The Bomb Squad Comes To Call....

Another funny story comes to mind from our time in Banffshire. The house had a rather decrepit garage at the corner of the garden. We never kept any of our cars in it, but a friend, lets call him Jeremy (for that was his name), kept his totally impractical little open-topped car in it over the Winter months. Summer came that year, and Jeremy went to take his car out of mothballs.

"Did you know about the grenades in your garage?" he asked us. "What grenades?" we asked. "There's things that look like grenades to me in your garage." he said. We weren't too sure what to do in this situation so we called the local Police. True to form, they went into "controlled panic mode" and posted a policeman outside the garage while we waited for the Bomb Squad to arrive from Edinburgh. The squad arrived fairly promptly, and removed what turned out to be an anti-tank weapon from the Second World War. Although the explosives had been removed, the pin and detonator were still in place.

About a week later Jeremy asked us what had happened about the grenades. We told him about the anti-tank weapon, and he said "What about the others?" to which we replied "What others?". "There were four things that looked like grenades in your garage." he said. Somewhat sheepishly, we contacted the Bomb Squad again, and they returned to remove two rifle grenades and a mock grenade (see picture).

Shortly after this episode we moved south, but the story did find its way into the local newspaper.