As wee boys we were noisy and one fine sunny day when one of the men who lived among us was on night shift and was trying to get some sleep we were whooping it up below his window. He gave up at last and opened the window and pointed an old WW1 rifle at us and shouted, 'Who must I shoot first?' As we ran off squealing we could hear his wife admonishing him for frightening bairns. How he had retained his rifle after 1918, we never discovered but he was one of the local worthies and some of his escapades nudge their way into a book now and then. The home guard were practising creeping down the burn across the road from the houses one day when he took charge and, using us as a decoy, (you can imagine how we got into the spirit of the thing), outmaneuvered and captured the trained troops of the 'enemy' in the wood across the other side of the field. The officer's swearing was something to hear! Real Dad's Army!

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