There is definite interest in this event taking place and almost 100 people have said there is a strong chance they will attend and its still 12 months away!
Personally I am quite excited by all this.
Apparently there are two people on the Scoop page who have not met for 50 years!!! and have made a date for August 2011 at the reunion as a result of re-connecting on the Scoop pages. Blimey the power of photographs, dad would have been totally blown away.
I have made a provisional booking with the Duke Of Gordon in Kingussie for the upstairs ballroom which can hold up to 150 people. It looks from the feedback I've had that there is a fair chance we can fill it.
The Duke Of Gordon has a lot of resonance with me as we stopped there when we came from Buckie to check Kingussie out when dad got the butchers job. I remember having a packet of crisps and putting a few into the concrete lions mouths outside the Duke. When we finally arrived in Kingussie to live some months later I belted over the Gynack bridge to see if my crisps were still there!! (nope gone much disappointment)
Kingsford House above the co-op butchers and bakers then became our home and very happy it was too. I got obsessed with shinty, the Spey and the amazing countryside which was so different from the east coast landscape around Buckie.
I Wandered for hours up the Gynack to the golf course and even further to the loch at the back of the course and to the Spey in the other direction of which more memories will I'm sure return, watch this space.
Jumbo.
Jumbo.
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| View toward Newtonmore over the Gynack Bridge from the front bedroom at Kingsford House. |
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| Kingussie petrol station opposite the Duke. |
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| Kingussie Festival |
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| Mairi Filshie outside the school. I distinctly remember Mairi coming into Donnie Macdonalds maths class excitedly telling me ' Jumbo your dad just took pictures of me outside!' Man I had my first ever crush on Mairi and was too much of a wimp to do anything about it, shit bugger damn, I thought I'd be young forever!!! |
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| Marcus White outside the Duke. |
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| Robbie "DOO' |
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| what a great photo!! |
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no reflection on Mairi ,as i dont know her, but you got the lovely Miss McCook, poor her !!!!!!
ReplyDeletethe reunion sounds as though it will be fantsatic,maybe better than school reunions,I would love to attend ,but for obviuos reason i cant.No doubt I will hear all about it in the run up to it and after the event.
ReplyDeletedoes anybody know the Chalmers who lived in Kingussie,not sure when,but they now live in Greenloaning near me,they said they knew dad ???
ReplyDeletewheres my other big blogs gone ??????
ReplyDeletei'm gutted, i have posted blogs on here every day, big ones at that !!!,where are they ??????
ReplyDelete1960's early ish. saw us move to Killin with the Coop butcher,dad had been a peripatetic butcher for last 12 months.So at long last after the bankruptcy and the possiblitiy of going to Canada YES we nearly went C/O P&O dad working his and his family passage as master butcher on board.Not sure what went wrong & why we didnt go, and I guess we will never find out now, unless it was dad's diabetes holding him back.Whilst we waited for a permanent posting for dad, he sent through his wages evey week to mum in Yuill Avenue along side a real Red Cross parcel,fresh butcher meat,??? sausage, mince,stewing steak.Most times it arrived the next day so mum could cook it all and sort of preserve it for the coming week,enough to feed all of our hungry faces ,I remember on two occassions in the hight of the summer (in Buckie ???? ) the parcel arrived and had turned sour and you could smell it as far away as Well Road,so it had to be buried in the garden as deep as possibly.So no meat dinners that week.
ReplyDeleteDad then got his permanent postion with the Co-Op in Killin,this is where I fisrt came accross dad's flair and ambition to be a news reporter,journalist, author or anyone or all three.I think he may have neglected some of manegerial skills at this stage to pursue his dream.
he would freelance for the PA Perthshire advertiser,The Courier (Dundee )and even the Scottish Nationals if they would print his story or use his photo.
The Hydro were just starting to build the dams in tayside and dad got in with an employee who took him into Glen Lyon to see what was going on and how the develepoments were progressing.He gained many stories from this source and of course his foray into black and white photography with his box brownie.Many were published.
After this dad took us up to Glen Lyon regularly.
Last year 2009 I went to climb the Ptarmigan Ridge at the back of Killin beside Ben Lawyers and before i did that I sat on the same dam wall as dad and I did all those years ago.
Do you know I was like a fairy on that climb, i think Jim was there in spirit.Cheers dad x
Hi Mags, great stories, all news to me, amazing. don't know where your other comments are, maybe they are under the re-union part of the blog, will check.
ReplyDeletefound my other blogs, but i have to sign in to blog spot to read them ????????
ReplyDeleteAny idea how i can copy them over ???
<Maybe I should try cut and paste ?
I'll add you as an author then your comments will appear as actual blog entries and not tacked on comments.
ReplyDeleteTo move a comment and make it into a blog just cut and paste then when successeful delete it as a comment.
ReplyDelete