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Inverness Royal Academy of Olde


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On ‎4‎/‎14‎/‎2016 at 3:43 PM, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Caddy Blazer - 1980 ?

Caddy.jpg

It was actually December 1979 and it was an amazing production which totally sold out for four nights. I was involved backstage... and Gawd! There I am in that photo! You can just see my head and a shoulder on the left, five rows back.

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

Charlie

Just had another look at this long but very absorbing and interesting thread.

At the school sports in 1952,I was unable to spot and identify,  Messrs. David Thom  (who  once belted me very hard), Mr Murray the gym master who chalked-off a try I managed to make on the Millburn sports field and I had  questioned him as to why he let me continue if it indeed was a "knock-on:,  and D. J.  the Rector.

However, what I did find very interesting was going back aways in the thread to note that persons selected to go to the Academy were usually in the top 15% of the range of intelligence required to qualify. That was a fillip since I had never ever given it much of a  thought other than wondering from time to time what criteria were once used in my day to allow me, or anyone else, to be selected for the Academy. e.g. was it just a random type of choice or a very selective one? Now I know , thanks to you,  so thanks for that Chas.

In fact I do remember that, prior to sitting the qualifying exam that we all had to do  in the Central school, I was asked by the teacher which school I would prefer to go to if I qualified. I simply said the Academy because I had no idea what the Technical school really was for, or what outcomes going to that school would imply. I mean, if what I decided upon prior to the exam had any bearing as to the selection of school to send me to, I would nowadays be quite upset because  surely, even at age 12, a child should still be imbued with some knowledge as to what he/she will be  committing their future to don't you?

There is no doubt in my mind that having "Inverness Royal Academy" on the Resume when I first started out in the banking system in 1955 probably did not hurt my chances of getting the mighty position of apprentice in  the Union  Street Office of the RBS over the other lad who applied for the position who also went to the Academy but was described in the bank's interview records as being "not quite as polished as SP".  So how do I know that?  Well, later, as an Inspector with said Bank working out of the Head Office for 6 years,  I had access to all the employee files in the Staff department and, whilst preparing for an Inspection one day and scanning the files of the employees at that particular branch,  I thought that I would quickly whip out my own file since nobody was around and I was surprised to note the comments therein. Just shows, though, that you just never know what awaits you round the next corner. I was probably wearing my best blue Academy blazer on that fateful day as well and, to please my mother, looked really spiffy with a new haircut and polished shoes, etc.

Jings! Imagine, that one small observation from the then Branch manager in his interview report to the bank's Head Office sealed my fate as to my future life, circumstances and destinations. And the ironic thing is that it also led me to emigrate to Canada, then leave the banking system altogether and run my own business for 29 years until I retired at age 70 still in Western Canada. All experiences which often were just plain joyous and changed and developed my abilities and my inner knowledge of what I am, and might be, capable of -- some of which were actually eye-openers as well. 

There is no doubt ,Charles ,that had I not been interviewed on that day in Union Street and been seen in that light by the RBS's branch manager, my life would almost certainly have been very different and it's  more than probable that I would still be around in Scotland rather than in spellbinding Canada, That is,  where there are more opportunities for advancement and less stifling prejudices against you for minor mistakes as you learn the ropes and grow accordingly. That is, if you can overcome the prejudice against British Immigrants which will be thrown at you by some misguided and probably fearful people when you first arrive!

:wave:

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16 hours ago, Scarlet Pimple said:

I had no idea what the Technical school really was for 

 

I thought that I would quickly whip out my own file since nobody was around 

Scarlet, on your first quote, cynics "up the hill" doubtless used to say the same thing.

On your second one - is this a habit you should really be admitting to on a public forum?

Edited by Charles Bannerman
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On 01/05/2016 at 3:27 PM, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

Royal Academy 1792

image.jpg

Just finished reading an old Inverness book by Evan Macleod Barron and within it there is a chapter called 'An Early Nineteenth Century Episode' which is all about an infamous event associated with the Inverness Royal Academy that played out between December 1819 and the Summer of 1820. It revolves around two feuding groups who championed different candidates for the new masters position and reads as if it is straight out of a novel. The main protagonist is an outspoken landowner/businessman who had been a long standing Director of the Academy from 1792 when Inverness Grammar School transformed into an Academy. He is said to have had an exalted idea of his own importance and an extraordinary fondness for posing (I assume in 1819 that meant the same thing as today).

Anyway I digress - there was a society set up by this gentleman in 1815 called the 'Society of True Highlanders' (seemingly not to be confused with the 'Club of True Highlanders') in which a number of those associated with the Academy were said to be members.

Was this the Academy's 'Dead Poet's Society'?  

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Prompted by TBB's post above, I have just traced this incident in Robert Preece's official history of the Academy, where Evan Barron's work is referred to. It would appear to have been a dispute between MacDonnell of Glengarry and MacKintosh of Raigmore about the appointment of a Latin master and it got badly out of hand.

However what did strike me as somewhat “familiar” was that the two sides of the dispute both recruited new school directors (a directorship could be bought) in advance of the vote on who should get the job.

