AS I get older I fully appreciate the words of Noel Coward, who said television is for appearing on and not watching. He is quite right.

RANDO Bertoia is a man with whom you should spend some time. He is in his 90s now and has lived a full and fascinating life.

THE two bravest things I have ever done in my life, I have done here in Kuwait. In 2003 my Territorial Army unit went to war in Iraq from our camp in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert.

WHAT hit me first was the heady aroma of four ladies' perfumes in the confines of one people carrier.

MY friend calls it a "tap on the shoulder" moment. He said he felt it when his parents died within a year of each other shortly after he retired from his 30-year career in journalism.

M Y home will always be Inverness, but Glasgow is where I live. And while football is all about rivalry, happily any rivalry I encounter following my team is not about politics, or worse, religion.

MY first court, visited as an awestruck trainee reporter with The Inverness Courier, was the magnificent chamber inside the town's castle.

MY mother tells me I write about football too much and I should write about other things instead.

DO you dare to dream? Do you see in your mind's eye the white lines on the A9 heading south? Do you smell the half time pies or hear the sectarian chants?

IT is one of those editions of the Inverness Courier I will keep. Like the one which carried the first story I wrote in the paper as a trainee reporter in 1986, like the one which contained an obituary of Miss Barron, the woman who gave me that job.

IT has long been my policy not to meet those I idolise. People like Alan Rickman, Kenny Dalglish and Nick Faldo turned out to be so underwhelming, they spoiled the whole famous thing for me.

IF there is such a thing as a ship spotter, they should come to the bustling port of Cochin on the south-west coast of India.

THE greatest pain I ever felt was first thing on a cold Monday morning on the playing fields of Inverness High School.

IT tends to make my toes curl if you mention 1966. I am sure that if Scotland ever won the world cup, I would bore longest and hardest. But I think the chances of that happening are remote. Instead we listen to the English.

WE were not friends, but we met many times. Whenever I think of him now I am chilled. When I heard the other day that he had died, I was saddened because he was not an old man. But many will not mourn his passing, believing he betrayed his calling.

YEARS of studying at the university of life has told me that these men weren't bad, not by today's standards.

FOOTBALLERS dislike the multiball system - even though they're professional athletes and fit as the proverbial fiddles. It was introduced by FIFA, the game's governing body, to speed things up, increase the action and make the game faster and more attractive to watch.

TWO killers, two very different motives, victims murdered simply for being what they were, and sentences wholly inappropriate for the crimes committed.

AFTER 25 years in this business you develop a telephone manner, a people manner and most importantly of all a doorstep manner.

MY father knew about these things. A good Labour man, he warned from day one that services would suffer and prices would rise, when public services were privatised.

YOU have to blame someone and I blame my mate Dougie. He was a tip-top Celtic supporter and he dragged me to Parkhead one night 25 years ago.

MAYBE I am unusual, abnormal even. The things that hurt me, get under my skin, are not the things you might think of straight away.

THE fact that the athlete concerned earns thousands of pounds a week probably makes all the difference in the world.

WHERE were you? There have been few JFK moments in my lifetime but at teatime on 21st December, 1988, I was at Farraline Park and had just put my girlfriend on a bus to Aberdeen.

THE television programmes were only a few minutes apart and although they were totally different, they said so much and were in a way mutually complimentary.

IT was everything that was good and bad about being a TV reporter.

HE (or she) usually did not even have a name, far less a Facebook page.

"YOU'RE not from round here, are you?" said the cop in that dry New York way.

HER face was wan, her hair tousled, her skin filthy. Her eyes were empty, her walk aimless. She clutched a bundle to her breast, as she passed I saw it was her dead baby. This was a village in Kosovo, 10 years ago today.

IT could not last. We had no God-given right to be in the SPL. We rode our luck down the years and results went our way more often than not.

THE field was flat, as Flanders is. The sun split the sky and I could feel my forehead beginning to burn. But the rain had been torrential over the two days before my visit to Fromelles, and the clay-laden soil still held much of the moisture.

