The Leither 165

Priceless Issue 165

Leither

Heroin ‘Uncut’ is dedicated to the memory of Heather Black, Morag McLean and all those friends lost now

Gormley, Beuys & Demarco Graven Images: Monuments & Memory The March of the Robots Dutch & Flemish Masters Reframed Gene Hackman & The American New Wave

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Contents 4

Boris Johnson’s fantasy of a neo-colonial England ruling the waves and shooting at small boats in the Channel

7

Demarco has long sought out wild places for inspiration they are, in his view, more important than galleries and art schools

8

Sean Connery was desperate to be rid of the 007 typecasting and explore other roles

10

This inability to generate a photographic practice in Edinburgh however, was overcome after reading the novel Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

32

To add to the excitement, Dame Katherine Grainger, the most decorated female rower of all time, will perform the ceremonies

All the world is here Food bloggers are raving about Leith Walk’s newest addition writes Cara South…

Owners of Leith Depot: Pete Mason, Julie Carty, Patrick Kavanagh

O

h Deer, an artisan café and bakery serving overnight oats, French pastries and feta buns used to be Bill’s Tattoo Studio which needled away here, for over 50 years. He was described as legendary by the people of Leith but had to put the shop up for sale after a bout of ill health. This new café is one of the many establishments changing the face of Leith Walk. Is this change for the better? And how is it affecting the people of Leith?

Wanting to find out more about the way the area used to be, I spoke to Leith local Rachel Glen. Rachel has been a customer of one of Leith Walk’s oldest and most authentic pubs, Robbie’s, for over 35 years. After telling me about the countless laundromats and chip shops that peppered the street, she said the walk used to be a much rougher and dangerous area and the bottom used to be a no go zone due to violence.

But at the same time, she talked of how Leith used to be much more of a community. People used to be much more friendly, and sociable than they are now. I believe the people who have lived in Leith for decades make up the heart of the area. They are the reason it has the sense of community that we see in our pubs and restaurants up and down the walk.

As a frequent visitor, I have witnessed the changes with my own eyes. There are dozens cafes and delis on and I gained some Intel from one of Leith’s favourite bakeries, Hobz. After selling baked goods via Leith Walk’s police box and markets, owners Matthew and Julianna decided to settle down and lease their now popular store.

Locating in Leith was a ‘no brainer’ for Hobz as the owners felt welcomed by the local community. With the majority of their customer base being returning locals, Matthew says: “I’d like to think we’ve helped create, along with the other amazing artisans in the area, a

Leith Depot is loved by people from all walks of life, a good balance between new and old Leith

community of small businesses that truly love our craft.”

So, Leith Walk now has a new atmosphere and I wonder, how this change happened? I spoke to Peter Mason, one of the owners of Leith Depot and founder of the save Leith Walk campaign. The campaign was created to prevent the building of student flats at the bottom of the walk. The campaign was successful after almost a year of fighting against developers and was the major starting point for the change.

Leith Depot used to be The Meridian, it was dubbed “Edinburgh’s worst bar” and closed down following violent clashes.

However, the red brick building has been transformed and it now contains a community bar with a music venue for local bands. Inviting a more diverse customer base with the ‘queer ass punk social’, comedy nights and weekly pub quizzes, it is loved by people from all walks of life and is a good balance between new and old Leith.

Artisan cafes and delis are definitely a major component in Leith Walks changing face. They bring in a different and more diverse clientele, who then, over time, start becoming more frequent visitors. Rachel told me her view and said that there are positive aspects such as more diversity, new cultural cuisines and far less violence than there used to a couple decades ago.

However, she also said that it has “knocked the heart out of it” and explained that the expensive tastes of the new comers make it harder for people to afford to live in Leith. Prices of flats are going up and young people can’t buy properties. This means that the only young people in the area are uni students, living in the nearby accommodation.

The artisans believe they have created a community within the bottom of the walk and from my visits I would have to agree. The cafes themselves have an upbeat atmosphere with a modern yet classy feel to them. The café owners and customers are all friendly and chatty people.

This makes me think that maybe the ‘heart’ of the area has not disappeared, it has just taken on a different form. n

Leither Published by: Leither Publishing Editor: William Gould ( 07891 560 338  editor@leithermagazine.com Sub Editor: Dot Mathie Design:  design@leithermagazine.com Advertising: Sue Laing ( 07772 059 516  sue@leithermagazine.com Contacts:  heather@leithermagazine.com 8 leithermagazine.com Cartoonist: Gordon Riach Illustrator: Bernie Reid Printers: Gladstone Print, Bonnyrigg ( 0131 663 5305 ( 07443 425125 8 gladstoneprint.co.uk * mark@gladstoneprint.co.uk © 2025 LEITHER PUBLISHING. Reproduction in whole or part is forbidden without the written permission of the Publishers.

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If you would like information on advertising or sponsorship opportunities with the Leither email: sue@leithermagazine.com Cover: Heather Black dealing with the authorities.

Photograpgh: Stewart Darby

Issue 165 | leithermagazine.com | 3

M

y powers of recall aren’t what they used to be, but I’m fairly certain that at some point in the recent past, I must have used the generous column inches which the editor kindly thrusts my way every now and then to comment on the farce/disaster/ recurring nightmare that was Brexit.

Now, before you scream “NO! We’ve heard it all before!” and turn the page, hold on; this is not going to be a retrospective look at how bullshitters like Boris Johnson (remember him?) and Nigel Farage lied through their teeth in an attempt to fulfil their tawdry John Bull fantasies about a neo-colonial England ruling the waves and shooting at small boats in the Channel.

No, just recently I was on my way to visit my family who live in Switzerland and as is usual on my travels by aeroplane, I found myself having an early morning beer in a bar at Edinburgh airport. But not just any bar. At seven in the morning, I found myself queuing up in the Sir Walter Scott bar. Yes, that’s right, the Wetherspoons hostelry that caters for travellers heading all over the globe from our fair city. And not for the first time, once I’d grabbed a pint of ice-cold Stella and settled down to watch the goings-on all around me, I found myself thinking about Brexit, its zealous protagonists, its impacts on travel, but more importantly, how probably no one in that packed bar could give a toss about it anymore. The Sir Walter Scott bar is a portal to “life’s too shortsville” and I love it.

You may or may not remember, but Tim Martin, who founded and is currently chairman of Wetherspoons, was a fervently staunch supporter of Brexit.

Although in 2021 when his operation started to haemorrhage staff, he did urge the then Government to adopt a visa scheme for workers from the EU to help 4 | leithermagazine.com | Issue 165

pubs and restaurants hire more staff.

Anyway, enough about that, what about the bustling oasis that never fails to bring a huge smile to my face whenever I’m off abroad?

I don’t know why, but there’s something really special in the air in that bar. Okay, granted, everyone in there is likely to be heading off on holiday and it’d be a fair assumption to say that of course, the atmosphere is bound to be light and expectant of good times to come, but there’s something more than that, something intangible.

Yes, it’s bustling, people are ordering alcoholic drinks galore, and breakfasts ranging from heart attacks on plates, to positively healthy ones which wouldn’t look out of place in an in-flight magazine, are being ferried all over the place by staff who couldn’t be more friendly and energetic, which is all the more impressive as they’ve probably been at it since 04:00 am.

My favourite breakfast memory was when a gang of girls in pink tutus and high heels waltzed in prior to their hen-night trip. After they’d settled into their seats, one of them called out to her friend: “Elaine, what’re you having?” To which Elaine replied in a tone way beyond excitement, “Porridge and prosecco!!” I don’t really do pride, but I swear that I had a tear in my eye at the sheer Scottishness and joyful abandon of Elaine’s reply. And I wasn’t the only one.

“Elaine, what’re you having?”

Elaine replied in a tone way beyond excitement, “Porridge and prosecco!!”

Graham Ross

There is something intangible in the rarefied air of the Sir Walter Scott bar” For some reason, people just seem to forget themselves and leave any hint of self-consciousness at the door. On my recent trip, a group of three young men sat down at the table next to me and ordered three pints of lager and full Scottish breakfasts.

They then proceeded to discuss what they were hoping to get from their imminent trip to Amsterdam. Without going into too much detail (which they did), this included lots of drugs, lots of dancing, lots of sex (with whoever was willing to oblige them), and the avoidance of anything which would necessitate a return trip to the GP. Breakfasts duly arrived and the young lad in the green velour tracksuit sitting next to me sat back, breathed out and declared “Ah’ve no had a full breakfast fir ages.” To which his friend opposite responded with gusto “Aye, cos yir always stuffing something else into yir face first thing in the morning!” Cue guffaws of laughter not only from the three of them, but me, and about four other tables who couldn’t help being party to the conversation.

And none of us are immune to this peculiar disrobing of our inherent uptightness. Ordering my third pint from the bar, the young guy serving me said “Ah, I do like to see people having an early morning drink when they’re travelling.” To which I replied, “Well, I think if you’re going to be moving, you should also be grooving.”

Instinctively, I would always cringe at making such a remark. Now, it might have been the alcohol, but I prefer to think it was that intangible something in the very rarified air of the Sir Walter Scott bar that made it seem not only perfectly normal, but somehow expected. n

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Issue 165 | leithermagazine.com | 5

6 | leithermagazine.com | Issue 165

The Nature of Art: Gormley, Beuys & Demarco A

nthony Gormley’s series of standing figures in the Water of Leith (6 TIMES) have become a cherished feature of the city.

Gormley was attracted to the location as ‘what’s brilliant about the Water of Leith is that it’s so hidden. It’s a secret.’

6 TIMES is a quiet and contemplative piece that draws attention to both natural and manmade elements of the Water of Leith. Gormley uses the body as a template to project his creative ideas upon. 6 TIMES encourages us to reflect on how human beings fit into our natural environment, and ‘what will become of us?’.

diminished. A living, growing object replacing an unchanging ‘crystalline mass’. The project aimed to illustrate the excesses of urbanisation and enhance the living space of Kassel.

