60th celebrations

We had a great evening when we finally got round to the celebration of both Jack's and Colin's 60th birthdays. We had 14 show up at DATA for the match, but this included CK who could only manage the ceremonial kick off.

Dave presented the replica strips to the boys - CK's was, of course, Thistle's 1971 shirt when their team of young boys hammered Celtic 4-1 in the League Cup final. I had suggested to Dave that he should try and get an Oban Camanachd shinty strip for Jack, but this was perhaps just a bit too oblique, even for TOFFS, providers of strips through the ages, and Dave eventually settled for another Scotland strip - not a rugby one as we got for his 50th, but a football one.

The match was scoreless for almost half an hour, but the old boys, who outnumbered the youngsters, then lost 3 quick goals, but superior fitness and stamina told in the end and the result was reversed to finish 5-3 in favour of the elder "veterans" - use of this word was relevant 20 years ago, but perhaps the time has come to re-name the group to Banchory Venerables Football Group?

Apologies about the poor quality of the team photo above - it was a lovely evening and the sun apparently played tricks with the auto settings and no amount of subsequent software manipulation could fix it.

The Stag was first port of call but the Old Speckled Hen ran out and we moved on to the Douglas for Nimbus and Peter's Well before heading off to the Derbar. The Douglas had the Wii set up and some of us had fun trying out the golf - perhaps an idea for a future Friday night?

Andy Marshall had organised a sweep for the Grand National and we all took 3 horses - then it was back to the Douglas for more ale with one or two lightweights starting to slope off home.