A neighbourhood chronicle
Editor at Large
Off to Coburg Street to the home of Lind & Lime Gin in the giant blue hangar that used to house Sports Direct - which saw much of me during my younger football, cricket, and racket sport days.
These busy beavers are also the folk behind the remarkable Port of Leith Distillery, which has added a new silhouette to the already populous Leith skyline.
The company behind these landmark projects, Muckle Brig, are here to let us know more on their latest venture: The publication of The Leith Annual.
Co-CEO Ian Stirling explains: “We are fortunate to operate in a remarkable place, and we wanted to capture and document that wonder for local residents and visitors, as well as future generations.”
The Leith Annual’s editor, Johanna Derry Hall, says: “It’s been a pleasure to collaborate with local writers, illustrators, photographers and artists in celebration of the area exactly as it is now, and we will hopefully continue to chronicle the neighbourhood for many years to come.”
I was very impressed by the set up here, their aesthetic is all over this place. The Lind & Lime bottle is already a classic and the wrapping paper they use in the
Leith Walk topped a list of the of the 22 worst cycle lanes in the world
gift shop could be framed and put on your wall. No, really!
Co-CEO Paddy Fletcher is a bundle of energy, full of vim and vigour, outlining future projects. He elucidated on four or five plans during our 5 minute chat.
I predict he and his cohorts will be a force for good in the Old Port for years to come.
As I left (with the redoubtable Willy Barr) Paddy told me that The Leith Annual came in to being when he found out that The Port of Leith Authority published a yearly annual/album of their fiscal year including the business of the port, it’s traders and workers etc, in book form. And a light bulb popped…
Which was good news for me. In his manifest generosity he gave me a copy of the Port of Leith 1956 to compare and contrast. So, here we go!
The first 20 pages cover auxiliary services, passenger services, consuls, consulates and public transport to and from the docks. Some good pictures though.
The next 30 pages focus on rates and charges on; goods, vessels, dry docks, cranes etc, auxiliary services and other charges.
Pages 51 to 68 covers the Chamber of Commerce, Banking, Insurance, Shipowners and Shipping Agents which essentially names in detail those on the board and their shareholders.
Then 10 pages of adverts before we hit the meat of this compendium, pages 77 to 122, which documents the unbelievable amount of trades and industry that kept Leith families in work for generations.
The 1956 book turned it’s gaze inwards towards the port. Whereas the new Leith Annual looks outwards to the Leith neighbourhood and the people who live here: within you’ll find chapters on Arts & Creatives, the Environment, Brewing & Distilling, the Port itself, Hospitality, the Built Environment, Transport & Infrastructure, Charity & Community and Sport.
The 2024 iteration is beautifully designed and there is much to chew on...
‘Leith’s Custom House is on course to become home to Scotland’s first fully digital museum, and while the interiors
Athletics’
are transformed the outside will see Custom Lane become a place for dining and socialising’.
‘Leith School of Art’s bespoke Foundation Course is testament to the fact that each student is supplied with all the materials for their practice. What they provide is an arts education like it used to be up to the 1980s. Until it became financially challenging to do so’.
Finally, a few words from Sheena. “I don’t like Leith… I love it! I’ve only been here for 7 years, my husband died and I didn’t want to stay by myself in Fife. People here are so friendly.”
The Leith Annual 2024 is the inaugural issue of what will be an annual publication, available in retail shops across Leith and Edinburgh and Port of Leith and Lind & Lime distilleries. n
Ê Info: www.leithexport.com
4
12
16
It’s late in 2024, the world is going to hell in a handcart: Protempore
There’s a man in a wheelchair and a Rangers shirt who seems to have more plaster casts than he has limbs. Rodger Evans from hospital
Ken Wilson, holding Reagan accountable ‘felt like trying to convict a squirrel for trespassing’
25 He was wearing his own suit, his own glasses and didn’t scrounge free tickets for Proclaimers concerts! Lawrence Lettice
33
Imagine a boiler heating up without an ‘off’ switch and you get the general idea. Not that Tracy Griffen is calling herself an old boiler
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
© 2024 LEITHER PUBLISHING. Reproduction in whole or part is forbidden without the written permission of the Publishers. The Leither does not accept responsibility for unsolicited material.