The artistic imagination often engages with themes which most have not even identified, let alone explored. Artists as social pioneers, testing the boundaries. Beuys was a spearheading environmentalist and a key figure in the formation of the Green Party of Germany. His political and artistic visions were fused, not compartmentalised. Many of his themes of the 1970s are now thoroughly mainstream.

Swathed in debris

They were installed in 2010 but removed in 2012 due to structural issues.

Reinstated in 2019, these life-size cast iron sculptures of the artist’s body have generally elicited admiration but have sometimes caused confusion. During their installation they provoked calls from concerned residents who mistook them for endangered walkers who had fallen into the river.

During storms, Gormley’s figures get swathed in debris. When the surges are particularly strong, a mechanism causes them to tilt and lie below the water level.

This leads to some fearing that they’ve been swept away!

Art in the real world

Gormley’s best-known work is the Angel of the North, which towers over Gateshead. His public sculptures are a manifestation of his belief that art should be out in the real world to be engaged with, rather than enclosed in austere galleries. ‘I just want my work to be part of the elemental world.’

The figures in the Water of Leith have received a lot of playful engagement.

Some have been decked out in football strips. A more extreme type of interaction occurred in Northern Ireland where his Sculpture for Derry Walls figures were ‘necklaced’, encased in vivid red melted plastic evoking the dreadful punishment meted out in South Africa.

Shocking to some, Gormley felt this only added to the pieces. More broadly, his work reflects a belief that the environment we live in constitutes the most pressing issue facing us.

A form of sculpture

In arguing that art and nature are inextricably linked, Gormley echoes

Healing profound wounds

Joseph Beuys & Richard Demarco (by Edward Schneirder)

Demarco has long found wild places more important than galleries and art schools as locations of artistic endeavour

one of Scotland’s most prominent cultural figures, Richard Demarco.

The connections between art and nature have been a theme of Demarco’s long cultural life, as expressed in collaborations with the likes of Ian Hamilton Finlay and Joseph Beuys. ‘I count the blessings of my long life upon this uniquely beautiful and miraculous planet Earth, now rendered most vulnerable by global warming.’

Demarco has long sought out wild places for inspiration. They are, in his view, more important than galleries and art schools as locations to galvanise artistic endeavour. This was expressed most through his fruitful partnership with Joseph Beuys.

Beuys’ 7000 Eichen (7000 Oak Trees) project was a manifestation of his idea of ‘social sculpture’, of art’s potential to challenge and transform society.

The original 1982 project centred on a plan to plant 7000 oaks throughout the city of Kassel, pairing each with a piece of basalt. He chose the oak because of its longevity and because the tree ‘has always been a form of sculpture’. As each tree was planted, the pile of stones

A central theme of Beuys’ was the ability of art to heal profound wounds. This is the philosophy that Demarco, now 95, preaches with undiminished fervour.

It derives from a childhood marked by xenophobic attitudes towards Italian immigrants and the implosion of Europe during his childhood. For Demarco, the way that the Edinburgh Festival of 1947 brought countries back together demonstrated the deep, enduring power of art.

For instance, Demarco’s response to Brexit was not to fire off an angry polemic. Instead, he helped plant a tree.

The Brexit Tree project, led by Berlinbased German artist Clemens Wilhelm under the aegis of Deveron Arts, has connections with Beuys’ ‘masterpiece’ 7,000 Eichen. The Brexit Tree in Huntly is a weeping willow, a tree which in many cultures symbolises loss and sorrow, but also healing and rebirth.

Ebb and flow

One of Demarco’s most moving recent speeches was delivered after planting an Oak (in the courtyard of Edinburgh College of Art) in Beuys’s memory, 100 years after his birth. Demarco and Beuys’ view that art should be all around us, engaged with by everyone, is manifested in Gormley’s work in the Water of Leith. In the same way humans do, Gormley’s figures are eroding in different ways due to the elements and environment they are placed in. The ebb and flow of seasons is silently witnessed by them, standing proudly as the chilly water trickles, glides or thunders past. n Charlie Ellis Issue 165 | leithermagazine.com | 7

From sure fire winner to flailing fiasco Kennedy Wilson on the good, the bad and the ugly of Hollywoodland

S

ome films are so bad they’re good. Some gain a cult following.

And some are just plain duds.

But the biggest sin of all in Hollywood is when they lose money. In his new book Box Office Poison (Faber £16.99) Tim Robey posits an alternative history of Hollywood by looking at 100 years of notable flops from Intolerance (1916) to Cats (2019).

DW Griffith’s pioneering epic Intolerance was a portmanteau film – a series of stories on a single theme.

It was most notable for its enormous Babylonian sets and while audiences stayed away in droves many critics thought it was the pinnacle of cinema achievement.

Creative differences, capsized careers, blown budgets, hubris, production delays, egomania – all play their part into making what appears a surefire winner into a flailing fiasco. At the same time vastly expensive or ambitious films often confound their critics who sniff failure yet the film is a mammoth success.

Titanic (1997) caught the public’s imagination while another ship-board movie did not. Speed (1994) in which Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock wrangled a runaway bus was followed up by Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997). Set aboard a cruise liner (not something normally associated with speed) it had none of the wit nor pace of the original.

‘The entire storyline is a clattering shambles,’ writes Robey gleefully.

One of the most famous flops was Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980) which cost £44m and made less than $5m. An awful fate also befell Orson Welles’s follow-up to Citizen Kane (1941): the less than magnificent Magnificent Ambersons (1942). The project was stymied at almost every stage but its prospects were torpedoed by the advent of the attack on Pearl Harbour. Movie audiences demanded patriotic, upbeat film fare. Writes Robey: ‘with American industry mobilising [for war] a lament about the price of progress – factory smog blighting the old-world charm of the Midwest – made Welles’s film look like a fusty antique’. Preview audiences disliked it and the studio made changes not authorised by the director and generally seen as neutering the story.

Oliver Stone’s 2004 Alexander cost $155m but the US gross was a paltry 8 | leithermagazine.com | Issue 165

He was a former milkman from Edinburgh’s Fountainbridge who became a lightning rod for the Swinging Sixties

$34.3m. It had been hoped it would have been as big a success as Gladiator (2000) but it tanked with audiences. Stones’s CV was a tad shaky but this spectacular epic – with Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie and

Anthony Hopkins doing the narration – was a dud of the first order. Many critics felt that Farrell, as a fetching blond, was hopelessly miscast.

The same was said of another blond: Daniel Craig when he became the sixth 007 in the early 2000s. So critical was Sean Connery (Big Tam) to the success of the Bond franchise that when the actor refused to do another double-0 gig producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman wrung their hands in despair. The first non-Sean Bond was the unknown George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), one of the most disappointing of all the Bond outings.

For many fans Connery was the Bond with his square jaw and hairy chest.

He was the former milkman from Edinburgh’s Fountainbridge who became a lightning rod for the Swinging Sixties.

According to Robert Sellers - in his book The Search for Bond - for Connery’s last Bond film he was ‘offered a basic fee of £1.25m, 10% of the gross and a penalty clause that if the film went over schedule the star received $10,000 per additional week’. Even at that, Connery took a week to think it over. He was desperate to be rid of the 007 typecasting and to explore other more demanding and interesting roles. Finally, he said yes, his fee used to establish the Scottish International Education Foundation aimed at supporting talented young people.

The search for new Bonds over the last 60 years drew in countless hopefuls for casting calls, boozy business lunches, auditions and screen tests. There were such unlikely candidates as the explorer Ranulph Fiennes, actor Michael Gambon and professional gambler Lord Lucan and a myriad of models and actors who looked the part. In fact, in the end more men have walked on the moon than played Bond.

Roger Moore had many admirers but many fans felt he was too much of a comic turn. Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan were forgettable. And then, in 2005 came Daniel Craig. ‘Craig tested brilliantly,’ writes Pearson. ‘It’s easy to see what was so appealing about him…

There was nothing that harked back to any of the other Bond actors. He didn’t fit the mould; he was right for the times.’

As we go to press, there’s a new search for the next Bond. There’s been talk of a black, female or gay 007 reflective of the mania for diversity. n Ê Info: Box Office Poison by Tim Robey (Faber £16.99). The Search for Bond by Robert Sellers (History Press £20) Ê Bluesky: @kenwilson84.bsky.social

Issue 165 | leithermagazine.com | 9

as ‘mirrors with a memory’– have become the dominant media through which we remember. We delegate this task of remembering so readily to our photos - largely collected on our phones - that our recall of events is profoundly altered by them.

Although I live in Edinburgh, and develop my ideas and print my pictures here – in the wonderful Stills Centre for Photography - I have rarely felt the consistent desire to be out in the city with my camera, photographing for reasons other than making an income.

For my photography ‘practice’: the practice of seeing, observing, noticing, controlling, translating; the practice of interfacing with the world through a camera; of reconciling one’s vision of the world with its material facts through mediated perception. I usually return to my hometown of Ashington, Northumberland to do so.

This inability to generate a photographic practice in Edinburgh however, was overcome after reading the novel Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

Graven Images: Photography, Monuments, & Memory Editor: I met Joseph Wilson in South Leith Parish taking industrial sized images of the word memory…

I am an anamnesiologist. I study what has been forgotten. I divine what has disappeared utterly. I work with absences, with silences, with curious gaps between things.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke 10 | leithermagazine.com | Issue 165

W

hen people ask what I take photographs of, I tell them that I photograph things that are disappearing. This is a get out of jail free card, as the camera is a device we use to preserve a formal impression of content from the oblivion of time. It is true though, that I return frequently to subject matter that is in a state of ruin.

These subjects are compelling to me as they belong to another period; scarred by the routines of the past and weathered by time,

yet they persist in our present as artefacts and take on new meaning beyond their former function.