Now this is perhaps not a concept familiar to a contributor by the name of Tichy Black's Back, but the scenario is incredibly similar to one which unfolded in Rose Street, just 200 yards away from the Old Academy, in December 1993 where similarly increased numbers of Caley members held a second vote on the merger.

Indeed, the fourth and last occasion when this artificially extended forum met was actually in the hall of the former “Midmills” Royal Academy a few months later.

But there the similarity ends. £50 to buy a Royal Academy directorship in 1820 was a far, far greater sum than £20 in 1993 to buy a Caley season ticket!

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On ‎04‎/‎05‎/‎2016 at 10:06 PM, Tichy_Blacks_Back said:

Just finished reading an old Inverness book by Evan Macleod Barron and within it there is a chapter called 'An Early Nineteenth Century Episode' which is all about an infamous event associated with the Inverness Royal Academy that played out between December 1819 and the Summer of 1820. It revolves around two feuding groups who championed different candidates for the new masters position and reads as if it is straight out of a novel. The main protagonist is an outspoken landowner/businessman who had been a long standing Director of the Academy from 1792 when Inverness Grammar School transformed into an Academy. He is said to have had an exalted idea of his own importance and an extraordinary fondness for posing (I assume in 1819 that meant the same thing as today).

Anyway I digress - there was a society set up by this gentleman in 1815 called the 'Society of True Highlanders' (seemingly not to be confused with the 'Club of True Highlanders') in which a number of those associated with the Academy were said to be members.

Was this the Academy's 'Dead Poet's Society'?  

MacDonnell of Glengarry posing......

MacDonnell of Glengarry by Sir Henry Raeburn.jpg

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  • 4 weeks later...
6 hours ago, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

Bye Bye Buckie

image.jpg

That would be June 1970. Buckie retired when I finished 5th Year. Great guy who always came down to watch and vocally support school rugby teams "Come on PaterSON.... play up BannerMAN...." He was certainly still on the go in 1998 because I exchanged letters with him then when he was living near Oxford, but I think he died shortly after - at a great age. If he was the second longest serving member of staff in 1970, the longest would have been Jess Thomson who arrived in 1930 and retired in 1972.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The very same year as Buckie retired - 1970. Television Top of the Form runners up and Trans World Top Team winners. Of the others, Margaret is still about town, Irene was teaching in Dundee but will be retired and Andrew - whose older brother Ian is ICT company secretary - died 7 or 8 years ago.

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Good Lordy. Even I remember this gentleman, Mr Buchanan. Tall , slim and distinguished-looking.

He would not remember me though since I have little or no artistic talent. When a picture might enhance my posts  my radar signals (S.O.S.) are frequently picked up by the also distinguished IHE who obligingly posts his creations  alongside them for illustration and titillation.  What a guy.:ictscarf: 

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2 hours ago, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

Swot watch ?

image.jpg

That will be your year in session 1969-70 IHE which, I seem to remember, in 1968 was the first S1 year group that they stopped streaming with the top performers from the Promotion in the A class and so on through to the less academically gifted in the D stream. On the other hand I don't even see a sprinkling of what I remember as that year's highest fliers in that 2D list, so I wonder if they then streamed the clases after S1?

I see Jimmy Chisholm on the list as third equal in Art. I also see the name of Deirdre Thorne who I THINK is the person my kids used to call "The lady that runs with the pram." Back in the 90s a woman living in Lochardil used to run everywhere pushing her daughter, until quite a mature age, in a buggy and was thus dubbed "The lady that runs with the pram". The same woman still runs quite obsessively and for years has very regularly been going out by Torbreck to the Dores Road and back. I think this is the former Deirdre Thorne. On the subject of runners, there's also this guy who seems to run very regularly in his full normal clothes from Lochardil to Tesco Inshes before walking back with two full bags of shopping. It is also said that on one occasion he ran to his work to tell them he was unwell and then ran back home again!

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3 hours ago, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

Caddy.jpg

That's what the fairly elderly would call The Library and the very elderly would call The Hall - but taken after the school was handed over to the Tecky College and internally vandalised by them.

The outside is far from clever looking these days either. For the benefit of exiles, the windows have all been covered up by metal sheets, the grass is getting on for waist high and the general fabric of the building, especially the decaying huts, is deteriorating visibly. If I was the owner of one of the nearby expensive properties, I would be getting pretty fed up with this.

Oh well, the city centre looks increasingly cr*p and stinks of p*ss so why not achieve an element of consistency by allowing the decay to spread to the leafy suburbs? And didn't the fact that Inverness city centre is falling apart and traffic is grinding to a halt make the nonsense of the tilting pier all the more ironically ridiculous?

Edited by Charles Bannerman
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I'm curious: are there any other sad sacks on the board who live still in the fading 50-year-old memories of a humdrum educational institution, presented as some splendid hybrid of Eton meets Hogwart's meets the Trinity Tiddlers, but which in truth was a tawdry, provincial outpost peopled by intellectual mediocrities and founded in part by money drained from the sweat of Caribbean slaves?

If so, we'd love to hear from you.

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