THE noise it made was odd, but there was something strangely comforting about it. I wouldn't say it was reminiscent of whales calling or womb music, but I immediately felt at home when I heard it.

"WHAT'S black and white and eats like a horse?" I asked.

THERE are many things I am not good at. Because I have none of my own, ageing children is a failing of mine. I am not very good at guessing people's heights either, but I would say he was nearly seven feet tall.

IT is something I seldom do but this time I am glad I did. I do not make many promises to myself and I rarely, if ever, break them. But two chums were baying at me and with a day off on the morrow to recover, I bought tickets for the recent Rangers v Caley Thistle match at Ibrox.

IT was Oscar Wilde who said that if you are tired of London, you are tired of life. I always get tired in London but never tired of it.

IT was six years to the day since I had seen her. She was a BBC correspondent, I was an army officer although admittedly a part-time one.

ONE exhibition centre, two halls, two maxims. In one, Pete Waterman was exhorting us to believe that a train is for life, in the other I was remembering that marriage is not a word, it is a sentence.

CIUDAD Juarez is like border towns the world over — dirty, edgy and fascinating. It is a stone's throw across the Rio Grande from El Paso, the west Texas town made famous in the Marty Robbins song.

ONE wonders what the bard would have made of a notepad, a computer smaller than a laptop, but with a 120 gig hard drive and more than a thousand megs of memory. It also has wifi access and a built in camera. I am writing this on one, just a few metres away from his house and mausoleum in Dumfries.

ON the freeway from the Kennedy Space Centre to Florida's gulf coast, you skirt the city of Orlando. You also pass a piece of real estate, the sign for which sent a shiver down my spine as I whizzed past the other day. It is called Sanford airport.

FROM the rear, at a range of 200 metres, it did not look real. It was grey, almost black, and did not move a muscle. Its long tail stretched out towards me, its head low in the water. The coach screeched to a stop and the driver screamed into his microphone.

YOU step out in Miami Beach and you step back in time to a time which was then forward in time. When they were designed and built in the 1920s and 1930s, the art deco hotels which line the front of South Beach were thought to represent the 21st century.

DO you change personality when you change clothing? Do you become somebody else at the weekend?

HIS first kiss, his first car, his first goal — these are things that a man remembers very clearly.

TWENTY years ago today I sat down at what was then a state of the art computer and wrote a preview of the weekend's Scottish Cup ties.

THE only thing worse than the mixture of sport and religion is the mixture of sport and politics — and we should not be so naïve as to believe that all three are not regular bedfellows.

MAYBE it's because I'm not a father. Maybe if I was a father I would understand. I am told by those who have little darlings of their own that you feel no emotion quite like being a parent.

THERE can only be one person on this earth who does not think Peter Tobin is guilty of every crime he has ever been accused of and that of course is Peter Tobin himself.

THE word "sukeo" was everywhere. It struck a chord in the back of my mind because it had been a while since I had encountered it. "Secret, UK Eyes Only," would be the watchword of the exercise. It was on computer screens, it was on documents and it was on maps.

THE colours are the important thing at the Houses of Parliament — red carpets and accoutrements indicate the House of Lords, green the Commons. "Red Lords, green Commons," I repeated to myself as I entered the first space to assault the senses — Westminster Hall. It was all I could do to stop my jaw dropping open.

DEAD pigeons are the favourite. That was the answer to the first question I asked upon entering Barlinnie jail in Glasgow. The question was a simple one, "How do the majority of drugs get into jail?"

DO you ever find yourself shouting "But why?" at the radio or television? The reporter has just finished his or her piece, all the facts and figures are there, the killer payoff line has been delivered and the bulletin moves on to sport, travel and weather.

NO journalist should turn down a story, even one he or she would rather avoid like the plague.

THE black poloneck was on, the Omega watch was strapped to my wrist, the recipe for a vodka martini was in my pocket.

MY team travels to Glasgow tomorrow to play Rangers. Ordinarily this would herald a day out of sizeable proportion. It would begin with lunch, usually some hearty soup and crusty bread, then a bus, train, taxi or walk to the ground, or a combination of them all.

