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.