As I undertake the Daily Mile around Largs to keep a watchful eye, on your behalf dear reader, on the local wildlife, flora and fauna I pop into various places of refreshment where I engage in all sorts of badinage with the characters of the town, writes Drew Cochrane.

There are some eccentric types going about the place and, yes, I should know.

So, it was that I found myself in Sharps hostelry where I bumped into an evacuee from the Second World War. Now, not only are they a rare species 70 odd years later but this 'mature' gentleman revealed that it had taken him that length of time to make it back to Largs.

Gordon Tait,who will be a healthy 85 years of age in July, is certainly sharper than I am (oh, some of you have already clocked that) because on, at least three occasions, in our chat he had to correct me when I, inadvertently, referred to him as a refugee. I blamed the Guinness for dulling my senses.

Anyway, Gordon was an only child in his Shawlands tenement in Glasgow in the early 40s as the Nazis were dropping bombs around his abode. So, his parents despatched the young Mr Tait to evacuation 'digs' with Harry and Jean Marshall in Fraser Street and he became a pupil at Largs Primary and attended Sunday School at St Columba's Parish Church, quipping "...and I wisnae thrown out."

His father, Charlie, who had served in the 1st world war, stayed in Glasgow to serve in the Home Guard Telephone Section in Langside.

"I remember never being away from the pleasure boats on the shore" Gordon recalled "and my pal Peter and me,

at the age of 7 or 8, thought nothing of jumping into a rowing boat by ourselves and going all the way over to Cumbrae and back. Nowadays they would have the police helicopter and lifeboat out looking for you."

When his mum got homesick after a year in Largs Gordon remembers returning to his home in Afton Street where, remarkably, he lived, continuously,for 80 years and although the tenement was intact, all the windows and the street had been, as he described it, "blown to smithereens." Fifty residents had been killed in the year he was away from the Shawlands district.

Back at his local city school the teachers would ring a huge bell if they had to rush with their gas masks from air raid shelter to shelter.

Gordon speaks fondly of the three cinemas which operated in Largs during the war in Waterside Street (now Narduccis), Stanlane Place (now a home) and the then newly opened Viking (now Homemount House) where his favourites were the Abbott and Costello and Laurel and Hardy movies.

"I'm old enough to remember the Charlie Chaplin films when they were released" he said with a chuckle, "particularly The Gold Rush where he ate a book made of liquorice."

Amazingly this surviving evacuee decided to leave his city tenement a few years ago to return, after a long lifetime, to Largs where he now lives in a Brisbane Road tenement, not far from his relatives Harvie and Marlyn Green.

Gordon, who earned his first wage at 11 delivering milk bottles in a 'barra,' worked for the Post Office in Glasgow for 49 years. He has served on the committee of his beloved Pollok Football Club for half a century and still travels every week to watch them.

"I sometimes do karaoke in a city bar and have been known to sing "I Belong to Glasgow." Regulars at Sharps await this pleasure, no doubt.

So, what does this sprightly octogenarian make of life today?  "We live in a nanny state"  proclaims the man who was born in the year Hitler came to power. "Ah cannae be doing with all this political correctness."

Gordon Tait, a man after my own heart.

Thought for the Week: I plan on living forever; so far, so good.

The 'former' chief executive of NHS Tayside has gone on 'sick' leave the day after being told she could not continue in her role.

Lesley McLay will, of course, retain her £120,000 salary and don't expect to see her return for another year when, I would predict, she will be offered a generous pay-off by the Scottish Government.

Ms McLay presided over a Health Board which has been bailed out to the tune of over £33m with taxpayers' money over the past five years, and she authorised the use of £2m from a charity fund to pay for an IT system.

I always scoff at the notion that chief executives of government bodies and local councils deserve their huge salaries because they are in charge of thousands of staff. No, they're not.  They are in charge of an opulent office and chair meetings about meetings with a select number of other highly paid directors.

I can actually feel some sympathy for Scottish Health Minister Shona Robison who oversees the health service from her home....in Tayside.  After all, what are her qualifications for running the NHS?  The SNP career politician worked for a couple of years...as a Home Care organiser.