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Inverness - Above street level.


Second Row

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1 hour ago, Scarlet Pimple said:

That Crown school was a good looking, well-built, building though along with the impressive Academy premises as well.

Well-built but not well maintained!  When I was there in the mid 60s, part of the ceiling over one of the staircases came down. Fortunately everyone was in class at the time.

The tower had a periodically-tested air-raid siren when I was there - probably long gone by the time of Second Row's photograph.

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You know how much of a luxury it is for me to see this great, solid architecture? What a heritage you have in the U.K. Power- wash the stone and it looks as good as new and has style and romance exuding from it.  Or a dark and dangerous past or whatever else  it evokes in your mind and heart.  As C.B. said sometime earlier on this site, the spic and span Academy building, in which we learned stuff and formed good and fruitful emotional memories , is now a physical shambles of neglect and  decay. Surely a building like that in Inverness could have been tidied up and used for the good of the local community in some way?

 With the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada celebrating it's 150th anniversary this year, in Britain  you can easily forget what history has left us. Before that there was only huge trees right down to the water's edge of the Burrard Inlet coming in from the Pacific Ocean here. They used powerful horses to pull the flat-bed sleds loaded with felled trees down to the water's edge over what was referred to in the past as "skid roads ". More often than not these roads were felled logs placed side by side to form a long skid path. Our modern home is just a wooden frame covered on the inside with plaster board and fibreglass insulation and on the outside with plastic strips slotted into each other and glued or nailed to the wooden frame. Or, as a Swedish engineer once intoned to me when I met him on the street and asked him what he was doing over here he replied  " I'm working on this little bridge over this stream under the roadway" and when I then asked him what he thought of our homes he smiled and said "matchboxes, Ha! Ha." I smiled and ruefully  said " Yes, me too. Ha! Ha! " Stone work would be too expensive to import and then haul in over great distances to the West Coast here and so all buildings were built of wood and this practice has simply continued over time.

 The undernoted link is all about the development of the Canadian Forestry industry which some of you might find very interesting. Starting in Eastern Canada in the very early 1800's, to provide wood for masts and so forth for British warships, it eventually became worked-out and licenses were introduced by Governments which restricted the operations to fewer people and to major businesses. Then British Columbia forests in Western Canada, some 2000 miles from the Eastern operations, started to dominate, aided and abetted by the opening of the Panama canal. Techniques for cutting and removal were different, however, due mostly to the age (some trees were/and are still over 1,000 years old) and incredibly huge size of the Coastal forest trees (e.g. Red Cedar) which are explained in the latter part of the article. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/timber-trade-history/

Log homes do exist in B.C. but the cost of cutting, trimming, hauling and emplacement of these logs, is very high and only very rich people can afford to have a home built entirely of logs these days.

 

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On 2/4/2017 at 7:04 PM, Second Row said:

You chaps are getting too good at this!

 

Oh no we are not, I can't think where this one is and there are no other responses I think we might need a clue!

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On 04/02/2017 at 4:24 PM, Scarlet Pimple said:

..... And the belting that they gave me left me incapable of listening or absorbing their teachings anyway so why were they so demonstrably cruel just because I was so restless :lol:?

The more I read of our days in school, I was a Caddy rat from '55 until '61, the more unsettling it is when I reflect on the beltings that were handed out to us for seemingly trivial reasons.

I was told to report back at the close of play to receive punishment from a fairly youngish and, to me, very attractive Miss Goodsir, my Geography teacher. As she got her belt out of the drawer, to my absolute horror, a knock at the door and in strode my English and Registration teacher Angus Matheson. (This was the man who routinely belted anyone who didn't achieve more than five out of ten for their weekend ink-exercise essay!)

I reckon his intention was to chat her up at the end of the day and his idea of presenting his romantic credentials was to offer to carry out the punishment. Miss Goodsir, to her credit and my everlasting relief, declined the offer and carried out the punishment with skill and panache. With hindsight and more knowledge of the female psyche, I assume this was to snub Mr Matheson's advances and declare her self-reliance.

Happy Days!!

 

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35 minutes ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

It's a bit more difficult now that you don't give us the answers in the file names :laugh:

:ohmy::ohmy::ohmy:

36 minutes ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

 

Is that Scorguie in the background of the second one? It reminds me of a view from the Higland House of Fraser webcam on Huntly Street - which doesn't seem to be working just now.

It is Scorguie in the background..........but the view is from a different place!

 

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11 minutes ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

Found the first one by accident, when looking for the second one!

Corner of Ness Walk and Young Street, above what is now Rocpool restaurant.

The second one has me baffled, though. 

just bet me to it thought that's where it was on the mobile but just on the PC now!

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Well done lads!!    Pity about the lighting installation on the chimney breast.

BTW, I honestly thought the second photo would be spotted right away, that's why I cropped it so tight. Have you not sussed the cryptic clue I gave you a couple of posts back?

---_1718.jpg

 

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38 minutes ago, Second Row said:

Well done lads!!    Pity about the lighting installation on the chimney breast.

BTW, I honestly thought the second photo would be spotted right away, that's why I cropped it so tight. Have you not sussed the cryptic clue I gave you a couple of posts back?

