More Roamerisms from the early 1990s
The proposed Great Glen Way walking route to link the Fort with Inverness figures in a consultation document prepared by SNH, the backer of the project. This tells us that the 60-odd-mile walk stretches from the Fort via Gairloch, Laggan, Fort Augustus etc to the Highland capital. Gairloch? That’s right – or, rather, wrong. It should be Gairlochy. SNH didn’t drop the ‘h’, they dropped the ‘y’ in their report.
Paul Morgan, of Croit Anna and Heron Bay fame, is currently travelling the world. This month he’s in South Island, New Zealand. And already Paul has phoned home with a refreshing tale to tell. ‘I’d hired a car,’ said he. ‘And it was raining – just like Lochaber. Then I saw this bloke on the very wet grass verge. Taking photos. I nearly went off the road.’ The photographer was none other than Roberto Matassa, ex-Fort William. Aye, auld acquaintance was certainly renewed by the two exiles!
The clock was turned back 50 years on Monday morning, as 35 young recruits of the Korps Commando Troepen from Roosendaal in Holland undertook a seven-mile speed march, in full kit, from Spean Bridge to Achnacarry. And, if you saw a Lochaber local doing his own 200 yards yomp through Spean in full kit – ie carryíng a very heavy reel-to-reel Uher tape recorder – trying to catch them up for an interview, I confess: it was me!
The AGM of the Lochaber branch of the Royal College of Nursing will be in the Belford next month. The derisory (that word is mine) one per cent pay rise offer is on the agenda.
If you happened to see Mrs Doubtfire and Rab C Nesbitt in town last Saturday night – it wasn’t them! Just a couple of imitators heading for Big Sam’s Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team party night.
‘Is there a pet shop in Fort William?’ a couple of tourists enquired of two local worthies. ‘Aye, there is, at Marshall and Pearson along the street. But it’s shut on Sundays. What’s the problem, anyway?’ the locals asked, their joined-up thinking being to direct the couple to Safeway to buy Chum or Chappie. But then the visitors explained. ‘It’s Toby,’ they said. ‘He has tugged on his dog collar and broken it.’ This, of course, was meat and drink to our dynamic duo. They checked the time and commented: ‘Well, all the church services will be finished in a few minutes, and you’ll see plenty of dog collars then. Maybe you could get hold of a spare one.’
A lot of people were conjecturing as to why ‘red and green lights on a pole’ were so much in evidence in the West End car park late on Saturday night, when members of Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team were boarding a Sea King helicopter to be airlifted up the Ben. Top secret equipment? Trial take-off lights? No! The pole was part of the gear utilised by the Fort’s night fishermen, and were placed at a point below what used to be the Achintore Shelter. They were then casting their lines over the railings and into Loch Linnhe.
‘Progress’ is a great thing. I can just see the Divisional Planning Office staff cringe as they read those words ‘Divisional Planning Office staff’ in this column. And saying to themselves ‘Roamer’s not having a go at us, surely?’ Of course I’m not! However, as I mentioned: ‘Progress is a great thing.’ Here we are in the middle of the 1990s and, at Monday’s meeting, we were issued with a 40page treatise about planning enforcement and related matters. However, the word processor with which the office has been provided doesn’t have a £ sign apparently. With the result that sums like £95,000 have to be prefixed instead with a cross between an asterisk and a square. That’s what’s known in this computerised age as ‘Making a HASH of it’.
Continuing with council matters, I was having a wee look back at some of my Fort William Town Council reports of the late 1950s. The council met in the erstwhile Town Hall in those days. And there always were a number of pithy and pawky comments from the members. For example, while tabling a motion for the modernisation of the Inverlochy Place houses, Councillor Campbell advised that ‘the kitchenettes are so small that the housewives don’t have room to change their minds in them’. At one evening meeting Councillor Macpherson arrived with the handle of the door – in his hand. ‘Is there a meeting of the General Purposes Committee tonight,’ asked he, ‘so we can get back out without breaking the door down?’ Then there was the debate about the Town Hall clock. It went too fast. It stopped. It struck 13. It chimed. It didn’t chime. Its hands stuck. Its light went out.
An illegally parked car in Middle Street carried a note under the wipers. ‘Working in DE Shoes’ it read. A local lady came along, saw the message, took it out and added a few words. ‘I do hope they’re comfortable,’ she wrote.
Which reminds me. During town holidays on Mondays in the 1950s the High Street was congested for long periods. The cause? The ‘Waiting This Side’ and ‘No Waiting This Side’ signs had not been exchanged in the morning. While local drivers, aware of their town’s regulations, parked religiously on what should have been the right side, visitors followed the sign directions and parked on the ‘wrong side’! However even ‘The Butler’ managed to leave his barrow in the ‘correct’ place.