My (Step)Grandfather was in the Black Watch for 33 years, from a drummer boy at the age of 12, at the Dublin uprising (I think it was), through the Battle of the Somme, Dunkirk and then 3 years in a Japanese concentration camp when Singapore fell.

Thing is apart from those bare details I know nothing of what he went through, as he'd never talk about it: I'd hear him screaming in his sleep at night though with nightmares of what happened in the Japanese camp.

He married my Grandmother when he was over 60. Her sister Vi was quite a well known and naturally gifted psychic in the Nationalist Spiritualist Church. As a Church sort of elder, one thing she'd do every Christmas was to have party for spirit children. Balloons, cakes, crisps, etc. She'd set the table and then turn the lights out and leave the room. Eventually when she turned the lights back on the room would be wrecked, food thrown about, the sort of typical mess that kids make at parties.

Anyway, this particular evening she was being especially "fey" and Grandpa stomped off as he'd had enough of this. He got to the bottom of the stairs (in their tiny house) when Aunty Vi said "I've got Tom Mackintosh here and he's laughing all over his face". Grandpa's jaw dropped and he came back into the room to explain. Tom Mackintosh was a sergeant during the Battle of the Somme. A grenade had landed in their dugout and he'd clapped his hat over and shouted "Run lads" Every one made it, except Tom.

Well, there wasn't much to say after that so Grandpa stomped off upstairs. Being an old soldier he laid his clothes out carefully, folded exactly along the seams over the back the chair and got into bed. Leaving the light on, he sat in bed for a while and then as he looked over at the chair -"someone" got hold off all his clothes (and old people wear a lot of clothes) and threw the whole off and over the back of the chair.

Tom - still laughing, 60 or so years later?

Well,