SHE has been dulled grey after years under the water. The result is that you have to look very closely to find her on the surface.

MY mother's interest in football extends to the question: "So what team is the man wearing black playing for?" But she would have scored it.

IT closed in 1963, but even in its current state it should be filled to capacity with Scots.  Being an island you have to get a boat (or helicopter) to Alcatraz. It lies in San Francisco bay and the proud boast of the people who ran it is that it was escape-proof.

AT one table Winston Churchill, John Paul Getty and Howard Hughes discussed politics and economics; at another Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh discussed aviation.

AS the waitress plopped my cappuccino down on the table I said, pleasantly: "I'm writing a book about Inverness." She said nothing but gave me a kind of half smile in response. I'm sure it was a line she heard every day, given that we were in Hollywood.

THE last time I saw him he had his fingers in my mouth.

THE strongest, most expensive drug I have ever taken was purchased quite legally over the counter and gave me a high for about an hour.

THERE are corners of many foreign fields that are forever England. This is not the time or place to raise the "by 'England' in his poem 'The Soldier' Rupert Brooke really meant Britain" argument. But while we are here, a GB Olympic football team would be a disaster. UEFA and FIFA might follow suit and that would mean the end of the Scotland team. Over my dead body etc.

AUGUST is the coolest time of the year in Ghana. And while I am happy to confirm this, it is still way too hot for me.

MMA ache. Ye fre me Michael. Me fri enyiresi kyre kyre wo Ghana. Wote borofo ana? Me madanfo.

THE coast approached under the port wing and I licked my lips in anticipation.

THE football season starts tomorrow and, for the first time in my life, I am not looking forward to it.

THE roundabout signified the start of another world, it was a modern day urban Rubicon, once across there was no going back.

IS my heart alone in sinking when a stag or hen night is seen? Does yours sink too? Is your sensation, like mine, a million times worse when it is seen at an airport and ten million times worse when witnessed actually on the plane? The pink, fur-trimmed cowboy hat is the giveaway sign, as is the tee-shirt with the wearer's name on the front. This is usually backed up with inane cackling and the inevitable beeline for the bar.

IT was not much of a gang, just the four of us, blood brothers then and blood brothers now. The blood came from scraped playground knees, or unceremonious and unplanned departures from bicycles, trees and walls — nothing more sinister than that.

WRITER Jack Kerouac would have approved of the road trip I embarked upon 15 years ago today. Indeed the experience remains with me even now.

HOW often do you hear it? And it is usually at times like this, when young men kill other young men in significant numbers, that you hear it most. It is uttered by people who clearly do not know much about the military. They ask, "Why doesn't the army take them?"

BERN has returned to its usual quiet self. The Dutch hordes have left, turfed out of Euro 2008 by the Russians, who obviously care nothing for reputations or bookmakers.

FANZONES — a relatively new phenomenon. They are public places where supporters without tickets gather to watch football games on big screens. I have been fortunate down the years to see the real thing in the stadium. The fanzone is something I have only come across recently, in a professional capacity.

AM I alone in remembering childhood as glorious? And I don't just mean memories of paddling in the pool at Bellfield Park, trying to catch tadpoles in the Muirtown basin or finding a decent Pheasant feather at the aviary beside Craig Dunain.

INVERNESS is lucky. It only gets a couple of murders a year. Here in Glasgow it is a news story in itself if there are not two murders per weekend. In the Highland capital, the social networks are such that it is usually fairly obvious who is responsible. This is not the case in Glasgow, a big city with a large transient population and much criminality.

"PLEASE hold the bannister," said my hostess as we climbed the stairs. Sure enough, beside the bannister was a sign urging me to hold the bannister.

THE bottle came from nowhere. Had I been the intended target, I might have congratulated the thrower on his aim. However, it had been hurled above 20,000 people watching a massive TV screen and crashed off my head instead. Forget congratulations, that Rangers fan and his drunken, riotous, bigoted colleagues have my unqualified contempt.

