More Roamerisms from the early 1990s
❚ The phone we use in the office – solely to make outgoing calls – rang stridently and annoyingly one morning last week. It does that very occasionally – and invariably it’s a wrong number from people expecting to speak to West Highland Oil, or with the caller asking ‘Is that Lords and Ladies’? – ‘Can you do me in 10 minutes?’ So you can imagine my surprise when I picked up the phone, and the voice of Alistair Morar (MacLeod) boomed out. ‘Is that Munro the Butchers’? Says I: ‘Hang on, Alistair, and I’ll get you the numbers of Annie in Corpach or Norrie in Toronto.’ (They’re two former stalwarts of Munro the Butchers of decades ago before the High Street shop closed.) Alistair, it transpired, had the right number – but the wrong code – for Munro the Butchers. In Dingwall.
❚ Still at Morar – but with fish not meat. Anglers there are catching shoals of salmon! It appears that Nessie’s cousin, Morag, the Loch Morar monster, may have gone into early hibernation. And, while salmon fishermen everywhere else in Scotland are bemoaning their ‘worst ever season’, the members of Morar Angling Club are doing salmon leaps of joy. In September, so far, on Loch Morar scores have been landed, including 31 in one competition alone. The heaviest was a near 18 pounder, reeled in by John MacVarish. Only around 15 salmon were caught in the loch in the whole of 1990. Alistair Morar himself says, as secretary of Morar Angling Club: ‘Something’s happening on the loch to make the fishing the best anyone can remember. We can’t explain it. But there are some who reckon Morag has gone off her diet of salmon, and is leaving them for the locals.’ Meanwhile, on Loch Shiel, it’s a similar story. The salmon have been reeled in like there’s no tomorrow. And Angie the Gate would like to know why this marine miracle has been wrought on Loch Shiel which was hard put last year to yield three little fishes.
❚ Last weekend’s eagerly anticipated challenge match at Fort William Golf Club between Fort William Round Table and the Rotary Club of Lochaber went the way you would expect. The repartee, kidology and gamesmanship took over from the golf! In fact, the tourney started with one of the young bucks from the Table giving the elder statesmen the initial advantage. Up he stepped, withdrawing an iron, and, having sized up the short distance to the green, he announced, ‘A drive and a putt.’ Couple of practise swings. Then ‘swish’ – down came the club. Contact. And the ball hopped about five feet from the tee. ‘Now for a hell of a putt,’ observed his Rotarian rival.
❚ MJM Motors came to the rescue of Nevis Garage the other night. By providing a tow. In this case, however, it was Donald MacPherson’s outboard motor-powered Galleon which was handily placed on Loch Linnhe to pull along to the yacht club Robbie Robertson’s becalmed Soling. Vorsprung Durch Technik, as they say in Caol – and Claggan.
❚ Three local lads are serving in the UN Forces Sector in Cyprus. Steve, Dean and Gordon are sent The Oban Times and Lochaber News which are later circulated to every other Scot in their unit. So they’re a well-read bunch out there.
❚ Aye, the pupils are switched on in Lochaber’s primary schools. Take youngster, Ross McKenzie, for example. Last week he came home with a book, the title of which was How to Handle Teachers. Ross’s dad is Eric McKenzie, depute rector of Lochaber High School.
❚ Female shopper went into the stationery department of one of our High Street establishments, looking for envelopes. ‘How much are these?’ she queried, holding up a packet of the brown variety. ‘They’re free,’ the assistant replied. ‘Free!’ echoed the intending customer, no doubt musing that this, after all, was Fort William High Street. ‘Yes,’ continued the lassie behind the counter, ‘They’re a bit stuck together.’ To which the still suspicious shopper responded, ‘’Well, why are you selling them, then?’ Came the patient reply: ‘We’re not. We’re giving them away.’ As far as I know they could still be enveloped in this discussion.
❚ ‘Don’t Go On The Eight Three Oh’! So the song has it. Indeed on the day of the Morar Road Blockade it took a few members of the non-local media ages to traverse the A830 – The Road to the Isles. By which time the roadblock had been lifted. ‘Where’s the demo action?’ the visiting press gang demanded to know. This, of course, brought the wry/dry response from the blockaders: ‘That was what this was all about – and you’ve missed it.’
At the weekend it was so busy in Fort William in Presto’s that Robert MacMillan, one of the demonstrators, who had successfully driven along the A830 from Kinloid to the Fort was confronted by a couple of Morarites. In among all the trolleys, boxes and customers they said to Robert: ‘We didn’t know you were organising a blockade in here as well’.
❚ An elderly female customer presented herself at Sammy’s chip van at Corpach on Saturday. ‘I’d like a fish supper, please, with nothing on,’ she said. Replied Sammy: ‘Madam, how you eat it is entirely up to you!’