If you have an interesting story we should know about, contact William Gould on tel: 07891 560 338. If you would like information on advertising or sponsorship opportunities with the Leither email: sue@leithermagazine.com
Cover: Illustration by Max Machen
Leith
Paolozzi strip
It’s late in 2024, the world is going to hell in a handcart
Not really the ideal time to be writing about hope as we glide towards Christmas and the end of another year on the relentlessly gaudy and desperate roller coaster we amusingly call life. Admittedly, my current worldview is somewhat clouded by my increasingly annoying habit of searching for stories which seek to provide the merest hint of truth in them, a search which has become almost impossible in the post-truth, disinformation morass which passes for the media these days.
There have been occasions recently when stories appear which seem to be so callous, so cruel and so mediaeval that you are forced to suspend all of your rational faculties to even begin to imagine that human beings could be involved in their perpetration. Regular readers will know that this column has previously commented on conflict and humanitarian catastrophes in places such as Yemen, Afghanistan and Palestine. And while these disasters continue to unfold at pace, they are merely the tip of a global, bloodied iceberg which is becoming more crimson by the day.
So far this year, it is estimated that one in seven people in the world have been involved in some form of major conflict and that there has been a 15% increase in political violence over the same period. One in seven people. It’s almost too fantastic to be true. Just think about it, by current population estimates, that means that in this year alone, 1.17 billion people on the little blue dot that we call home have woken up and been exposed to some form of traumatic conflict. In Palestine alone, 87% of the Palestinian population have been exposed to such conflict.
The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) website collects information on the dates, actors, locations, fatalities, and types of all reported political violence and protest events around the world. ACLED assesses every country and territory in the world according to four indicators - deadliness,
danger to the civilian population, geographic diffusion and armed group fragmentation.
In its latest assessment, ACLED concludes that the top fifty ranked countries and territories are experiencing extreme, high or turbulent levels of conflict. And you will not be surprised to find that currently, Palestine is the most dangerous and violent place in the world. I won’t list all of the top fifty countries in the index, but along with Palestine, there are a number of other countries which by anyone’s reading, are teetering on the precipice of outright carnage, bringing with it the prospect of famine, disease and/or terror. These include Sudan, Nigeria, Syria, Chad, Yemen, Mexico, Columbia, and Haiti.
When you have finally tried to make any kind of sense of the numbers involved (an impossible task, trust me, I’ve tried), you might also take a minute to consider what these levels of conflict actually mean on a daily basis for all of the innocent victims who are caught up in the quasi-religious and egomaniacal turmoil being visited upon them by evil old men who are hellbent on nothing more than making sure that their particular death cult makes it to the pearly gates at the front of the queue. Systematic rape, torture, murder, slavery, extra-judicial killings, starvation, dehydration, and disease. Every day. One in seven people, including millions of children. Every day. In the midst of all this desperation we would ordinarily look to our more civilised political institutions to do whatever was in their gift in order to mitigate and hope beyond hope that they can end some of the unimaginable
It’s estimated one in seven people in the world has been involved in major conflict this year
Graham Ross
carnage being wrought on our brothers and sisters in the global community.
The United Nations? Despite issuing hundreds of resolutions aimed at reducing conflict around the world, the UN has been completely ignored at every turn by those countries who continue to terrorise and destroy other human beings with the complicit backing of so-called allies, and therefore seems utterly powerless to engender any moves towards peace. Powerful western governments also regularly issue mealy-mouthed statements condemning atrocities, while at the same time arming the very people carrying them out.
For example, the UK, the United States, France and Germany are all more than guilty for arming Israel while it continues its murderous rampage in Palestine. They have also contributed heavily to the Saudi regime’s continual bombardment of the people of Yemen for decades, resulting in over half of the population not knowing if they will eat from one day to the next. That’s 17 million people if numbers are still important to you.
So is there any hope?
Don’t expect it from the UK government. Don’t imagine that the next American president will come to the rescue whoever they are. Don’t expect Netanyahu, bin Salman, or Putin to have a collective Damascene conversion any time soon.
Do take to the streets when you can. Do seek out those charities at home and abroad working tirelessly against all the odds to alleviate suffering and effect change.
Check out the Trussell Trust, Medecins Sans Frontieres, the Amos Trust and UNICEF.