SEVILLE and Manchester, places with not very much in common but names which will crop up in pub quizzes for evermore. Their connection? Both were venues for Scottish clubs playing in the final of the UEFA Cup. This despatch comes to you from the northern English industrial heartland, where I have been covering the fans' stories as Rangers' remarkable European campaign came to an end.

IT was like the first day at school. In fact, it was worse than that. It was like joining a new school half way through the second term.

THEE only thinge that was a bitt offputting was the smell off burning eyes.

"HERE mate," came the voice. I should point out that in the local patois, this means: "Excuse me sir." She was all of eight years-old and sported her pyjamas and slippers. The scene was London Road, not far from Celtic Park, at around 5pm one weekday.

GLASGOW is that kind of town. Secreted in my desk is a green and blue tie. Depending on the story I am given to cover, it is expedient to dress accordingly.

IT is a football ground but it has meaning for me other than the beautiful game. Gayfield Park in Arbroath, home to the local team, the so called "Red Lichties", was the place where my father did his basic training in the RAF during the war.

YOU feel like a travelling salesman sometimes, being a reporter. You knock on so many doors and try to persuade someone you have never met before to do something they do not want to. The salesman exhorts his potential client to buy some furniture polish, I try to get total strangers to appear on television and tell the world their most intimate secrets.

COLE Porter most probably never visited Inverness but, had he done so, he might have penned a song differently.

THE phone call from my contact came late at night. Its content was cryptic. "Maryhill Police station, 5am tomorrow, be there."

SOME of us are morning people, others are creatures of the night. Some prefer tea to coffee, others red to white. Some don’t like using the telephone.

IT was Horatio Nelson who said "You should hate a Frenchman like you hate the Devil". This was uttered in a previous world of course, where England's naval hero was locked in mortal combat with Napolean over the minor matter of world dominance.

THEY are two places in England I've been through hundreds of times on trains, but have never had any cause to visit. Last week I went to each, unexpectedly — and within days of each other.

TODAY is a momentous day in British broadcasting. It was on 22nd February, 1993 that I returned to Scotland from Switzerland and began working for Scottish Television in Glasgow.

MY pistol was stripped, cleaned and reassembled. My rifle similarly prepared. My body armour was in position, its ceramic plates covering my heart front and back and my helmet was strapped to my webbing.

THEY are unlikely bedfellows, but Noel Coward and Gordon Strachan have got me thinking.

IT sounds pretentious, but I am trying to write another book. The thing is, I just cannot find the time.

MY answer explored the toileting habits of bears in woods.

SATURDAY'S Scottish Cup defeat at Hibs is best forgotten as quickly as possible. And while those of an ICT persuasion look forwards to the rest of the season, the date and visit to Edinburgh sparked a fond memory for me.

CHRISTMAS in Inverness is a present itself. Indeed any time spent there is always value added. The air is cleaner, the beer colder and the welcome warmer.

LET me see now. Where are we? Oh yes. The Scottish national football team manager leaves the job because he misses the day-to-day running of a club and dealing with the players.

HAVE you heard the saying "build a bridge and get over it?" The Christmas present to the nation this year is just that, a bridge. But what it will not help me get over is the cost, the statement it makes and the damage it will do to the environment.

MILITARY modellers understand the difference. Seldom do machines, just off the production line, resemble what they look like doing the things they are designed for. It takes a trained eye.

TWO pictures of boxers — Joe Calzhage and Ricky Hatton — caught my eye this week. The former was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year, the latter was defeated in a title fight in Las Vegas and spent more time spreadeagled on the canvas than he would have liked.

INVENTIVE people, Scottish soldiers. They created an adjective for women they encountered while patrolling on the streets of Bosnia and Kosovo.

TWO e-mails got me an interview with him, just two. And because it all happened so quickly, the e-mails only two days before the meeting, I hadn't really pondered the content of our discussion. I was supposed to be on holiday after all.

IT was one of those crazy days, fast moving, exciting, the focus of the whole country. My phone was never away from my ear. For me that day was about two men. The first appeared at court in Linlithgow charged with the murder of a 15-year-old schoolgirl.

