Orkney Image Library

Many a good night spent there.
Jimmy Kirkness the policeman checking that nobody got in after a certain time, we just watched for him and got in before or after he went away.
Do you remember Stewart or John the night that one of the group from Longhope had a VAT69 half bottle on them and got told "that wasn't bought here and if it happened again we would be banned?"
My quickstep partner on a few occasions "the peedie joiner" now he was some Victor Silvestor ;-)

I am sure allan besant and john budge had many good nights there

Beryl

I'm sure I saw the "peedie joiner" recently in Brora ......Is that possible?

i think the peedie joiner died quite a while ago. If he was Bernadette Garrioch's brother that is. But I think it was somewhere in that area he went to.

Ian was joiner at Lyness for a while, he got a posting to gibralter. Last I heard o him he was at Fort Augustus. He was a joiner but he should have been a mechanic cause he was one o the best willie fixit's I ever met, able to turn his hand to almost anything. Like Willie says its a peedie while now since I heard that he had passed away.

A fact confirmed tonight by his niece.

The peedie joiner's name was Ian Allured, he moved from Lyness to Gibraltar, I never heard of him since.

Netty and Vic Baikie had a great selection of records that kept the Saturday night dances going and Davy Spence made a grand job as a DJ after Vic passed away. The live band was even better but Eric giving the drums laldy into the early hours of Sunday could be a snag some times!
Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue", Ricky Nelson's "Hello Mary Lou" - wonder what came of the Baikie's great collection? When I hear them old songs I always think back to the good times at the Club.

Whan night Plum wiz being a pest so the door man, I think it was Jock Barnett, put him out only to find him back in, and Jock could not figure out how he kept reapearing. We could see Plum was getting ever dirtier as he was climbing in through the coal bunker and up through the boiler room each time he was ejected.
Jock never would have made a detective!!

Oh happy days indeed.

It was great what a free dram would do for one or two of the doormen, maybe it affected the sight or mind (or both). I noticed the postman always arrived early.

Somebody who we will leave nameless was being refused entry one saturday night when old Ned Olsen was doorman, and pushed old Ned's head through the plasterboard quite a surprise for the guy in the gents to have a head appear through the wall beside him.... the tales of the club could go on and on.. them were the days......

That sign on the end of the club was the work of the late Harry Berry and most sign writing on Hoy was done by Harry for as long as I remember. There are still some boats name boards around that was his work. Now Harry was a truly a Remarkable Man!

Stewart, you mention the postman, he was also a remarkable man, but in other ways. Danny seemed to defy gravity- I never saw anyone who could sleep on their feet holding a pint and a dram at an angle of 45 degrees for hours on end. Danny did enjoy a night at the club!!

If ever there was a bit of a fight Vic would say "plenty of room for that boys out on the football pitch" he was such a tall man that one word from him was enough anyway.

The xxxxxx xxxxxxx wife came into the club at the end of the dance one night, we were all sitting about waiting to go home when she threw this brown paper bag in the air from one end of the room to the other and a pair of panties fell out. "Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned" There was just complete silence for a minute or two.
As you say John happy days and many a good laugh.

I mind taking part of the club down wae Jimmy & Billy Swanson. Jimmy still has a fine big shed at the top of his garden built out of some of the sections. I think Billy Learmonth bought part of the club also.

I wonder who many folk me age remember sitting outside the club in cars on a Saturday night, being fed on Pepsi and crisps to keep us quiet.

Happy memories, of holidays at the Rafters lyness, sat night a the club, i think we played bingo, had a dance, still very young, not outside with pepsi and crisps, you must have still been in nappys Keith?

My mother Emma Laird never missed the club, she loved to dance, it was her only world. My father was the boiler man but managed to have a few. Bobby Thomson used to baby sit my brother and I. He was my fathers best friend. I remember the crisps and lemonade very well on a long summers night in Lyness. Happy long lasting memories.