And do, please, keep hoping. n
Going for a song…
As the omnishambles of 2024 staggers to a close, few would sing its praises. But there is still ‘a song in my heart’, claims Colin Montgomery
Do not adjust your sets. Or adjust your specs. Or adjust anything else for that matter – unless it’s on doctor’s orders and out of public view. Yes, a song in my heart. Regular readers of my bilge will be snorting loudly. “You? Embittered, cynical, Montgomery? Full of blithe assertions and chippy observations? A song in YOUR BLACK HEART?” Well, incredibly, yes… a final twist in this most twisted of years. The ghoul-show of 2024.
But on with the show. And not the ghoulish variety; I’m thinking ‘song and dance show’. Or more accurately, ‘song show’. With songs written to order a la David Bowie. For it was the other day that I stumbled down a rabbit hole of internet dilly-dallying inspired by his 72’ classic The Jean Genie - a gusty stomp that played host to carnival of cut and paste lyrics which Bowie himself described as “a smorgasbord of imagined Americana”. That mish-mash of phraseological flourish is apt. Because the song follows suit, borrowing from hither and thither musically too – although anchoring the
sassy splurge is his nod to the chugging garage beats of The Yardbirds. And that’s where the backstory got more interesting for me. For it led me to one… Cyrinda Foxe. The song’s ‘inspiration’ as it were. She even makes a wowy blonde cameo in the official video for the track. Foxe was foxy. No accidental nominative determinism though. When this actress, publicist and model (part of the Warhol set) changed her name to Foxe she knew what she was up to. As did Bowie in the NYC apartment where he shared a… ahem… romantic evening with her. So smitten was he with Foxe’s vulpine charms that he asked if he may write a song especially for her. She suggested something with a Yardbirds vibe.
So, the Jean Genie was released from the lamp. Or rather from Bowie’s genieus mind. “I wrote it for her amusement in her apartment. Sexy girl.” That iconic opening riff at first; the wonderful jumble of lyrics came later. But the point of all this is… he knocked off a song to order. Almost whimsically. And it got me thinking, as we toboggan downhill into the season of songs written to order, aka Christmas tosh… maybe I should follow suit.
Yes, if Roy Wood, Noddy Holder, and Shakin’ Stevens can batter out tinselly toe-tappers for money, why can’t we all do it? Songs to order. And for sale. Not even confined to Christmas – for you may be reading this hungover in the first
week of January. How much is that ditty in the window… the one with the terrible title and idiotic kazoo solo? I’ll tell you exactly how much. Step aside, Tin Pan Alley. Make way for Monty’s Magic Songbook.
The Ballad of Old Bonnington Road: £42.60
I love a tear-jerking ballad, full of love, regret and thwarted desire. This belter ticks at least one of those boxes – the thwarted desire of a man who, as the old storytellers had it, attempted to drive down Bonnington Road without meeting temporary traffic lights, abandoned holes in the road or ‘essential works’. This stretch of tarmac is rarely without them. Ever. To try and drive down unchecked is to seek a quick bunk-up in a convent.
W-I-N-T-E-R: £178K (renewable annually)
Time to lighten the mood with this swanky tribute to cult outfit, Ottawan, nodding heavily towards their 1980 ‘speak and spell’ classic D-I-S-C-O. Here though, our subject is the magical winter markets that turn Embra into a wonderland! Sorry, that came out wrong. I meant, turn it into a vulgar moneygrabbing tat-fest. Hands up baby, hands up…
Who Put the Tram?: £2 single or 30 barbiturates
Cyrinda Foxe with David Bowie on the set of his music video The Jean Genie 1972
Next, a parody of a parody: Barry Mann’s novelty hit from 1961, ‘Who Put the Bomp?’ featuring the refrain: “who put the ram in the ram-a-lama- ding-dong?”. In my version, that’s “who put the tram in the tram-a-lama-ding-dong?”. The ding dong being the fecking tram bell chiming outside my living room window. Oh death, where is thy sting?
I Bought the Blaw (and the Blaw Won): £Market rate for a half Q Edgy public-school educated punk idol, Joe Strummer, turned Sonny Curtis’s ‘I Fought the Law’ into a rebel yell of disaffected youth. Today’s youth prefer a blunt smoked in public. Stroll down Leith Walk and you inhale a bong’s worth. The sickly smell of the ‘blaw’ is everywhere. But it’s “cool maaaannn”. Hence this snarl of selective liberalism.
