Fore, Jimmy!

Mom was playing golf on the front lawn of Granny Bland’s home in Stuart Street. Her Dad Frank had laid out a course and Annie, Frank, cousin Leslie and her youngest son Michael joined in, Michael only about 4yrs old. As they were playing, James Farquhar Esq walked past, raised his hat and said in his broad Scots accent, straight from Orkney Archipelago, “Good Morning Frank!” Frank replied, “Good morning Jimmy.”

Raising his club lil Michael called out, “Good morning Jimmy!”

Mom and Leslie packed up laughing. That just wasn’t done, you know, back then, says Mom chuckling now, eighty years later. For a little boy to call a gentleman by his nickname!

~~oo0oo~~

Orkney is 10 miles colder than Wick in Caithness, where our great-grandad Stewart Bain came from. It’s off the Scottish mainland and consists of seventy little islands. So it should be called Orkney Islands, or Orkney Archipelago, but no, the Orkney ous call it Orkney and they call the biggest of those tiny islands “the Mainland.”