Orkney Image Library

Aye Willie did it no hing in The Binks?.
Bertha wid been gea tarry way Grandads pipe reek and big Andy's home made high power fags!! Also Ikee puffan away half o the night!!. Many a hour I and others spent listing tae thir yarns owld Wullack (your Grandad) would recall to me in the odd time of his time in France during the first War, I widna swap thir yarns for a fortune,I could fill pages wae the stories told aroond the red hot stove wae the big kettle boilan for endles cups o tea always freely given tae the young and old who were aye welcome at the Binks,aye a privilage to have lived when yarnan was all the intertainment that you needed of an evening .

Yes, John, it sure did. It went to the council houses with Andy and when he died I got it.
That along with 2 of the candlestick/ bells off the dresser and the Italian lighter that stood on the mantleplace. I'm afraid they don't get polished as often as Mary would have done. They were the Binks for me and now stand proudly in my 'dresser'. Have you written any of the 'old man's' tales down. He never spoke much about it except once telling me he came home and immediately went up to the hill and burnt all his clothes and came back to the house naked to get rid of the lice. Did he say where he was because I think he volunteered in 1914 and survived the whole war.A rare thing.

My grandad Robert Grieve visited Wilson Nicholson, Willie Smith and your grandad when he came to Longhope on holiday - he was always wondering if they knew anything about his brother who was killed in WW1 and his body was never found but he is named on the memorial in Camrai.

Owld Wulluck told me of waiting at a railhead to be taken somewhere or another, he along with another Scotsman left the men in the platoon to try to kill rats using cordite in nearby shell holes, A stray shell came and exploded among the platoon and Wullie and his Scots friend were the only two men not killed or very badly injured they having gone rat hunting!! Their time was not up it would seem.