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The following summer (1978) the Inverness gang of 3 persuaded me and Andy West to join, and we attended our first event at Smithton, near Inverness. Here we met other wierd and wonderful characters, Calumn and Ruth (the pyromaniac) Davidson (were they married at that time, I can't recall?), Donald ('Butty', but you didn't dare call him that to his face!) Young, Ian Fraser, Mongo James, and many others that I can't remember, about 15 in all. Pete, Fred and Pete were also there. This was the village gala and we put on a small skirmish. I remember that Mongo James and I put together a small sword play cameo (rather he did and I followed along), that involved a bit of swordplay, a throw over the hip and a kill (guess who died?!). It all seemed to go well, with a few ooh and ahhs from the audience. We had a good time in the pub where I was introduced to a game called 'Zulu Warrior' which involved a simple chorus and a metal tray, where you took turns to hit people over the head with it in time to the 'song'. Seems all rather childish now, but at the time it was great fun! Little did I know that this would be the start of something big...

At that time the equipment was quite laughable by later standards. The muskets used little metal caps to give off a loud noise, and the uniforms were cut off school trousers, football socks and fine material jackets (known as 'waiter' jackets). It was all enthusiasm and novelty. We were just enjoying ourselves, who cared about the crowd? To the paying audience it was something new and wacky, who cared what it was supposed to be?

The next muster (as these events were called) was at a place called Coxwold, in the North of England. I remember we went down in a van, which proceded to break down in Edinburgh, and we had to stay with fellow 'Knotters' George ('Pervy George') Way (Now Baron Pleen and a respected lawyer) and Ronnie Cobham, in Edinburgh. Meanwhile a replacement van was obtained, and we were off the next day. In the van were Pete, Pete, Andy, Ian, Calumn, Ruth and a husband and wife whose names I don't remember. With all the equipment it was pretty cramped, and rather cold.

The battle was great fun, about 500 people, and the drinking in the pub was great. I recall that Andy got absolutely stocious, and was found hanging over a fence puking his guts up by someone from another regiment (O'Cahan's?). I think I wasn't drinking at this time after a bad experience on the soup.

By this time, though, I was well hooked, and eventually spent almost 20 years in the SK.

My first big event was down at Oxford, in '79. We had stopped off at Doune Castle to meet up with O'Cahan's for a photo shoot for some tv or film company. That was Friday morning/afternoon, and we set off again in the late afternoon, arriving in Oxford late into the night. The only thing of note was that Alisdair McRae, who was driving the minibus at the time, almost managed to run over some cyclists. He swears it was night-time, but we all know it was light. Oxford is a very historic city, with the centre of town still having a lot of period buildings. It was some sight to see all these guys in period costume. As for the battle, we were formed with O'Cahan's as the Scots Brigade. The script called for us to attack an English regiment, but get repulsed. Trouble is we walked straight through them. And the next unit, and the next. Ooops, not quite to script. A good initiation to a major muster, with over a 1000 present.

I remember the muster at Lancaster, where we all went down by minibus, back in the early '80s. We were formed in a pike block with O'Cahan's (Scots Brigade strike again!), and faced off against 2 English regiments, Newcastle's and the King's Guard, I believe. They took turns to take us at the push of pike, whenever one push collapsed the other unit would come in before we were fully reformed. They moved us not 1 inch.