Photographs are themselves temporally mixed: the impression of a photograph was made at the point of exposure, but we regard them in the present. We look backwards, at a photograph’s moment in the past, and something from the photograph works its way into our present.

Perhaps it is because of this return gaze from across time that photographs – once referred to

It is my belief that the World (or, the House, since the two are for all practical purposes identical) wishes an inhabitant for Itself to be a witness to its Beauty and the recipient of its Mercies.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke Clarke touches on many themes that relate to photographic practice - such as memory, loss, and the interaction between observer and observable - through her use of ruins and monuments to create the metaphysical space of ‘the House’: a seemingly infinite sequence of halls, filled with various statues, which lost ancient wisdom seeps into after being supplanted by the modern, secular relationship to the world.

The fantastical descriptions of ruins and statues in Piranesi, along with its message of reverence for the (meta) physical world, and of the importance of a relationship beyond the logical with it, found their way into my daily experience of the city I live in.

Outside of the obvious examples that appear on a google search of Edinburgh, I noticed monuments everywhere: plaques, neoclassical decorative masonry, sculptures, churches, and gravestones, the very walls of the city.

I began to meet them with an interest not dissimilar to that the novel’s titular protagonist has for those in ‘the House’. Piranesi’s desire to explore and catalogue each of the House’s Halls and the Statues within them stirred a desire in myself. Instead of a journal and

pen, I picked up my camera, and this formed the beginning of this project: Graven Images.

Eventually the Ancients ceased to speak and listen to the World. When this happened the World did not simply fall silent, it changed. Those aspects of the world that had been in constant communication with Men – whether you call them energies, powers, spirits, angels or demons – no longer had a place or a reason to stay and so they departed.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke What was interesting to me lay in the interplay between the subject matter, the medium of photography, our desire to remember and to be remembered, and the ways in which material and technological worlds affect our practices of remembering.

The project has concentrated into a typological study of the word ‘Memory’ as engraved on gravestones. Gravestones, like photographs, are markers of time,

When people ask what I take photographs of, I tell them that I photograph things that are disappearing repositories of memory, sites where the past and present can meet in our minds. Physical stones are a long-standing ritualistic means, whereas photography is a modern, secular means. The message of Piranesi seems to me to be that we are losing touch with the former in favour of the latter.

I realised that the search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted, and that if ever we discover the Knowledge, then it will be as if the Value has been wrested from the Houses and all that remains will be mere scenery.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke Piranesi provides an interesting critique of our contemporary relationship to the world for photography – the modern medium – to confront. On the one side, photographs demand the use of our imaginative capacities when produced and viewed meaningfully.

A photographic practice necessitates a relationship with the physical world – the very reference material for photographs – in ways other art forms do not.

Yet, shifts in the production, storage, and consumption of photography in contemporary

culture is contributing to the psycho-cultural shift away from subjective mnemonic rituals to evidence-based, technological operations, reliant on a vast externalized, eternalised, and omnipresent digital archive of photographic images.

And so, in accord with their contradictory nature, photographs can be seen as contributing to, and guarding against – depending on their usage – the atrophy of our relationship to the physical and the metaphysical, particularly in relation to memory.

I am photographing this project using methods that emphasise the physicality of analogue photographic processes to monumentalise the materiality of the medium, the monuments pictured, and memory.

As well as using photographic film – with the intention of enlarging these engravings to human proportions – I have begun photographing directly onto photographic paper, ordinarily used in the darkroom to make a positive print from a film negative.

This produces a paper negative, which displays an inversion of tones and orientation of axes – a negative image, back to front – laying bare discords between human and camera vision, encouraging us to question our acceptance of photographs as stand-ins for the recall of experience.

The inversion also frustrates our attempts to read the word ‘Memory’ ordinarily. Bringing to attention language as a (psycho) technology that is profoundly involved with the translation of experience and the propagation of memory.

I focussed on my memory of being a child in that garden, to the last time when both the world and my mind had been unfettered […] To my surprise I discovered that the act of remembering was extremely potent.

My mind was immediately freed, my vision cleansed Piranesi by Susanna Clarke Despite changes to the means through which we construct and preserve memory, we – as Piranesi does – still live among statues: ‘silent presences’ which we can turn to for ‘comfort and enlightenment’. We can find meaning in them and use their form to activate subjective imagination or social memory.

Their stillness and their silence run counter to the image culture we experience through our devices.

They offer space for reflection, interpretation, and remembrance – through imagination rather than reference – of that which has passed. ■

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Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be That’s an old joke, of course – of pensionable age, in fact. But it’s still the one everyone knows, because it turns out jokes about nostalgia ain’t what they used to be says Tom Wheeler

I

’ve written about nostalgia on these pages before – specifically, the way it manifests itself in the form of inane memes bemoaning the scarcity of instant mash and white dog turds in modern society. (As an aside: was the whiteness of the turds in any way connected to all the instant mash they fed their dogs?) And I remember musing on the pervasive, inevitable nature of nostalgia: that however much our younger selves refuse to accept it, ultimately we all end up carrying on like the furious boomer with a selective memory and an instinct towards oversharing.

My reason for returning to the subject is that I’m currently having a very pleasant time playing the recentish remakes of the classic Grand Theft Auto video games from the early 2000s.

Back then, I played them so obsessively as to wear out four or five Playstation controllers. Coming back to them now, I find I remember great chunks of them with absolute clarity: the city layouts, the oh-so-frustrating radio control plane missions, even large parts of the dialogue. And I’m playing them to the exclusion of almost everything else, while hundreds of more recent, technologically superior games in my collection sit unplayed and unloved, gathering virtual dust.

You may recall that at the time, the GTA games were massively controversial. The violence, which even in remastered form looks entirely cartoonish now, was the subject of endless tabloid hand-wringing. Calls to ban each game followed its release as dependably as a Vice City police van follows a man in a Hawaiian shirt who’s just shot down a helicopter.

None of this did the slightest harm to the success of the games – quite the contrary in fact, as publishers Rockstar knew perfectly well. And those of us

actually playing them were adamant that we might have stolen thousands of pretend cars over the years, but it never did us any harm. Looking back, we were nostalgists in the making.

But now, as I tootle around the familiar landscapes of San Andreas, I realise that these games have become the manifestation of my descent into a nostalgic fury-spiral from which I’m unlikely to emerge unscathed. Not because I’d rather play a game from two decades ago than a shiny new one – I’m absolutely fine with that – but because of the epic quest I ended up undertaking in order to play them at all.

Venerable as these games are, the process of buying them felt almost archetypally modern. They were released, via the usual online stores, to a slew of horrific reviews. Rockstar, realising it had a problem, set about fixing the various problems through a series of game updates, until eventually they had a product that might actually be worth buying. Noting that, I added them to my wishlist, waited for them to appear on sale and, when the moment was right, bought them with a single click of a mouse button. Job done, or so I imagined.

Now, the original versions of these games were essentially the last hurrah of an offline world. You could only buy them in physical form, and you didn’t need to log in to play them – in fact, you couldn’t. There was no recourse for a company that put out a game with glaring flaws; they simply ended up with an expensive dud on their hands. So there was a healthy incentive for them not to do that.

But to play the new version of the game, I had to log into my Rockstar

Grand Theft Auto 3 (Early 2000s)

We were adamant that we might have stolen thousands of pretend cars over the years, but it never did us any harm

account. Naturally, I’d forgotten the password, so I requested a new one.

Nothing happened. It slowly dawned on me that my account was linked to a defunct email address. I asked the internet what I could do about this situation, and the internet told me I’d need extensive documentation and a good deal of doggedness.

Lacking either, I grumpily resigned myself to having spent twenty-odd quid on a remake I could never play of three games I already owned. And I thought about all the other games that I thought I owned, but whose login screens I may never again get past, barring a miracle of memory.

Riding to the rescue was my best pal – with whom I’ve been playing video games since the ‘80s – who worked out that there was another solution: buying them in physical form for the Nintendo Switch, thus bypassing the need to prove to a bot that I am, in fact, me.

So he quietly picked them up for my birthday, legend that he is, and I’ve been contentedly working my way through them ever since. And I’m quite enjoying the irony that the thing that finally turned me into a frothing-at-the-mouth nostalgist was my complete inability to get online, in order to revisit an offline world from the beginning of the century.

You’d best block me before I circulate a meme about it. n Issue 165 | leithermagazine.com | 13

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The Samaritan & The Fire Bellied Toad W

e’re social animals, you and me. And however splendid isolation may seem – with Garbo setting the gold standard of leave-me-be – we tend to want to connect with others. I guess we’re closer in temperament, most of us anyway, to the fire-bellied toad than we are to the desert tortoise or the Hawaiian monk seal. Toads get a bad press though, don’t they, and what do you know but I find myself in a hole. One of my own digging.

The words are refusing to play nice and my train of thought – I’m sorry to say but that light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming mixed metaphor – it’s stuck in a siding somewhere between Didcot and Banbury. “Your ticket isn’t valid for this service, Sir, and we can’t accept Scottish bank notes. I must insist you alight at the next station.” Alight?

“Sir, I’m sorry but smoking is absolutely not permitted on this train.”

What? Wot? Wit? I recall it was Dot Parker who said brevity is the soul of lingerie. But I digress and I undress, emotionally speaking, and I do apologise for any distress. The heart of the matter is that which matters to the heart – and let’s look out for those of us who could be, in the words of another favourite poet, not waving but drowning – which brings us to the talking cure or, from a Samaritans perspective, the listening cure.

What’s your name? And which branch are you in? These are the only personal aspects a listening volunteer is permitted to disclose to a caller. It’s three years since I became a full Sam, no longer a probationer, and I remember the sense of elation I felt following that first shift with the P-plates off.