SOME of them looked very shaky. Supported by walking sticks they shuffled into the Glasgow Hilton's grand ballroom. Others still looked sprightly enough to take the field on Saturday. One of them was a woman — unbelievably a Scot who won the world cup. They were all new inductees to the Scottish football hall of fame and I was fortunate enough to be a guest at the dinner this week, which saw them join that elite band.

HURRICANE Noel has spoiled my moment of homage. Since the day in the early 1970s when my parents took me on an aeroplane for the very first time, I have been fascinated by heavier than air flight.

TODAY my travels have taken me again to the deep south of the USA. It is early November and yesterday's temperature here in Wilmington, North Carolina, was 85 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to have the air conditioning on in the car.

OCTOBER — what a month for the sports fan and it is not even over yet. And for those who are not sports fans, beware — November looks to be even better.

"WHERE'S your annual camp this year?" many have asked lately.

WHEN someone invites you to a birthday lunch at the Savoy Grill, you'd better have a good excuse not to go.

SCOTLAND are in the quarter finals of the World Cup. Yes I know, that sounds really unusual doesn't it. So I'll say it again. Scotland are in the quarter finals of the World Cup.

COMMONSENSE is not so common and joined up thinking is not always joined up. That is why it is the little touches, which are simple yet borne from cutting edge mental processes, that make me smile.

FEW things get my sap rising more than a good trial. The buzz in the few seconds between the jury coming into the court after their deliberations, the declaration that a foreman has been elected and the announcement of the fate of the accused, can't be described.

APART from a desert, it has pretty well everything. From high mountains in the south, through rolling green forests split with rivers and watched over by castles, to a coast on a mighty ocean.

HOW would you define sport? Something that gets your blood pressure up watching or playing? Something that helps you relax? Something involving running, kicking or shooting?

WHEN the phone rings in the middle of the night, it is seldom good news.

HERE we go again. The revolving door down Caledonian Stadium way is spinning once more.

THE morning after I retire I look forward to switching on the radio and tuning into a music station instead of the news. I haven't listened to music radio for 20 years and could not tell you who is top of the pops. The last time I paid attention to the hit parade, REO Speedwagon were in it because of the number of 45s they sold.

I BLAME the media myself. And before you start hollering "Hello kettle, this is pot, you're black", let me tell you I am the first person to spot deficiencies in the normally strict moral code of Her Majesty's press corps.

THE SPL trophy will look good on the Caledonian Stadium sideboard next summer. This season will be our season, I am sure of it.

HANDS up all those who have broken the law. Come on. Be honest. Yes, we have all snaffled stationery from the office have we not? Gone over the speed limit or been economical with la verite come insurance claim time. Feel better for getting that off your chest?

THE Swiss capital Bern, where I lived for a time in the 1990s, is a charming city. It has an old town and a glacier melt water river meanders through it.

WE are human beings. We have routines. It comes with the territory. We like to drink in the same pubs, eat in the same restaurants, holiday in the same places.

"HOW are you spelling that," I asked the man outside the village shop, a hefty bundle of Sunday newspapers under his arm.

AT first it sounded like an April Fool, either very late or very early. The radio news had me rummaging in the wardrobe where my Highland Dress is kept to answer the thorny question — just what is my sporran made of?

WHAT'S in a name? Clearly not much. Malcolm MacDonald was not a Scot, sadly neither is Lewis Hamilton, but Gabriel Agbonlahor might well be.

THE Army has a colloquial term for trade unionists, social workers, environmentalists and peace campaigners — it labels them "tree-huggers."

THEY were the strangest directions I've ever been given, but then Kuwait is the strangest place I've ever driven in.

I COULD smell them before I could see them and it was their unusual odour which led me to them bundled together in a black bin liner at the bottom of the wardrobe in the spare room.

MARRIAGE is not a word, it is a sentence. As a confirmed bachelor, this is my mantra.

IF you go into a pub, restaurant or hotel in Inverness, the chances are you will be served by someone from Poland.

