Ah!! The soundtrack to my misspent youth.

Friday, Saturday or Sunday nights, there would be up to ten of us packed into a wee Ford Thames van, going to or coming home from a dance in some god-forsaken corner of Argyll, our heads full of the music, and your heart just burstin'for the girl who gave you the "last dance" and who was squeezed tight beside you as the wee van rocked along the bumpy single track roads.

And it was always "Lovely Stornoway" that blew the roof off!!.
The Stornoway girls would come down to work the holiday hotels in Dunoon or Inveraray or Arrochar, mostly as maids or waitresses.
They would teach us the "Gaelic"and scold us in that bonny Lewis accent if we got too drunk, but they were sweet, free spirits who knew all the secrets of nature and the secrets of family and tribe.
So unlike the local girls with their kid -on sophistication, their hard as nails hair do's, and their "sex is dirty" ideas.

My wee girl was Christine, she left for Borve in the autumn of 62, but she'll never leave the back corners of my mind.

I can still hear her singing with her head on my shoulder.

"And no matter where you are, hitch your wagon to a star.
Heaven cant be very far , from lovely Stornoway"....Ake