You’ll Never Walk as Shown: £A grand (old farce)
I stumbled down a rabbit hole of internet dilly-dallying inspired by Bowie’s 72’ classic The Jean Genie
The big finish. Taking it cues from Gerry Marsden’s emotional anthem, my take on Picardy Place roundabout and its jaywalking kamikaze pedestrians. Now free to traipse through the ugly wee bollard things into traffic, on their phones, they ignore the pedestrian crossing 20 yards away (rendering it pointless), and walk on, walk on… a rousing paean to the idiocy of illthought-out infrastructural changes. Winner.
Remember, these magical songs are not available in any shops, anywhere, ever. Fortunately. But I hope your festive seasons are sound as a pound. All the best. n
CHRISTMAS
2kg Turkey Roll
1kg Gammon Roll
1kg Stuffing
1Ib Chipolatas
1b Streaky Bacon
1 Smoked Ham Hock PRICE £60
2kg Turkey Roll
1kg Beef Roast
1kg Gammon Roll
1lb Chipolatas
1Ib Streaky Bacon
1.2lb Sage & onion stuffing
1 Smoked Ham Hough
1 Broth or Lentil mix
Evie & the Guerrilla Gardeners
This is the first of a series of Stephen Millar articles on recently founded community organisations that are making an impact on the lives of many Leithers, and also those living beyond the boundaries of the Republic itself
Earth in Common is a charity that focuses on food and its place within the community. It was founded in 2013 and today is based on a 2-acre site on the Northwest corner of Leith Links. The location contains a market garden, growing plots, and a new base - a former sports pavilion that the charity had rebuilt, and which opened to the public in 2023. I come here a lot. As someone relatively new to Leith and trying to lay down roots, I took the plunge and got a plot of my own. I spend hours in the cafe and buy locally grown produce there. I have countless conversations with people who are Leithers or have come from far flung parts of the world who - through circumstance - have had their own lives changed in some way by what goes on at the Croft.
The new building on the Links also opens the area up to the community more widely. If growing vegetables is not your thing (at the moment…), you can still come to the yoga class, join the choir, play chess, take part in a poetry night or the hula-hoop competition, get your bike fixed, find a venue for your kid’s birthday party….. the list of possible activities is long and growing.
In just a few years, the Croft has become an important part of many people’s day to day lives. It has almost become a village of its own within Leith and if you have not heard of it, or passed by and not popped in, I strongly encourage you to do so. It might change your life.
Underpinning it all, is the charity’s commitment to reclaiming common land, producing healthy food and making nature accessible. These aims are a challenge in densely populated Leith, but it has been achieved in
a short space of time - however not without difficulty or challenges.
It all began with Evie. Born in Leith, and a mum of four, Evie knew well the darker elements of the community. She was a counsellor who helped those with addiction, particularly during the infamous ‘Trainspotting’ era when heroin addiction reached tragic levels. Many of her acquaintances in Leith succumbed.
Struggling to entertain four children in a small flat, Evie started small. She began growing vegetables on a desolate patch of land behind her flat in Leith. The kids loved it, and Evie could see the mental and physical benefits for them and herself.
Evie began working with other ‘guerrilla gardeners’ to take over other grim public spaces that had fallen between the cracks. It was a grassroots movement - no public funding, activities that led to conflict with landowners, and required determination and self-belief. But something was working and after a while Evie and her guerilla gardeners decided to set up a community group that would help spread the benefits beyond just their immediate circle.
One of the biggest challenges was to find a home. They found an abandoned part of Leith Links Park, at the time overgrown and often littered with used syringes. The guerilla gardeners got consent from the council and transformed the area, and out of nothing created a forest garden and communal plots. In the early days there was a small shed, The Hingabootery, which sold drinks and snacks.
Workshops were created to teach local children about the environment and food, and the market garden was set up to produce tons of fresh produce every year.
Evie’s wider mission is “a blueprint that can be replicated in urban regeneration across Scotland.”
Say hello to the girls: Evie, Catherine, Fiona, Sara and Jaimie
Now a charity, Earth in Common began making connections with other communities both in Scotland and further away. One notable collaboration involved working with schools in the Northern Region of Malawi.
The benefits to local people are widespread. For many it is a place just to relax, have lunch, and talk to others. The atmosphere is different, and it can feel like a retreat, hidden away behind the hedges around the site that separate it from neighbouring roads and the rest of the Links.