It was a Sunday morning in May and I walked home along the Water of Leith

A knot of fire bellied toads

Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love

marvelling at the beauty all around: leaves dancing in the breeze, birds singing their four-chambered hearts out, sun reflecting on the glassy surface. Then I saw something floating on the water, something the ducks and the swans were dodging, something that turned out to be a dog walker’s poop bag, and which sank slowly to the bottom, taking my reverie with it.

It’s counter intuitive to claim you enjoy listening to other people’s unhappiness and, you might even think, bordering on the perverse. How can that be so? Won’t you get depressed?

Don’t you ever get bored? But giving some of your time and all your attention to another person for the duration of a phone call is a simple way of making that connection with somebody.

Simone Weil, the mystical Marxist and philosopher’s philosopher, with Albert Camus being her number one fanboy, she said: “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love”.

The best calls I’ve had, best in the sense of the levels of openness and emotional disclosure, have reached mountainous peaks and oceanic lows, with stories (and never mind AI) that would render Nobel Laureates redundant. Stories that the caller might be recounting for the first time, stories of traumatic events that could have happened decades ago, long stories that it’s nothing short of a privilege to hear.

The golden thread theory suggests finding the thing from their lived experience the caller still cares about in this cruel world. The thing they value and would be reluctant to say goodbye to. It could be a person – a pal

they’ve known since primary school or a new grandchild; a pet – nothing quite suggests the likelihood of living another day than a dog in need of a walk or a cat to be fed; or a passion – a dancer who once appeared on Top of the Pops, a poet who crowns you the King of Scotland (I’m a republican but, you know, such is the caller’s prerogative), an Oxbridge bound care-leaver offering dietary advice (“You should definitely have that banana after this call”).

People, when they phone a helpline, can be categorised by the nature of their problem – mental health, grief, addiction etc., and that data is important for service provision, policy making and so on. But it’s their potential, their past, their dreams, their tales to tell; this is what makes an impression, this is what makes a connection, this is what counts.

I think of Joe Strummer’s monologue from The Future Is Unwritten documentary: “…we’ve all got to stop just following our own little mouse trail. People can do anything – this is something that I’m beginning to learn...It’s time to take the humanity back into the centre of the ring and follow that for a time...Without people you’re nothing. That’s my spiel.”

Have I got myself out of this selfdug hole? Reach down and lend me a hand would you. I’ve got a night shift tomorrow and who knows what calls await, who’s going to be on the other end of the line and why, all those connections waiting to happen. You and me, you see, we’re social animals, fire-bellied toads. And my train has just arrived at Oxford Parkway. n Rodger Evans Ê Info: Samaritans.org Issue 165 | leithermagazine.com | 15

This means that the young adults of today were exposed to the first significant advance of the robots - the smart phone – launched in 2012 Robots are now managing our memories, our choices, our relationships, counting our steps, and telling us who is at the front door when we’re on holiday.

Last Sunday I met up with a when they switch it back on, they group of young people in Glasgow are sucked straight back into the for a pizza. Over lunch we got into vortex. What’s more, they all a very interesting discussion about agreed that their attention span how technology is taking over their has declined massively over the lives and dominating their future. past few years.

A bit of context: this was a It still seems weird to me that a group of six young people who phone can become so powerful. Of have either completed Working course, we know that the phone Rite’s employability bit – voice-to-voice programme and are exchanges in real time– now in work, or are in is benign. It’s the rest; the process of finishing the assault of apps and the programme with virtual interactions a job. The youngest is that we increasingly 17, the oldest 21. None refer to as: ‘artificial of them went to, or intelligence’, that is had any aspiration of where the problem Sandy going to, university. resides. I don’t like This, often overlooked label. It’s way too Campbell that segment of society, flattering for something who left school at 16, so sinister. As far as are the young people I’m concerned, from a On the who motivated me to drone to a smart meter, Loose start up the charity in they’re all robots! the early years of the It feels to me like we millennium. are witnessing the restructuring They, and everyone they of the human experience. We associate with, has a smartphone. are increasingly allowing the Even though they tend to come outsourcing of our lives. Robots are from families where money is now managing our memories, our pretty tight, for these young choices, our relationships, counting people a smart phone is a must – our steps, and telling us who is even more so since the pandemic. at the front door when we’re on Without one they wouldn’t be able holiday. Robots are deciding what to take part in life as it is. and who we should be interested I found it encouraging to hear in. Robots are sabotaging our selfhow conscious they are about esteem by enticing us into bingetheir smart phone addiction. It browsing other people’s creations was interesting to discover their and achievements, instead of various approaches to factoring cultivating our own human in moments of escape from digital imagination, free from robotic dependency. A couple of them said interference. that they were lucky to have jobs They just won’t leave us alone, which required them to switch constantly competing for our the damn thing off at work, but attention, and in the process, 16 | leithermagazine.com | Issue 165

training our minds to keep wanting more. It is the indefatigable march of the Now-ist society where the next thrill is but a swipe away.

This is the world our young people have been born into. They didn’t have a choice, and they have to be able to navigate it at a level of competence that I will never get even close to; nor do I want to.

This truth took me back to when I was that age. The backdrop to my childhood and early adulthood was the Cold War. The atrocities of the Vietnam war were being played out every night on the TV. I remember thinking this war will never end – let alone that the Berlin Wall would ever crumble.

That’s the beauty of those years – the post-puberty decade when adulthood beckons. A decade to make your mark; to make choices that will become your future. The Cold War didn’t stop me throwing myself into the act of living.

Yes, I joined the odd demo, and adopted causes that I have stayed loyal to, well into my retirement.

But just like the young of today, the important things back then were practical – a job with decent money, a home, maybe a car, good friends and the pursuit of love and happiness.

Civilisation depends on this age group, their convictions, their energy, even their righteousness.

Who else is going to fight our wars, create new cultures and test permissions? But I do have my fears that the tech onslaught of the robots is having a numbing effect on the very experience of childhood and adolescence. In the post-puberty decade, the brain is in

Sandy has a chat with some youngsters on how technology is taking over their lives

On his return to 1895 he expounds his theory as to why this rupture in the evolution of humanity has occurred

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its peak development phase as the neurological wiring for adulthood is being constructed. This means that the young adults of today were exposed during their childhood, at a time where the brain is at its most malleable and suggestible, to the first significant advance of the robots - the smart phone – launched in 2012.

Of course, with all this talk of robots, I start to imagine a sci-fi world; something like a blend of The Matrix and The Terminator.

But there is another story, written in 1895, that, for me, speaks to the core of my concerns: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, turned into a pretty decent film in 1960 Wells’ hero builds his own timemachine and travels some millions of years into the future. Initially he is enchanted by the innocence of the versions of human beings he finds, dwelling in fields and tents and seemingly living a life of carefree leisure. They call themselves ‘Eloi’. But he is confused by the absence of any evidence of productivity. They have a language, but it’s very limited and doesn’t seem to extend to actual conversation. Each individual exists so introspectively and

without apparent care for others, that when one of them falls into a river the rest of them just turn away and continue with whatever they were doing.

Then he discovers a parallel civilisation living underground: the ‘Morlocks’. He concludes that they too are humanoid, but their noisy, busy, and thriving society exists in sharp contrast with that of the Eloi.

The big reveal about the nature of their relationship happens when he sees the Morlocks emerging above ground at night - then it all becomes clear. Above ground is not some idyllic paradise- it is a farm!

The Eloi are in fact the Morlock’s livestock, docile creatures dragged below ground as needed for tomorrow’s lunch.

This future land demonstrates the tragic trajectory of the intervening years leading to the split of the human race: one element in control, and the other providing the food. On his return to 1895 he recounts his adventures to his friends. He expounds his theory as to why this rupture in the evolution of humanity has occurred: one half has become idle pleasure seekers, whilst that the other half does all the work and makes all the decisions.

I see troublesome parallels at work between Wells’ nightmarish vision and our modern-day world, where the evolution of AI could potentially furnish us with a separate controlling species, and render humanity redundant, reduced to idle livestock.

At the end of the time traveller’s tale, our adventurer sums up what the future he has seen means for the fate of the human race.

He closes his novel with some haunting words which could equally apply to an impending dystopian future of our own creation: “I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide.” ■

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Travels with the Apothecary Jar

TimBell

W

e were clearing out North Leith Parish Church on Madeira Street late last year.

Rummaging through cupboards that hadn’t been opened for decades. The city museums, the Archives Department and Custom House have all taken some items.

We booked a waste disposal outfit to take away stuff of no value. The day before they were due, I was doing a last sweep, not expecting to come across any surprises. And there, at the back of a cupboard, was this apothecary jar, about 6’’ high, with a perfectly fitting stopper.

The label reads: A bottle found in the foundations of the old Free Church North Leith upon its being taken down June 1876 It’s not difficult to fill in its history.

North Leith Parish church in Madeira Street opened in 1812. In 1843, the year of the Disruption, it had no minister. The Patronage Act, in force at the time, gave the power to call a minister to a local aristocrat or landowner.

It was an intolerable intrusion into the Church’s internal affairs.

At North Leith the power was in the hands of the ’hail inhabitants’, effectively the male heads of families. This was difficult to organise. Much effort was spent verifying the signatures and identity of the men.

And it was difficult to manage. With two candidates for the post of minister, rival parties formed in support of Mr Davidson and Mr McNaughton respectively. The matter went before Presbytery, the General Assembly, the Court of Session, and back in reverse order. It was a lengthy, exhausting, and unseemly business.

The Church of Scotland can claim a big part in early experiments with democracy in Scotland. But this was never a matter that was suitable for an open, public, democratic process and decision.

Just over half of the elders (nine) at North Leith left, along with probably the same percentage of the congregation (about 600), to become founding members of what was at first known as The Free Presbyterian Church.

