More Roamerisms from the early 1990s

fort@obantimes.co.uk

At precisely the same time as an audience of 126 were attending the Fort William premiere of ‘Rob Roy', an estimated several hundred more – and fewer than half of them ‘Fit Likers' – were having a fine Friday night final fling with ‘Scotland The What'. And, in keeping with their own inimitable style, the stalwarts injected some Lochaber humour into their Auchterturra programme. ‘It's a great pleasure and, indeed, a great thrill for us to be in Fort William,' they told us. ‘This is our biggest occasion since being invited to Balmoral to do a show.' We were then regaled with an account of how the threesome had tried – in vain – to get booked in to the same hotel. ‘I'm in the Milton,' said Stephen. ‘And I'm in the Alexandra,' George told us. ‘They've put me in Invernevis,' confided the impish Buff. ‘And that explains why I was given medicine and a bed bath at six o'clock this morning!' Aye, a lot of the humour was well observed. ‘Ochone! Ochone!,' Buff declared. ‘What does that mean?' Stephen asked. To which Buff replied: ‘It's Gaelic, and nowadays you get a £20,000 grant just for saying it.'

A ‘nameless one' appeared in the Lochy Bar on Sunday afternoon, nursing a sair heid. ‘Boy, it must have been late when I left here last night,' he observed to the bar staff. ‘You weren't in here last night!' he was advised.

Bob was out on the Aonach Mor ski slopes with the big snow groomer early this month – thanks to the April snow showers. As he was wending his way onwards and upwards, there was an almighty scramble a few yards ahead of him.

Three blokes emerged from a snow hole and dived to more secure cover so as not to be caught under the machine. ‘I couldn't believe it,' Bob said later. ‘They must have spent all night out on the piste!'

I wasn't far out with my comment that the arrival of BST last weekend was more appropriately British Snow Time than British Summer Time. Aye, the gritters were out on Monday night.

A fair number of locals had a bet on ‘For William' in the Grand National. Because, of course, the name was the nearest they could get to Fort William. ‘For William' completed the course – last.

Some interesting cameos have been revived to mark the forthcoming anniversary of VE Day thanks to Lochaber Local History Society's excellent publication ‘Lochaber in Wartime'. Here are a few of them:

By April 6, 1940, locals were being warned – if you lose your gas mask it will cost you 2/6 to replace it.

Around 8am on a March morning in 1941, a German plane flew in low from the Spean Bridge direction, dropping bombs which exploded on the moorland and machine-gunning the Pilot Engine, driven by Jimmy Ness, as it crossed the Blar Mhor.

The army and special training schools were housed in the Granite House in Fort William High Street. The premises were, co-incidentally, taken over in later years by Jimmy's son Jim Ness.

David Niven was a special operations executive officer at Lochailort. He trained at Achnacarry and often helped out behind the bar at the Stage House in Glenfinnan.

The commander at Inverailort Castle, whose radio had broken down, went to the Lochailort Inn to ask how the war was going. The reply from Wilhelmina MacRae was: ‘What war? There's been none since 1745.'

No-one from Dorlin House – where naval and army personnel were stationed – ever passed the Connochie household at Glentower in Fort William's Achintore Road without bringing in chocolate, chewing gum or cigarettes to thank Dr Charles Connochie and Mrs Frances Connochie for their continuing Highland hospitality.

JL Sydie, Old Cinema, Viewforth Place, received contracts from the Army and Navy to paint and camouflage all the Nissen huts dotted around Lochaber. JL Sydie's early mode of transport was a roofless Austin 12. We of the Viewforth Gang played in it when its wartime duty had been done.

Let's have some of the usual Roamer trivia, snippets and anecdotes. Aren't our Lochaber posties wonderful? A local black Labrador certainly reckons so, having amiably tracked one of the lads on every step of the ‘Hill Run', as they used to call it, even following him all the way back down to base. This resulted in the re-addressing of one black Lab with first class delivery home in a Royal Mail van.

Aussie Betty was waiting for the bus up Lundavra. Just along the road from the crescent she was, standing in the ‘open air' section of the bus shelter – the bit where the perspex panel is missing.Betty felt something nuzzling her from behind. She whipped round sharpish, to be confronted by one and a half hundred weights of brown calf.

The new Japanese chairman of Ben Nevis Distillery's parent company, Nikka, was here last week. It was his first visit in that capacity, so the flags were flying. Side by side on the poles at the front of the premises were Saltire, Union Jack and the Japanese national flag. They were arranged so that the first one the chairman would see when he approached the distillery would be that of his own country. Unfortunately, however, instead of coming down the Inverness road from the airport, as had originally been arranged, he was chauffered up from Glasgow with the result the Rising Sun was in third position and not pole position. It's an ill wind, however. As the flags continued to flutter in the breeze next day, the distillery's auditor arrived, on holiday, having completed the West Highland Way. ‘Nice of you to put the flags out for me,' he observed to all and sundry.

Yet another European seafood exhibition with a Scottish pavilion. In Brussels this time, but without a Lochaber link. Inverness, of course, and Invergordon represented, along with Orkney, Shetland and Argyll. But Lochaber? No more, yet again.

The unstaffed station at Morar regained some of its former glory last week when it re-opened, officially, as the local newspaper office. Yes ‘West Word', the 32 page community monthly paper was informally unveiled at a ceremony in what, formerly, was the station master's office. Around 750 copies of ‘West Word' will be edited and produced in the booking office and waiting room.