SOMETIMES I'm as far off the information superhighway as it's possible to get. Podcasts are Greek to me, which is why I enjoy my copy of the Inverness Courier. But last week I nearly choked at one headline in my favourite blatt.

IT would be nice to live there but spending more than a few days in Monte Carlo results in spending more than a few pounds.

“STOP the world, I want to get off.” How often have you said that?

IT'S one of few luxuries I permit myself. A fish supper, two tins of beer and an hour and a half flaked out on the sofa watching the Champions League. Cutlery is unnecessary and empty tins can roll about the floor unmolested until full time.

TWENTY five years ago a task force was ploughing its way towards the Falkland Islands. Its sailors, soldiers and airmen, most of whom were hard pushed to point to the islands on a map, believed that the politicians and diplomats would get round the table and sort it out before they got there. Things of course did not work out that way.

IT was the kind of place you need to be a soldier to find. Blink and you would miss the road end and if that happened at night, you'd be snookered. Luckily I found it in daylight and once inside, I had no desire to leave.

THERE is still a week to go before the deadline for nominations for the Scottish elections on 3rd May.

IT was Twelfth Night, the time when the festive period is officially over and the decorations must come down or a plague of locusts descends upon you.

LET me see. The equestrian events at Drumnadrochit, track and field at the Bught, with tennis at Bellfield Park and Squash on Bishop’s Road.

BECAUSE they had lived through a world war, my parents knew a moment of history when they saw one.

VETERANS of these events say you can tell by the seating plan how well or badly you have done.

EDINBURGH Castle is one of those places you see thousands of times but rarely enter.

“THIS call originates from HM Prison Porterfield. If you do not wish to accept it, please hang up now.”

A SWISS bank sounds really glamourous, but in reality it is much the same as a Scottish one. There are no secret passwords (except your PIN) no briefcases chained to wrists and no third world dictators shuffling around oak panelled offices with arms full of bullion.

YOU know you are in Switzerland when the rail fare from the airport to your destination costs more than your flight. Another giveaway was snow falling from a leaden sky as my train rolled out of Geneva.

POSSIBLY because my family was full of them, and because they were more interesting to talk to, I always preferred to be in the company of older people than younger.

IT was one of those dreadful places where they try to punt you all kinds and measures of coffee, hot and cold. As ever I do inside Costa Coffee, Starbucks or Bean Scene, I drew myself up to my full height and ordered a cup of tea.

WE have not had the worst of the winter weather yet but already Scotland has ground to a halt several times. Pre-Christmas storms brought flooding and power cuts and as usual our transport infrastructure imploded at the first sign of trouble.

HAVING produced such footballing luminaries as Kevin MacDonald and Graham Bennett, Inverness High School was going to have to be pretty short of players before ever I got picked for the team.

JACK McConnell’s Christmas present to the people of Scotland should have been an announcement that the Executive was building a massive new super prison.

WHAT do you buy for the man who has everything? “Penicillin” is my usual retort.

HANGING high above Friedrichstrasse in Berlin, at the place where Checkpoint Charlie once stood, is a large photograph of an American soldier.

THE rooms were very similar — dark and dingy with long conference tables near the door. They were in buildings only a few miles apart and decisions were taken at these tables which made history.

IT may well be the land of the free but, as I left the USA to return to Scotland, there were uncharacteristic rumblings about banning things. When I got home, the argument was in full swing.

WHEN people ask me what I studied at university, I now tell them something of a white lie. I used to say American history, but I got so fed up with them asking what I did in the afternoons, I now just say history.

“THE emphasis is on the ‘scat’ not the ‘pis’,” she said earnestly. My lavatory humour kicked in. “Like ‘scatological’ you mean?” I responded.

GRANTHAM in Lincolnshire is famous for nothing more than being the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher. It will always have a special place in my memory though, because it was there I prepared to go to war in 2003.

"THANK you for calling the leisure centre, we're very grateful you've chosen us as part of your healthy lifestyle regime.