Those ministers who remained in what was now the Established Church of Scotland were easily mocked in a popular jingle of the day, as having neither principle nor conscience, determined to keep their stipends, come what may: The wee kirk, the Free Kirk, The kirk wi’oot a steeple, The Auld Kirk, the cauld kirk, The kirk wi’oot the people.

The newly formed Free Church immediately built a new church only a few hundred yards away at the top of Coburg Street at the corner with North Junction Street. This bottle was put into the foundations, and it opened in 1844.

Indicating the considerable ambition of its founders, the church could hold 1,000 people. In 1857 the energetic new minister, Rev. William MacKenzie, organised the building of a magnificent new church nearby at 74 Ferry Road.

It was completed in 1859, with capacity for 1,100 people. It was known as St Nicholas church, and latterly, following a union with another local church, as St Ninian’s.

The Coburg Street building was

The bottle made the short journey with the congregation, unseen for forty years, until a few months ago

demolished in 1876, giving way to a new block of tenements and, at street level on the corner, a bank, now Downes Opticians. It seems that this bottle, found in the foundations, was taken just up the road to the new building.

There are no signs of it ever having been cleaned, nor has there been any attempt to protect the label or the writing. It all suggests it was in the back of a cupboard.

The Church of Scotland eventually got rid of the Patronage Act in 1874, removing the prime cause of the 1843 Disruption. At General Assembly level, the Established Church of Scotland and what was by then the United Free Church of Scotland reunited in 1929.

But there had been much splintering within the Free Church, and reunification did not restore the pre-1843 situation. The more socially conservative presbyterian churches are still self-governing.

St Nicholas, now a Church of Scotland parish, along with many other parishes around the country, remained fully functioning and in place. In 1981 the congregation merged with North Leith and Bonnington Parish Church on Madeira Street, to form North Leith Parish Church.

The St Ninians building was demolished to make way for the Port of Leith (now Harbour) Housing Association block of sheltered accommodation named St Nicholas Court.

It seems that this bottle made the very short journey with the congregation.

There it remained unseen and ignored, for forty years, until a few months ago.

At Easter last year the congregation merged with the South Leith congregation in the Kirkgate. We have taken the bottle with us; its third move, and its first trip over the Water of Leith, in 180 years.

Now it’s proudly on display, still blinking in the first daylight it has seen in all that time.

It may well be that it is Leith-made, in the glass works on Salamander Street that survived until 1874.

If so, the bottle has never been outside Leith. n Issue 165 | leithermagazine.com | 19

Newhaven, Ferry Port

isitors came to the village for many and varied reasons be it pleasure, boat trips, onward travel, bathing, food and drink or simply to enjoy the sea air. The main drivers behind all this activity were undoubtedly the ferries, of which there were many, although the fresh sea air and the local people certainly played their part.

In the mid 1700s, Newhaven harbour was a single stone pier. It was fast becoming a prominent ferry port.

sailed to London every ten days; the Aberdeen Smack & Steam Packet Co. ran from Newhaven to Aberdeen, Inverness and as far as Orkney; every Wednesday and Saturday, the London & Edinburgh Steam Packet Co. ran a service to London. This company had offices at Whale Bank at the top of the Whale Brae and in Maitland Street at the west end of the village approximately where Porto & Fi is today.

Because of the increase in the ferry services at Newhaven and Leith, the Trinity Pier Company employed the services of Capt. Sir Samuel Brown RN to design and build a pier. Already renowned in this area of engineering using chain, Brown built the Trinity Pier of Suspension, 700ft long and 4ft wide, at a cost of £4,000. It was opened on August 14, 1821 with great pomp and was quickly in service with steam packets, initially carrying goods and passengers to Queensferry, Grangemouth, Alloa and Stirling.

Although Queensferry was recognised as the shortest crossing by boat, sailing from Newhaven reduced the journey time for those travelling from Edinburgh to the Fife towns. The onehour coach journey from Edinburgh city was scheduled to meet incoming and outgoing ferries, brought passengers to Newhaven on a daily basis.

Regular sailings to Aberdour with goods and passengers, three daily sailings to Kirkcaldy and Dysart and four each to Burntisland and Pettycur show how busy it would have been in those early days. This was the start of bringing national prominence to Newhaven and for close on a century making it Scotland’s largest and busiest ferry port.

With the arrival of steam-powered ships in the 1800’s, the ferry services increased, and their destinations were further afield. The UK Steamship Co.

The fact that so many people were coming to Newhaven helped to develop the local hostelries in the village. One of the earliest, and probably the least well known today was The Whale. There is some speculation as to where it was actually located, but possibly at the foot of the Whale Brae — a coach service, the London Fly, left from here.

The Boatie Row Tavern was another well-frequented inn, situated as it was at the pier head. Probably the most famous, however, was the Peacock Inn.. Established by an Edinburgh man, Thomas Peacock. in 1767, he had an obvious eye for business and saw the large ferry traffic as being potential customers for his new business.

Originally consisting of a few onestorey cottages, which fronted on to the sea, they were frequently lashed by the waves on stormy days but despite

Long before the modern tourism industry came up with the concept of somewhere being a “destination” Newhaven was just that, writes Dougie Ratcliffe

V

20 | leithermagazine.com | Issue 165

Every Wednesday and Saturday, the London & Edinburgh Steam Packet Co. ran a service to London

Trinity Bridge of Suspension by C Hullamande, courtesy of the Liston Legacy

this he turned the inn into a lucrative business specialising in fish dinners.

Freshly caught and supplied by the local fishermen, it seemed he could do no wrong.

These and many other taverns throughout the village provided food and drink for the numerous visitors and travellers who came to Newhaven for the ferries and the pleasure sailings as well as the sea bathing, which was a popular activity.

The promenade at Annfield gave access to the beach, which was a popular place of leisure for both locals and the visitors. Unfortunately due to land reclamation this beach was lost in the 1930’s when the Western Harbour was being created.

As well as providing access for the ferries and pleasure cruises the Chain Pier was also used for sea bathing.

Bathing huts were available as well as a gymnasium at the end of the pier for the more athletic types to continue their

exercising. One of the feats was to swim to the Stone Pier and back, a distance of around 500m.

The demise of the ferry traffic and the general visitors to the area came about with the creation of Granton Harbour by the Duke of Buccleuch. Opened in November of 1835, most of the ferry services moved from Newhaven and the Chain Pier for this new and more modern facility.

The opening of the Forth Bridge in 1890 significantly impacted the ferry passenger services from the Edinburgh area, but the final blow was the great storm of 1898 when the pier was damaged beyond repair. All that was left worth saving was the ticket and booking office that we know today as The Old Chain Pier pub. n Ê Info: newhavenheritage@gmail.com

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Heroin ‘Uncut’ The Films of Peter Carr North Edinburgh Arts presents the first screening in more than 40 years of Heroin, a series of three films made by Peter Carr in North Edinburgh, first shown on ITV in 1983, Billy Gould edits

A

s poverty, crime and drug use in Scotland’s capital was ripping forgotten communities apart. Peter Carr was introduced to Jimmy Boyle co-founder of the Gateway Exchange. Who, in his turn introduced Peter to Support Help and Advice for Drug Addiction. The grassroots organisation set up by what Carr calls “two remarkable women” - Heather Black and Morag McLean - as a lifeline and support network for drug users.

This became the basis of Heroin, which over its three episodes reveals a powerful and moving portrait of a community surviving in the face of institutional neglect and contempt from local authorities who would rather keep it out of view.

After four decades, Peter Carr will revisit North Edinburgh for the screenings of his films which will be followed by a conversation between key figures on the making of Heroin and those around North Edinburgh then and now. } Heroin 1 followed by Irvine Welsh in conversation with Zoë Black, April 23, 6.30-8.30pm } Heroin 2 followed by Dr Roy Robertson in conversation with Victoria Burns, April 24, 6.30-8.30pm } Heroin 3 followed by Peter Carr in conversation with Sarah Drummond, April 25, 6.30-8.30pm An exhibition of production images from the films by Granada TV stills photographer Stewart Darby runs at North Edinburgh Arts alongside Heroin ‘Uncut’, from April 23 to May 17 2025.

Heroin ‘Uncut’ is dedicated to the memory of Heather Black, Morag McLean and all those friends, neighbours and loved ones who took part in the Heroin films. Though they may no longer be with us, their stories live on.

The tenacious Neil Cooper ferreted 22 | leithermagazine.com | Issue 165

away and was rewarded with an interview Peter gave to the Irish Times about the films, and he thought it a good fit for North Edinburgh Arts.

Kate Wimpress watched the films and introduced him to the Black sisters, who have been crucial to the project.

By this time Neil had a dialogue with Peter, and with the Black sisters and NEA on board, he originally planned an event for the 40th anniversary of the films in 2023. Unfortunately NEA were in the process of building their brand new centre, and things were put back.

Peter sent an essay he’d written in July of that year which will form an important part of the upcoming events here are some extracts:

Surely you mean Glasgow?

In 1982 I made documentary films about Styal prison, an old Victorian orphanage set in benign Cheshire countryside.

The regime was relaxed with women working as machinists and gardeners.

But one thing that struck me very forcibly was the number who were locked up for drug related offences. One or two were small-scale dealers, a couple of drug mules who had been caught at the airport, but the majority were users.

Almost invariably the drug of choice or dependence was heroin.

I went back to Granada Television and told Steve Morrison there seemed to be something of a heroin epidemic out there and that we should look into it. Surely it had to be London? Well, no, actually.

We thought of Liverpool and Manchester but they were too close to our home turf at Granada TV where we could go home at night. We wanted to embed ourselves in the project… how about Scotland? And of course it will have to be Glasgow. Rough old place, Glasgow!

Morag MacLean at The Villa in Pilton

And then somebody told me about Jimmy Boyle (mentioned earlier) who was running The Gateway Exchange in Edinburgh with his wife Sara Trevelyan.