---_1718.jpg

 

That is some ladder on the left!  Murray Forbes the Jewellers where I spent a lot of money 33 & 35 years ago :wink: that top corner flat has good views over the Ness towards the castle and north and west with the bay window.

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29 minutes ago, IBM said:

Got the second one The backpackers Hostel up the top of Castle St towards Culduthel Rd :smile:

Yep!

"but the view is from a different place! "

The building is known as ...."Viewplace"......Culduthel Road.

More tomorrow........

INVERNESS - ABOVE STREET LEVEL599 - 7-36 - .jpg

 

 

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Second Row. I left the Academy in 1955 and Miss Goodsir was my English Teacher. Maybe she was subbing as a Geography teacher though?. Very petite and spunky younger lady with a very engaging and fresh smile--she had  spirit.

There was a very tall, well-built and handsome, younger teacher  named Mr. MacPherson in the school at that time.  Anyway, whenever he appeared on the scene in the main hall and she went up to talk to him I noticed the light in her eyes got a lot brighter and the words "hero worship" kind of got stuck in my mind from them on. :smile:  I wonder if they ever hit it off together ....?

I did remember her very well though since at the end of that term she announced the class placings. To my complete astonishment she said I was number one --  which, of course, to a youngster was very gratifying . But, then again,  maybe she just liked Pimples and the impish glint in my own eye.........:wink:

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S.P.

Thanks for correcting me, Miss Goodsir was an English teacher, which would explain why Angus Matheson, my English teacher, paid her a visit at the end of the day.(I'm sending you a photo via PM showing him with our '56/'57 shinty team for identification purposes.)

I think at this stage we will need the services of C.B. to refresh our memories of the parties involved. I think he said in one of his books that Miss Goodsir went to either Australia or New Zealand. I know not what happened to Angus Matheson and he isn't mentioned in the roll call of teaching staff (Session '63-'64) as mentioned on p70-71 of C.B.'s tome - "Completely Up Stephen's Brae". Curiously, just a few weeks back, I was speaking with a 90 year old friend who was in the same digs as A.M. when he first started in the Academy.

 

 

 

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36 minutes ago, Second Row said:

S.P.

Thanks for correcting me, Miss Goodsir was an English teacher, which would explain why Angus Matheson, my English teacher, paid her a visit at the end of the day.(I'm sending you a photo via PM showing him with our '56/'57 shinty team for identification purposes.)

I think at this stage we will need the services of C.B. to refresh our memories of the parties involved. I think he said in one of his books that Miss Goodsir went to either Australia or New Zealand. I know not what happened to Angus Matheson and he isn't mentioned in the roll call of teaching staff (Session '63-'64) as mentioned on p70-71 of C.B.'s tome - "Completely Up Stephen's Brae". Curiously, just a few weeks back, I was speaking with a 90 year old friend who was in the same digs as A.M. when he first started in the Academy.

 

 

 

Haven't read what SP said, but, my recollection of the lovely Miss Goodsir is that she definitely taught Geography.  Maybe she taught English too, but I don't remember that at all. My pal and I always used to try for a front row seat in her classes so that we could ogle her better:lol:.  Although being at the Academy at almost the same time as you (I was 53 to 59), I don't remember Angus Matheson. Our English teacher was Miss Cuthbert.

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4 hours ago, Caley Mad In Berks said:

Haven't read what SP said, but, my recollection of the lovely Miss Goodsir is that she definitely taught Geography.  Maybe she taught English too, but I don't remember that at all. My pal and I always used to try for a front row seat in her classes so that we could ogle her better:lol:.  Although being at the Academy at almost the same time as you (I was 53 to 59), I don't remember Angus Matheson. Our English teacher was Miss Cuthbert.

Do you possibly mean Miss Eva MacKenzie? This is well before my time and based on a couple of the books Second Row spoke about. I've looked at a staff photo from 1956 where unfortunately the quality is very bad because it was a poor original done with 1995 reproduction technology. Certainly both Misses MacKenzie and Goodsir are in it and, although not a good photo, it does sort of seem that Miss Goodsir is (as John Inverdale famously said!) "not all that much of a looker". (:redcard: - PC alert!!!) The other book does indeed confirm that Miss Goodsir emigrated to NZ.

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Oh!.Oh! Now you have sewn the seeds of doubt in my mind. I remember Ms. Cuthbert as well and , correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't she a little lady (cute too) and maybe had a slightly protruding front tooth? Maybe it was Miss Cuthbert and not Goodsir who taught me English especially if the latter taught upstairs and was younger than Cuthbert .

So, to clarify this intriguing I/D situation, the lady I referred to who handed out the "English" placings had the classroom as follows:- walk up the front steps of the school and enter the main hall. Keeping to the left side of the hall she was in either the first or second left side room just past D.J's lectern.

 

 

 

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And, IBM , yes that's a long ladder all right  up against the front of that building. I would say at least 30 feet in length. I've been up that height but I did not feel comfortable at all.The foot seems to be awfully close to the curb and, if it slipped off, the laddie on it would be a gonner. You need to maintain the feet about 3 feet of distance from the wall for every ten feet of height.

There you go, another little bit of back talk from the Workers Compensation Board.:happy:

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