I BLAME the plywood castle, the pipe bands and the sea cadets for my addiction. Every July as a child I would join the queue, brave the all too frequent rain, and sit inside the Northern Meeting Park, awed by the tattoo.

FOR the religious types among you, please forgive my irreverence. But the older I get, the more I experience, the farther I travel, the more I realise that God is clearly a Scotsman.

COVERING a murder trial at the High Court in Edinburgh has been an eye-opener and I'm not just talking about the evidence.

IT was what journalists call a good news day. Except there wasn’t much good news about, just plenty of good stories.

TO my knowledge, Saddam Hussein is the only man on earth who has woken up in the morning and done his damnedest to kill me. In fact he tried to do it several times. Osama Bin Laden, I have no doubt, would like to have a go. But then he'd probably like to kill all of us.

THE last time I travelled on Army business, they sent me to Kingston, Ontario. At the weekend they sent me to Kingston, Surrey. I have been scouring the atlas over the past few days because I am sure there must be a Kingston, California, a Kingston, Queensland or a Kingston, North Island where I might expect to go. But knowing my luck, and the brutal sense of humour possessed by Army posting staff, I'll probably be sent to Kingston on Spey.

AFTER thoroughly unpleasant experiences during encounters with actor Alan Rickman, golfers Nick Faldo and Colin Montgomerie and countless footballers, managers and chairmen, I have made it a policy never to go out of my way to meet anyone I admire.

THERE are many places on this earth I would not want to be. If I ever get off the train by mistake at a place called Holby, then I will wait for the next one without leaving the station, for fear of some ghastly mishap which requires my treatment in the local hospital.

THE names Marian Majewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski don't exactly trip off the tongue. But if it wasn't for these Polish immigrants, we'd all be speaking German today. They were scientists who fled their homeland to find a new life in Britain. Because of their genius, they worked at Bletchley Park during World War II, cracking the enigma code used by the Germans.

YOU don't have to tell me smoking is bad for your health. I was once nearly killed while popping out for a cigarette - and I wasn't even the one smoking it.

THE scene was Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport and I was rushing back to Scotland after an emotional week in Normandy covering the 60th anniversary of D-Day. I was in a hurry and somehow managed to take as a carry-on a small rucksack I'd meant to check in.

FORGIVE me if I harp back to the World Cup, but given the events of the past couple of weeks it is germane to my point.

YEARS ago, long before media studies degrees were even thought of, Inverness Technical College, as it was then, held an annual careers convention. The gymnasium above the refectory was laid out with dozens of stands where people would try to entice schoolboys like me into professions ranging from the police to fish farming.

YEARS ago I vowed to myself that if I ever went into the Gellions and the barman said: "The usual?" I'd leave and never go back. That would be a sign that I'd gone too far down a certain road.

HER Majesty has decreed that if I am to be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, I have to attend Staff College to get the right tick in the box.

THERE is only really one place to watch a World Cup final and that is in the stadium where it is taking place. A good second however, is the officers’ mess of the Canadian Land Forces Command and Staff College in Kingston, Ontario, where I have been sent on a course by the Army.

THE Battle of Waterloo may well have been planned on the playing fields of Eton but it was on the playing fields of Inverness High School where my chums and I re-enacted many World Cup battles. Favourite was Archie Gemmill's cracker against Holland in 1978. And it was in the same comfy Inverness living room where I watched that goal, nearly 30 years ago, that I witnessed the latest World Cup drama unfold.

IF, God forbid, RAF Kinloss ever shuts down, all may not be lost for the local economy.

FOLK music not being my thing, the Haugh Bar in Inverness was never a regular haunt. And it was less likely to be among my preferred hostelries when, some years ago, the management announced that English drinkers would not be welcome there. A proud, patriotic Scot I may be - a racist bigot I am not.

IT’S one of the seven deadly sins but hopefully it didn’t show on my face. Through gritted teeth I wished them luck and waved them on their way.

THE dream is a pleasant one but sadly all too infrequent.

FOR most people the grand staircase at the main entrance of Hampden Park is more frequently used as a meeting point than a means of getting inside.