I heard that he was deeply concerned about the growth of heroin use in Edinburgh. Surely not! The glittering festival city and Scotland’s capital? I came to Edinburgh to meet him, and he took me on a tour of some of the run down housing schemes in the west of the city, Wester Hailes, West Granton, Pilton and Muirhouse.

My Jimmy Boyle drug tour of Edinburgh included a trip down Leith Walk and the surrounding streets. He pointed out a couple of addresses where drugs were being dealt, and we watched the comings and goings for a while. Once or twice a police car passed slowly by, and when we headed back it followed us all the way through the city and out to Pilton. We arranged a meeting with Detective Inspector John Veitch, at the time head of the drugs squad. It wasn’t a happy meeting.

I remember his irritation above all with ‘little druggies’, whose offending behaviour took his officers away from the important business of fighting crime.

He conceded that he’d been aware of my presence, and that for all of our fine words and good intentions, it was clear

to him that we were simply engaged in this project ‘for the glorification of Mr James Boyle’.

You could understand his frustration.

Drug use and abuse was causing a massive increase in shoplifting and housebreaking as well as cheque and credit card fraud. Subsequent requests to film in police stations and prisons were all rejected, although Inspector Veitch did consent to the rather prickly interview we eventually included in the programme.

Jimmy Boyle next introduced me to two remarkable women; Morag McLean and Heather Black. This was in a Pilton portacabin, ironically named The Villa, where they were running a self-help group they had founded. It was officially known as Support, Help and Advice for Drug Addiction, a touch long winded for the informal little set-up, so it was always known simply as SHADA. The two of them, Heather with a background in community work, and Morag, who was a recovering heroin addict, had co-founded SHADA to try and gather support for fighting the heroin epidemic and the accompanying crisis of HIV and AIDS in the city.

It was the New Year, January 1983, The state of the place would break your heart, showing all the scars of

A New Year card from Morag in front of Peter wishes him the best for 1985, saying ‘Still clean, it’s a year now’

urban neglect, forlorn post-war council housing and once grand tenement blocks with boarded up windows, dogs hunting in packs, overgrown gardens and litter scattered like dirty confetti by cold sea winds. It was a place too deprived to have much pride, and hardly surprising that the mostly unemployed young people turned to drugs to escape.

Over the next few weeks, all manner of people wandered in and out as we watched the day-to-day business of the unlikely couple running SHADA. Morag was quiet and gentle, with a rather mournful demeanour, although given to flashes of self-deprecating humour. Let’s go for ‘laid back’ as a bit of convenient shorthand. Heather on the other hand was anything but laid back, a small fiery woman with a history of fighting the establishment for funding and backup from various agencies they had to deal with, including social services, housing, public health and, all too often, the police.

We spent a lot of time sitting in The Villa, occasionally filming the comings and goings. I say ‘filming’ because these were pre-video days. We worked with ten-minute magazines of film, which were expensive and strictly limited in number by the budget. The footage could only be viewed and reviewed after

it had been processed days later in the laboratory back in Manchester. It sounds clumsy in these whiz-bang film everything days, but actually, I think it worked in our favour. Neither the workers nor their young clients ever got to see themselves, quickly became unaware of when we were actually filming, and were never tempted to perform for us In the same programme, we spent one of our precious rolls of film talking to Morag MacLean and her mother about their story, with poor old dad sitting mute in the corner. When I say ‘you don’t see filming like that these days’, I mean it literally. For ten long minutes, nothing happens. There is no music, no cutting, just Jean McLean talking about the nightmare that her daughter put her through. It’s quite hard to watch, but I think it is a valuable piece of archive.

When the films were broadcast it was to a mixed reception. One review by Hugh Hebert in the Guardian said ‘The second part of Heroin was riveting. Its set piece was a meeting of the support group in which it emerges all the time we have been watching the two of them working themselves into the ground to help addicts, Morag herself has been slipping back into the habit. It is a shattering moment for the group, and for the television viewer who has placed faith in the girl without seeing what the strain is doing to her’.

So many of the characters in the films are gone now. I have a New Year card from Morag in front of me wishing me the best for 1985, and saying ‘Still clean, it’s a year now’ and adding ‘Dad died on 9th December’. She had moved to London at this point and lived on for a number of years before she herself passed away in 1991 from HIV related infection. She was survived by her lovely gentle mother, who wrote to me after her funeral saying how proud she was of Morag, saying ‘she’d been off everything for a few years and used to talk to schoolchildren about HIV and Aids. We are all so proud of what she achieved’.

I have another letter in front of me as well. It’s from Heather Black, and dated 1985. She is also talking about a bereavement, and says ‘I just hope I cope with the funeral alright on 19th July. I thought I’d be able to cope better but I suppose I’m human as well. I bet that came as a surprise to you’.

Actually, Heather, it didn’t. Behind that occasionally combative facade, I always found Heather to be a sensitive and caring person. We stayed in touch for a while. I came back to visit and she and Willie brought their three girls down to Manchester to stay for a day or two with me.

That all seems like a very long time ago now, and I was a bit remiss about staying in touch, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss her. Rest in Peace, Heather. ■ Peter Carr July 26th 2023 Ê Info: Eventbrite: Heroin ‘Uncut’ – The Films of Peter Carr, northedinburgharts.co.uk Issue 165 | leithermagazine.com | 23

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T

his spring, we shall see the welcome return of the Haunted Leith Ghost Walk. Having operated several walks throughout the city, I was excited about the prospect of a Leith venture. The event was a runaway success and concluded with a spooktacular Halloween extravaganza.

We covered many famous and lesserknown tales of the historic port and thrilling brave ghost walkers throughout the year. I discovered a brand-new nautical tale during a recent visit to the iconic Trinity House. Our story begins at sea.

A strange story is told in connection with the report of the 1880 murder at sea on board the barque Pontiac of Liverpool

by Jean Moyatos, a Greek sailor. We do not know whether the particulars we are about to relate came out in the investigation. Still, undoubtedly, they had a strong bearing on the case and made it probable that but for the hallucination of one of the crew - not the Greek sailor - the murder would not have taken place.

Five days after the Pontiac left Callao, Jean Moyatos murdered one of his fellow seamen and stabbed another in such a dangerous manner that his life was despaired. Two nights before the fatal occurrence, the mate of the Pontiac was standing near the man at the helm, no other person being on the quarter-deck at the time, when the latter, in great terror, called out, “What is that near the cabin door?” The mate replied that he saw nothing and looked about to see if anyone was near but failed to discover any person.

The steersman then, terrified, said the figure he saw was that of a strangelooking man, of ghostly appearance, and almost immediately afterwards exclaimed, “There he is again, standing at the cabin window.” Though given the place referred to, the mate saw no figure near it nor at any other part of the quarter-deck, though he looked round and round.

The next day, the report went from one to the other that a ghost was on board, which filled some sailors with alarm while others made a jest of it. A boy stowaway was so dreadfully alarmed in his bunk by something he saw or felt (we do not know which) that he cried so loudly as to waken all the seamen in bed. The boy was sure the ghost seen the previous night had frightened him, and others of more mature years were inclined to think so, too.

Perhaps more than one-half of those onboard believed that something supernatural was in the ship, and calamity would soon occur. A sailor joked with the boy about the ghost and said he would have his knife well-sharpened and ready for the ghost if it appeared the next night.

He would give it a stab and “chuck” it overboard.

Another sailor joined in the joke, saying he also would help “to do for the ghost”, and others said they would have letters ready for the ghost to carry to their friends in the other world. Jean Moyatos overheard what was said as to stabbing and throwing over-board,

The ghost ships of Leith

A few hours after the jesting, Moyatos stabbed the two men who principally carried out the jest

and in consequence of his imperfect knowledge of the English language and having previously supposed there was a conspiracy against him, thought the threats were made against him and therefore resolved to protect himself.

A few hours after the jesting we have briefly explained took place, Moyatos stabbed the two men who principally carried on the jest, with the fatal result known. The murder, as might be expected, filled everyone on board with horror, and the terror of the sailors who believed there was a ghost on board became overwhelming.

They had great dread at night, whether in bed or on watch on deck, which was heightened by reports that the crew heard strange noises from below. Not even at the end of the voyage had the fear been overcome, for after the ship lay moored in the docks of Leith, two of the crew who had agreed to sleep on board became so frightened after their companions were paid off that they refused to remain in the vessel at night.

Jean Moyatos, on being brought to trial

before the High Court of Justiciary, was found insane. Therefore, the Court ordered him to be confined to a lunatic asylum at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

This frightening tale of nautical nightmares echoes other ghostly stories of the sea. A terrifying encounter appeared in an Edinburgh newspaper in 1868. Three separate crews refused to sail upon the Leith vessel due to the horrific sight of a headless apparition at the rear of the vessel.

Let’s not forget the chilling events on board the Granton trawler ship, The Alma.

The terrifying encounter saw a crew member fall overboard only to return on a substantial wave on the opposite side of the boat. The fortunate fisherman claimed that a ghostly apparition bearing the phrase ‘Slange Var’ upon his hand reached out to save him from his descent into the icy waters where he sailed. n John Tantalon Ê Info: Join John on The Haunted Leith ghost walk on Saturday 29th March at 7.30 pm at Tower Place Issue 165 | leithermagazine.com | 25

Reframing The Universe Right now, I feel like I have two heads says Colin Montgomery, some might say both are a sniper’s dream

D

uring a recent saunter about the National Gallery I encountered ‘Exhibit A’ of a world reframed – and not for the better.

It always feels like you go ‘up the galleries’, rather than ‘to them’ – well in my head it does. To clarify, I refer to those classical sisters perched on the Mound, not the duo either side of Teletubbies Land up Belford way; that land art in front of Modern One always elicits an ‘eh-oh’.