For many newcomers who work in the cafe, take part in or lead an evening class, or volunteer in the market garden, the charity has become one of the focal points of their lives. If people in the community feel isolated or are looking to connect with others, this is one of the best opportunities you will have in Leith.
There are many other parts of the city where no such opportunities exist so Evie and her team are not just achieving goals relating to food, but also changing the lives of many local people in a way Evie never envisaged when trying to grow potatoes on a derelict concrete plot years ago.
But Earth in Common - like many community groups - faces the daily challenge of finding money to keep going. The charity has received funds from various sources such as the National Lottery and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, but really needs more to stay afloat in the future.
You can help them by becoming a supporter for £15 pounds a year (for an individual). This provides several benefits, including 10% off cafe and farmhouse purchases, workshops and courses, discounts on venue hire for special occasions. That equates to about the cost of about two or three drinks in a local pub, so represents amazing value given the benefits of becoming involved in the Croft.
If you want to try growing your own produce (and if I can do it, you surely will…), you can put your name down for a plot. I have one, and whilst I am still learning, in the first couple of years I have grown potatoes, onions, beetroot, strawberries and peas - something I had never done before.
The impact on local children has also been significant, and over the years hundreds of Leith kids have attended workshops, taken part in Minecroft (a survival skills course), or just hung out with a parent growing vegetables.
What of the future? Evie tells me over the next decade she wants the charity to become more self-sufficient financially and so able to deliver more for the Leith community. Evie wider mission is “a blueprint that can be replicated in urban regeneration across Scotland. To see all communities like Leith with urban crofts, or projects like them, thriving and supporting environmental jobs and businesses”.
If you want to take part in this journey, pop into the cafe or visit earthin-common.org.
You won’t regret it. n
FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD
We are in A&E on a Sunday afternoon…
It begins with an ache in my lower back, no more than a minor chord, barely a whisper really. This is an hour into the shift and not discomforting enough to stop me taking another call. An hour passes, the pain intensifying from dull to just about tolerable, like a librarian’s shush, or a muffled snare drum. I put it down to bad posture and peering at my laptop in a work meeting yesterday.
Boiling the kettle, ignoring the biscuit tin, I slurp my tea and check the time. Five to three in the morning and if the birds outside aren’t singing yet, the dashboard on my screen suggests 20 people are awake and the average waiting time is 9 minutes. During the next call, my final of this nightshift, what was bearable is becoming something else, the vocal closer to a werewolf’s blues, the rhythm section courtesy of Sly and Robbie.
A wave of nausea hits me. Then another. And another. I change my sitting position, try standing, stretch muscles I’d rather not, but there’s no respite. The waves are bigger and badder and they keep coming. I feel my concentration slipping down into the inky depths and try to bring the call to some kind of acceptable conclusion.
The taxi home is quick and the driver avoids most of the potholes. He doesn’t talk and for all these things I say a little prayer to Bacharach and David. Some Ibuprofen and two calls to NHS24 later, an out-of-hours doctor at Little France is giving me a painkilling injection, and we head home and I try to sleep, finding myself counting kidney stones rather than sheep.
A week passes; the kidney stone(s)
There’s a man in a wheelchair and a Rangers shirt who seems to have more plaster casts than he has limbs
don’t. We’re in A&E on a Sunday afternoon and while this isn’t quite “the corridor care” the British Medical Association will highlight in the news the next day, it is an eye opener. There’s a man in a wheelchair and a Rangers shirt who seems to have more plaster casts than he has limbs. Several folk have head wounds. A young guy sits between police officers. I don’t think he’s handcuffed but he is comparing misadventures with somebody dressed as if they’ve just finished a pint in Spoons and about to board the flight to Ibiza.
My threshold for pain, let me say, is laughably low and this episode beats even that of having a cyst removed from under an eye-lid, the memory of which is conflated in my phantasmagoria with scenes from Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange. My Room 101, if I may mix the literary and cinematic references, will forever be a darkened room on the second floor of the Edinburgh Eye Pavilion. Rats not included.
Back in A&E, my name is called and I’m given a wrist tag (maybe I too will be boarding that plane to Ibiza), have blood taken, and am escorted to a cubicle where I spend the next 17 hours. A Nigerian doctor asks me questions, prods in a few places, and gives me a cardboard receptacle for a urine sample which an Irish nurse later collects. I’m staying put till they stabilise the pain and schedule a scan for which I need to be put on a drip for hydration purposes.
