giving too much of the plot away) is about a poor boy from down the Shore in Inverness who ends up changing the lives of a very large number of people. It is largely set in the school and in the town between 1895 and 1967.

On this forum, I will in addition reveal that the main character is a football fan so a little bit of football does get into the plot from time to time.

Perhaps on this forum I had better also now reveal that the main character is called George Fraser, but that is purely because a pupil of that name did exist and won the school's Centenary Medal in 1892!

Hopefully this will be of interest to all Invernessians - even if they weren't "Kaddie Rats" - or indeed to anyone who enjoys a read.

Copies, priced at a mere ?5 for 112 A5 pages with all profits to the school fund, will be available from 28th October in Inverness at the School, Waterstones and Borders. The book will not be on retail sale outwith the local area but there will be a postal ordering service which we are currently working on.

To take advantage of that, visit the school's website where you can also see further promotional material.

Now for the anticlimax... my computer literacy doesn't extend to links to other websites but the website address is http://www.invernessroyal.highland.sch.uk/ or google "inverness royal academy" and the school's site will be top of the list.

Edited by CaleyD
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I am thinking about riting a book.

Which reminds me... there is one (fictional) episode in the book where it wasn't difficult at all to find a name for the character although at the end of the episode there is a rather greater degree of repentance than might have been expected from a character of that name.

:024: Some people will go to any length to sell a book.

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I'm actually quite surprised you haven't offered to do it yourself.

Well I may be a gifted actor but there is no way that I could play the part of an ugly, boring halfwit.

But you do that on here all the time. ;)

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I love the title 'Right up Stephen's Brae'

Memories are made of this - past the Crown Church, past the Heathmount, past the Thistle Park (down on one's knees as you pass the Broad Stone) - then past the Fire Station housed then where the cricket park is now. Down the hill past the Meal Mill and on up past the Golf Course and you enter the Village of Culcabock.

MacDonald's Shop, The Fluke, the wee Petrol Station, then up the Back Street full of memories. The School and on up to Draikies Farm whose cows wandered down the Perth Road from the current entrance into the Hospital and up the Back Street to be milked twice a day.

Now Charles ....That is Right Up Stephen's Brae to God's Kingdom!!

Many posters on here would not have been aware of the foregoing as, coming from the Ferry/Merkinch/Dalneigh areas, this hight above sea level gave them a nose bleed and the umbilical cord stopped about Hunters anyway.

Open grassed areas were foreign to them unless men were running on them with a ball with strange names like Willie Jamieson, Stottie Fraser, Bobby Bolt etc...oh and later came Andy Penman, all the way from Aberdeen and they realised that he came from even further away than Right Up Stephen's Brae!

.

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Looking forward to this, but not a very good advert for the IRA if none of your pupils is capable of setting up a simple website with a Paypal or equivalent option. Postal orders? Are you sure they still exist in the age of electronic money? Tsk, are you still teaching them with slates and inkwells? Nostalgia is one thing, but I didn't realise you actually teach it :lol:

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