Anyway, there, amongst the drawings on show at an exhibition by Dutch and Flemish masters, was a reframing…

No, not that kind of reframing. I mean, they hadn’t gone down The Range and picked up 3-for-2 on glass clip frames; it’s not the done thing for the most exquisite 17th century Flemish and Dutch masterpieces. A little on the gauche side, dahling. But then again, so is patronising your audience. Which, to my mind, is exactly what happened next.

Trigger warning: the following perspective might not be to your taste, but it is thought-through.

The moment arose when my partner and I were gazing in wonderment at a depiction of a person of colour, a portrait by some Dutch master or other (can’t remember the specific artist). It was, I think, a beautiful rendering in coloured chalk. A portrait of such skill in the way it effortlessly captured the innate character of this strong profile from the past. Then, just below, came, by way of contrast, the thudding clunk of a ‘learning moment’.

It just had to explain to us – to assuage some atavistic guilt – that there weren’t many black people in Northern Europe at that time. Certainly not people of status. Owing to the fact that, er… this was 17th century Northern Europe. That pearl of wisdom didn’t better inform my understanding of the drawing. Instead, it was an interruption, turning a colourblind appreciation of virtuosity into a moment laden with the baggage of the now.

Yes, baggage. Along the way there was another such information panel, informing us that no women artists featured because society was er… different back then. Again, all very well.

But rather than being enlightened – if you didn’t already know that we’ve come a long way on matters of race and gender since then – it was like someone tapping your shoulder, tutting, and doing a Marcel Marceau sad face. All silent tears and red braces.

26 | leithermagazine.com | Issue 165

And that’s where what I call my ‘dual heads’ end up butting heads. One head says: yes, to further our understanding of what is progress in society – the long road to where we are now, and where we still need to get to – is important. The other says: I don’t need to have an art gallery curate my thoughts, engineer my reactions, and divest me of the simple pleasure of appreciating a drawing. For the sake of it being… simply a drawing.

That may sound like boorish ignorance to some. Or a ‘first-world problem’. Or that I should go ‘check my privilege’ forthwith. But nah, sorry… because in the same vein, at the same gallery, I wouldn’t need a wee plaque telling me Degas was an anti-Semitic misogynist, or that Gaugin had his colonialist way with under-age Tahitian girls, or that any of the artists on show led terrible lives that would see them socially exiled today.

That’s not to say we ignore the character/societal flaws behind great works of artistic expression – be it painting, writing, music or anything else.

Such inconvenient truths – the not so much dirty but filthy laundry that often goes hand in hand with total genius – do

Pieter Jansz.

Saenredam, The Interior of St Bavo’s Church, Haarlem

I don’t need a wee plaque telling me Degas was an antiSemitic misogynist, or Gaugin liked underage Tahitian girls

have a role in helping us get under the skin of art and artists. But I wonder if, more and more, we spotlight it to placate contemporary guilt rather than to aid appreciation.

That would be like oh… watching a comedy skit by the late Janey Godley, but with a tickertape of stuff she said on Twitter years ago rolling across the bottom of the screen. Or listening to Wagner, but with a recorded message played every 30 seconds stating that ‘Hitler couldn’t get enough of his stuff’.

Or dropping Rabbie Burns from the Higher English curriculum in Scotland because he’s not ‘diverse’ enough. The last one is real.

Perhaps we should see the flawed world as it is/was, minus the need to reframe it with intrusions which seem there only as ‘safe words’, playing to the orthodoxies of modern audiences.

Especially so when such reframing only serves to distract the eye from the beauty of the art itself.

As Rabbie said: “God knows, I’m no’ the thing I should be. Nor am I even the thing I could be.”

But I’ll wager we’re thankful for his ‘being’ nonetheless. n

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TracyGriffen

Twenty years and still going strong

Writer without portfolio

‘I

t’s an interesting idea, but it will never work.”

“Why?” I asked.

The Business Gateway advisor Marco replied: “Because it’s not possible to run a business from the back of a bicycle.”

Challenge accepted! This was back in 2005, and Griffen Fitness is still going strong. I look back on those early days with fondness and a touch of awe. For five years my fitness business entailed riding my bike to people’s homes and getting them fit with minimal equipment (what I could carry in a pannier bag). In all weather.

What Marco didn’t know was that even back then I had a clear vision of my dream fitness studio. But it seemed a bit pie in the sky; as I had never worked in the industry before, had zero client base, and was only recently qualified. My other option was freelance writing, but I could see (even back then) that paid writing jobs were dwindling, and the world was getting fatter.

From 2005 to 2010 I cycled around Edinburgh every day, originally working seven days a week. As well as personal training I taught aqua aerobics cycling up to Gracemount, Drumbrae, Warrender and the Commy Pool, basically every pool in Auld Reekie.

My favourite classes were the Porty ladies, Leith Victoria (friendly and close) and the private members club at Drumsheugh. However, swimming pools were just watery stepping stones as I slowly built up a client base, savings and

28 | leithermagazine.com | Issue 165

a professional reputation for Personal Training. I have always preferred 121 interactions, less distractions with better results than groups.

Around 2009 I started this column, writing about fitness subjects in an accessible and hopefully entertaining manner. That means I’ve penned over 150 Leither pages. Anyhow back to the story…

By 2010 I had a client waiting list and discovered it’s impossible to cycle on ice (we’d had two successive ‘big freezes’), so opening a studio was the next logical step. A shopfront had just been vacated below my flat on Balfour Street, so I hunted down the property owner and asked to lease it. Shaf Rasul or The Shaf, as he’s known to Dragons Den fans was, unbelievably, my new landlord!

My savings were swallowed in admin fees as we formed a Limited Company, so Griffen Fitness Ltd opened without fanfare or property alterations. I lost around 75% of my client base overnight. Turned out my Newtown clients didn’t want to venture down to darkest Leith. So, I started rebuilding the business with a hyperlocal focus.

And then the recession hit. So, I added qualifications and worked harder to become a more sought-after trainer. In my quest for global domination (or at least earning a living), I embarked on an Extreme Kettlebell qualification. And got a ‘slipped disc’ doing the practical exam.

It was so bad I couldn’t even do press ups.

I had no income protection. 2011 was a painful year, I had the responsibility of a premises but could barely work. Instead I wrote the Healthy Living Yearbook. We self-published at the end of 2011 and had a very fun launch at the Drill Hall with a space hopper race.

Publishing a book was a confidence boost and I loved doing instore events at Waterstones and Blackwells. I discovered it’s possible to carry a pop-up banner on a bicycle. All the books were delivered to shops by bike. It was great to be busy again. And slowly business started coming back.

In 2012 we launched pop-up shops at the Griffen Fitness studio – we had all sorts, from jumble sales to art exhibitions, hula hoop gatherings and parties. All to the backdrop of tram roadworks. We had a decade of digging outside the door, and briefly an area we called ‘Oafland’, where Carillion roadworkers would congregate. It was messy and awful.

Does anyone remember the hole outside Leith Cycle Co that was there long enough to have its’ own ‘Happy Birthday Hole’ celebration? (More than one! – Ed) Anyhow, the oafs of Oafland

eventually downed tools and abandoned the project for awhile so we had some peace.

During which time, puppy Coco was adopted for the studio. Coco the fitness pug, her alter ego Jolly Jessie (that’s her show name if we take her to Crufts) stole our hearts and was my motivation to expand the business. From 2014 all I wanted to do was hang out with my dog in my studio, so corporate work got shelved, the opportunity to enter local politics (meetings too long and never dog-friendly) and off-site boot camps all got abandoned so I could hang out with Coco.

I did venture down to Downing Street on the back of Federation of Small Business stuff I was doing, but it didn’t feel ‘authentic’. About that time I read Malcolm Bradwell’s Outliers, which

28 Tracy Coco

L to r: Tracy & Coco limbering up for Crufts, the legendary Golden Bench outside the Studio, Tracy at 10 Downing Street on Federation of Small Business’s Day

I did venture down to Downing Street on the back of Federation of Small Business stuff I was doing, but it didn’t feel ‘authentic’

focused on how it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. After a decade of PTing I was nearly an expert.

Hoorah.

It became apparent that there were few local fitness experts. Even by 2015, I had been in the industry for a long time – over 90% of PT’s quit within the first years of setting up. So then and there I decided, no matter how tough it was, I would stick with what I was doing. In quiet weeks I’d write, hang with Coco and go to the allotment, and spend as little money as possible. Business improved from about 2016 and we bought the studio from The Shaf. Things were looking up.

It was about that time I interviewed the legendary Queen of Leith Mary Moriarty in her kitchen for this very magazine, and she inspired me to join in

the fun. I volunteered as a Board member of Leith Festival and learnt the ropes.

Coco was always welcome in the office, so I spent even more time there and eventually became Festival Director. By 2019 I was running a fitness studio, and a festival. It was a bit bonkers and as close to burn-out as I’ll ever get.

And then lockdown. Enforced rest.

Studio closure. All sessions cancelled. No festival. Aaaaah, pivot!

Adding webcam workouts from my kitchen, and writing a new book - Get Fit & Enjoy It - which taught the methods I was perfecting in the studio; helping reluctant exercisers get fit in an enjoyable and effective manner… without a gym.

At this point, leisure facilities were all shut with no indication of reopening.

In fact, every business reopened on Leith Walk before us. But, after lockdown, people started realising that you don’t need to go to a gym. What I was teaching in the studio has gone from being leftfield in 2005 to the new normal.

Teaching home exercise was a great justification to make the studio more lounge-like, even serving homegrown mint tea to clients. By this stage the Leith Walk roadworks were a part of everyday life, the noise of slab-cutters in the background.

Imagine my surprise when I heard the trams rattling down Leith Walk. Finally, I could put on the website, ‘next to Balfour Street tram stop’. Believe me the ding of the tram bell is a better background sound than roadworks.

But what’s that? A concrete bench plonked right outside the studio door?

