Angus Peter Campbell

I once played football at Hampden Park. At centre-forward, in those golden days when teams boasted that position as well as inside-forwards and half-backs. It was the big Scottish Cup proper and I was playing for Edinburgh University. We’d just won the East of Scotland League and qualified for the national trophy and were drawn against Queen's Park at Hampden. We were nearly as good as them, though nearly is never good enough. We lost 1-0, to a penalty towards the end of the game.

ONCE upon a time, I was a television personality, famous in the streets of Mintlaw, in the glory days when Grampian TV was seen in every household between the Silvery Tay and Stornoway, before all these other fancy channels started getting in the way.

IT’S a terrible shame that children in Glasgow will be prevented from entering Gaelic-medium education after the summer because there’s no room for them in the two Gaelic schools in the city. For we need every child we can get if the language is to grow and survive.

ONE of my earliest memories is lying in bed as a child listening to the wind howling through the hut where we lived. On quiet days it whistled, and the fun was in making harmonies with it, but when a proper nor-wester blew in your only option was to coorie in and believe that though the giant might huff and puff, the house would not be blown in. After all, my father was a joiner and the house would therefore stand forever. Which it does, in the magic of time.

NOLLAIG is the Gaelic for Christmas, but before anyone starts complaining that's now over and done with for another year, it's not. For Nollaig covers the week-long period from Christmas until New Year's Day. Christmas Day itself was known as Nollaig Mhòr (Big Christmas) and New Year's Day as Nollaig Bheag (Little Christmas).

I’ve known some great nicknames: a boy in school whose fragrance was not Chanel No 5 was known as Kipper, while a Classics teacher we once heard making an extra-curricular Roman noise was immediately called Fartacus.

IT'S a bit like Chelsea facing relegation, minus the millionaires and the fuss. I’m talking about the legendary Kingussie shinty team who will shortly face a play-off against Kilmallie in a last-ditch effort to save themselves from exiting the Premiership for the first time ever.

I’ve been thinking about Elvis, ever since I passed a house in Oban late at night last week during the Mod and heard the sound of Blue Suede Shoes drifting through the open window. Why, after all, should I have expected Calum Kennedy?

The Royal National Mod will sign off on Friday evening in Oban, signalling the start of eight days – and nights – of quiet, sober Gaelic reflection in that bonny town. In between will also be some fierce competitive singing and a raucous cèilidh or two, of course.

Some years ago I looked in the mirror and found my late father staring back at me. Since then, I’ve increasingly enjoyed his company and take counsel from him daily as I shave, hopefully becoming wiser as well as older in the process.