In Profile – Bob MacIntosh

All his life Bob Macintosh has been a team player -- from the Cameron Highlanders and the Normandy Veterans' Association, through Inverness Caley football club and a marriage of 57 years, to Old High St Stephen's and more than 20 years as an elder. "Basically," he says, "I like to help."

It's a philosophy that early shaped his life. Born at 3 Glebe Street, Bob (87) attended Queen Street Church with his railway guard father and his mother and was a member there of the Lifeboys and the 7th Boys' Brigade. He was serving his time as a painter with Simon Fraser in the old Washington Court, off Eastgate when war broke out and his five year apprenticeship was put on hold.
He was a member of 4th Camerons (TA) and was called up in the first week of the war, stationed first in Island Bank Road and then at Tain as part of the 51st Highland Division allocated guard duties in the Highlands and Islands.

Bob's war got intensely personal when the 5th Camerons were posted to North Africa and took part in the battle of El Alamein and the subsequent invasion of Sicily. "So many joined the Camerons they were able to have two battalions," he recalled. "The 4th Battalion went to France where they were captured with the rest of the Highland Division at St Valery. I was in the 5th and after North Africa we came home to prepare for the invasion." Bob landed in Normandy on D-Day+1. He recalled: "It was pretty dodgy for a while". Bob finished the war in north east Germany, luckily with only a slight flesh wound. "In all it was two years before I got home."

He went to work with Tulloch the painters in Church Street to finish his apprentice and thus qualify for journeyman's wages. It was as a fully fledged tradesman that he met a pretty young dressmaker named Margaret Chisholm at a dance in the Caledonian Hotel ballroom and they wed in the Old High in 1950. Margaret's family – her father Jock Chisholm was a clerk of works with the council – had been brought up in the Old High and Bob and his wife have been there ever since with Bob an elder ordained in 1984. The couple, who live at 21 St Fergus Drive, Dalneigh, have a daughter Roberta, a teacher in the city.

Bob is a member of the Normandy Veterans' Association (Highland Branch) and was for many years a standard bearer at the Armistice Day parades. He doubled as beadle at the Old High when the official beadle was unavailable. "It was just to help out, when it was all hands to the pump" he smiled, and he put his master painter's skills to good use when he led and supervised painting work in the church.

Bob, playing at left half, also helped Caley win the Qualifying Cup for the first time in, he thinks, about 1947. He played for them for 10 years. It was not his first foray into the field of athletic endeavour. While a youngster in Glebe Street, he lived next door to Rodwell Clyne, uncle of the Rev Douglas, and was one of those who joined a small boxing club he formed.

Looking back, he believes the discipline, hard work and comradeship he has experienced have contributed to a life in which service to others has become second nature. "It was the way we were brought up," he said, "it never did me any harm, it did me a world of good."

Footnote – Bob says he can't remember how he got his nickname "Porridge." Answers on a postcard, please.