No matter how long I’ve been around Leith Walk the actions of the Council never fail to surprise me. The bench directly and blatantly contravenes their own design guidelines for street furniture, no matter that we can hear what folk are saying on the bench in the studio! So we gave it a gold ‘makeover’…

There’s never a dull moment on Leith Walk.

The flipside of the dratted bench is that Griffen Fitness got to adopt one of the big rusty tram planters.

Yes, the Arthur Street planter remains, and I’m implementing my recent horticultural qualifications to create a biodiverse planter with pretty flowers – it will soon be a listed asset on the Edinburgh’s Nature Network.

That’s the thing about running a microbusiness. It can be quite random. You’ll have hectic patches, you’ll have mass cancellations, get injured, have no money, have sudden good luck, unexpected bills, dodgy tradespeople but, overall, you’ll have the freedom to experience all these things and do exactly what you want to do.

It’s not easy but I persevere, and honestly, it’s my best life. Thank you to all the Leither readers who have supported Griffen Fitness over the years.

Every time I falter, I remember that running a business is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. In twenty years I’ll be 70 in 20 years-time and I plan to be running a lettuce farm.

Just watch this space. n Ê info: www.griffenfitness.com Ê bluesky: @tracygriffen Issue 165 | leithermagazine.com | 29

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A face in the crowd Lawrence Lettice celebrates the career of the quite extraordinary actor Gene Hackman

T

here is a good case to be made that Gene Hackman was arguably the finest American screen actor of the past 55 years. While the level of tributes and genuine praise attributed to his contribution to American screen acting, entirely warranted and deserved.

Gene Hackman properly made his mark by the late 1960s and into the early 1970s; one of a new breed of actors who began to make immediate inroads into Hollywood film-making. This was the era of the American New Wave, a period in which much more complex character driven and artistically street-wise films were being produced, that required new actors to reflect that change and alteration in approach.

Along with the likes of Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Robert Duvall, Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, it was during that period, that Gene Hackman also began to attract attention.

Yet, he was not your traditional leading man with matinee idol looks; with one critic describing him as closely resembling a burly, beer-guzzling truck driver.

Yet though he lacked the movie star glamor of a Warren Beatty, or a Robert Redford, he possessed something much more substantial. For he was gifted with a domineering (sometimes intimidating) power, presence and an air of solid gravitas, that greatly elevated all of the films that benefited from his participation.

I recall discussing his career on the old Scot FM (remember that former Leith based radio station?) many years ago, comparing him with the great Spencer Tracy; an actor who at first glance, possessed that average, ordinary everyman persona, which made him so relatable and identifiable on screen. For audiences, he was real and he was human, often excelling as gruff authority figures, quietly disguising either malevolent menace, or heartfelt benevolence in equal measures.

Certainly, for me, one of the sheer joys of regularly going to the cinema during much of the 70s/80s/90s, was watching an actor such as Gene Hackman, grabbing the attention of the audience with a fierce fury that would often shake you out of all expectations.

For there were few actors during that time, who could dominate the screen with such a forceful compelling intensity – not forgetting a surprising versatility - than Hackman. Here was a performer who combined the judicious blend of an unorthodox leading man, with being a consummate character actor; a reluctant

and wary movie superstar, who was greatly respected (and at times) greatly feared by all who worked with him.

I always felt that if Gene Hackman was in a film, you were almost guaranteed that the quality of the story and characterization would be raised to a much higher level. He was also renowned throughout the industry as a hardworking, uncompromising and dedicated professional; an actor who strove to achieve honesty and truth through his performances.

Of course, in 1971, it was in his Oscar winning role as the bullish, aggressive rule-bending New York detective “Popeye” Doyle, that first turned him into a somewhat reluctant movie superstar.

Many of his other films are like a roll-call of some of the most popular and influential American films of the modern era that included: Bonnie And Clyde, The Poseidon Adventure, The Conversation, Young Frankenstein, Superman, Mississippi Burning and Unforgiven.

However, during his long career there are a number of less heralded films

Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle, doing what he does best

This was the era of the American New Wave, when more complex character driven street-wise films were produced

that are always worth catching (or re-catching) that displayed all of his talents and strengths.

For example: his vagabond traveler in Scarecrow, the horse loving cowboy in Bite The Bullet, the veteran basketball coach in Hoosiers, the Air force officer trapped behind Vietcong enemy lines in Bat 21, the Washington politician compromised and embroiled in a murder coverup in No Way Out, the assistant DA protecting a murder witness in Narrow Margin, the belligerent nuclear submarine commander about to trigger WW3 in Crimson Tide and (echoing his earlier role in The Conversation) the older, cynical surveillance expert in Enemy Of The State.

Avoiding typecasting even found him embracing eccentric comedy, playing the feckless father attempting to re-connect with his family after a long absence, in The Royal Tenenbaums.

Not long after that, he appeared opposite his old buddy Dustin Hoffman, in the convoluted courtroom thriller Runaway Jury. The intense and corrosive confrontation between the two actors during a break in the court proceedings, is simply a textbook example of American screen acting at its purest.

He retired from acting in his mid-70s, and focused upon a new career as a novelist, in which he found some success.

Even though he lived a long life, the recent tragic news of his death (and that of his wife) came as a bit of a shock to all who grew up watching and loving his movies.

However, he will always retain the affection, admiration and respect of generations of movie lovers, for his dedication to his craft, and for providing us with so many great screen moments and memories.

He was a hell of an actor, and his status as one of the greats is irrefutable. n Issue 165 | leithermagazine.com | 31

The Seafaring Spirit Festival…

W

ill be taking place in April at Newhaven Harbour and the Heart of Newhaven Community Centre. The event is hosted and created by Newhaven Coastal Rowing Club, who welcome you to celebrate Newhaven’s rich coastal connection with boat launches, celebrities, craft workshops, choirs, live bands, boat races, storytelling, RNLI safety demonstrations, and interactive exhibitions that bring the maritime history of Newhaven to life.

Coastal rowing is one of the fastestgrowing sports across Scotland and is now spreading across the world to countries such as the USA, Australia, and New Zealand. The Scottish Coastal Rowing Association was formed in 2010 to encourage communities to get involved in the building and rowing of boats, principally the St Ayles skiff.

There are now over 100 clubs and 300 boats registered worldwide. All the skiffs are built to the same specifications - 22 feet long, carrying a crew of five, with four rowers and one coxswain to steer and coach the team. The sport fosters a deep sense of community and teamwork and is accessible to people of all ages and abilities.

Newhaven Coastal Rowing Club was established in 2009, and over 300 people watched the launch of their first skiff, the ‘Wee Michael’, in November that year. The boat was fully funded and built by the local community and named by Newhaven’s Victoria Primary School pupils after the ‘Great Michael’, the legendary 16th-century warship built in Newhaven.

Since then, the club has expanded, adding two more boats to its fleet – ‘Bow Tow’, a smaller Wemyss skiff, and ‘Troika’, which was generously donated by the Muirhouse Youth Development Group in 2024. These boats have become a familiar sight in and around Newhaven Harbour, Crammond Island, Inchmickery, and along the North Edinburgh coastline.

2025 marks 900 years since Edinburgh was formally established as a burgh.

To mark this incredible milestone, Newhaven Coastal Rowing Club is hosting a free community festival, Seafaring Spirit, celebrating Newhaven’s role in Edinburgh’s history and the area’s deep-rooted coastal heritage.

One of the most exciting moments of the day will be the official launch of the club’s two newest boats, with the Trinity Sea Cadets providing a guard of honour, a piper salute, and local rowing clubs lined up with oars raised to pay tribute to the new boats.

To add to the excitement, none other 32 | leithermagazine.com | Issue 165

I’ll have plenty of odds on the Wee Michael winning this race!

Get creative, make your own model boat, fantastic fish, Newhaven Lighthouse, or even a seagull puppet

than Dame Katherine Grainger, the most decorated female rower of all time will be performing the ceremonies! Famously winning a gold medal in the double sculls at the 2012 London Olympics, along with four silver medals across five Olympic Games. Since 2017, she has served as Chair of UK Sport, promoting highperformance athletics and grassroots sports across the country. Her presence at the festival is a huge honour and reflects the growing interest in coastal rowing.

After the excitement of the launches, make sure to cheer on Newhaven as they race their skiffs against other local clubs in front of the Western Harbour. The RNLI will also be on hand to give safety demonstrations and offer a lifejacket clinic—we’re hoping their lifeboat will make a guest appearance too!

The festival is more than just about rowing though - it’s a full day of entertainment and hands-on experiences for all ages. Soak up the festival atmosphere and enjoy sea shanties and jaunty gigs with music and singing from local groups including the Newhaven Choir, Castle Chorus, the Edinburgh Ukrainian Choir, the Shanty Band, and the Grassmarket Band.

Alternatively, choose to be enthralled with stories from the high seas as you

listen to local storyteller Jan Bee Brown weave her tales.

Discover how Newhaven’s relationship with the sea has evolved over the centuries through interactive exhibitions. Get creative in one of the fun craft workshops throughout the day - design your own model boat, fantastic fish, Newhaven Lighthouse, or even a seagull puppet!

Or, head to the harbourside and put your knot-tying skills to the test! The Leith Scout troop will be demonstrating five essential knots that everyone should know—perfect for any budding sailor. You’ll never get your Clove Hitch muddled with your Bowline again!

With so much to see and do, the Seafaring Spirit Festival promises to be a fantastic day out for families, history buffs, and maritime enthusiasts alike.

Whether you’re watching the boat races, enjoying the music, or learning something new, this is a celebration you won’t want to miss! n David Thrall Ê Info: Seafaring Spirit, Newhaven’s Maritime Festival, Saturday 26th April 2025, (10am – 4pm) Free Ê Facebook: The Newhaven Coastal Rowing Club page will update as we get nearer the festival

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Issue 165 | leithermagazine.com | 33

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