The latter never happens but that doesn’t stop me thinking about it as I lie on a trolley, covered by a white sheet with a dozen tiny spots of blood, not mine, while a series of other patients
have their not-so-private consultations in the next door cubicle. One such neighbour is decked out like an off-duty clown, and has an intensity hinting at a less than idyllic childhood and ongoing mental health struggles. Swears he knows me from somewhere, a cafe in Leith? No, I’m not a musician. But turns out he is.
The scan shows a kidney stone of 4.6 millimetres at its widest, large enough to be of concern, but not sufficient for immediate intervention. I’m given a bag of painkillers but no suppositories this time. (What am I supposed to do with this? etc.) Another week passes, maybe two, and I go back to work, keep taking the tablets, drink enough water to drown an angry Pharoah and all his men. And somehow make it to Munich and back via Amsterdam and Paris to see a game of football I’ll never be able to forget; however hard I try.
An appointment letter arrives from the Western for another scan and on a glorious Monday morning in June I am informed that my kidney stone is gone. Seems I must have flushed it out, along with Ramesses the Great and his avenging army. I am grateful. I am exultant. I am whole despite part of me that was for the last month part of me no longer being part of me.
The sky is bluer somehow and the sun shinier and I want to sing The Israelites, that Desmond Decker song, but the horror show of today’s geopolitical reality wags its finger at me. And I wind down the car window and breathe in the fumes of Ferry Road instead. n
Rodger Evans
That eye scene from Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange
A Luhrmann or a Chiles?
There is, as mentioned before on these pages, a particular set of challenges around writing for a print magazine that comes out every 6 weeks. As a writer, you might want to explore subjects that are vaguely seasonal and/or topical. But there’s always the worry that by the time anyone actually reads your article, circumstances will have changed so fundamentally as to render it completely irrelevant – or, at best, an inadvertently amusing relic of bygone times.
If, for instance, I’d written a scathing denunciation of Liz Truss for this magazine on the day she became Prime Minister, it would barely have gone to print before she was politely but firmly invited to hop it, leaving a self-inflicted financial crisis and a still-perky lettuce in her wake. By the time the next issue of The Leither came out, her successor would already have been facing calls for his own resignation; though to give Rishi Sunak his due, he proved the doubters wrong by grimly hanging on long enough to lead his party into electoral
If you regret losing touch, get in touch – not everything is easier nowadays, but this is
oblivion. So fair play to him there. When it comes to writing in a timesensitive way, the last issue of the year always poses its own unique difficulties. Depending on when you pick up your copy in relation to the annual cavalcade through Black Friday, Christmas, Hogmanay and whatever they’re calling January these days, it might be the season to be extravagant, jolly, shitfaced or abstemious. It’s even possible that you’ve stumbled on this article online, years after its composition, while trying to Google an experimental improv show called ‘Shitfaced/Abstemious’ at the 2037 Edinburgh Fringe.
To complicate matters further, a couple of delicately balanced world events have the potential, at the time of writing, to produce outcomes ranging from “oh heck, that’s not ideal” to “oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit”. And jokes about a wannabe fascist dictator have the potential to fall rather flat if, come publication day, he’s already moved on to being a practising fascist dictator.
There are a few possible ways to
approach this timing conundrum. One is, bluntly speaking, to ignore it. “Here is my accumulated wisdom around pigs in blankets; and if you’re reading this in November or January, simply skip it for now and set a phone reminder to read it when it next becomes relevant.” But however tempting that might be, I’m not sure it quite suits the medium. So I’m left with a choice of two contrasting approaches: the Luhrmann and the Chiles.
A Chiles takes its name from the affable broadcaster Adrian Chiles, whose regular Guardian column has gained a kind of cult status for its sheer commitment to the homespun and mundane. Genuine Chiles column headlines include ‘The dog has a cough – and I’m £80 poorer’, ‘If dishwasherloading was a sport, my dad would be world champion’, and the nearlegendary ‘We can go to the moon – so why can’t we stop my glasses sliding down my nose?’.
Whatever your opinion of this type of column, it has two things in its favour: it’s equally suitable for any time of year, and it’s highly unlikely to be overtaken by major geopolitical events. So I’ve tried drafting a few of my own in a similar vein, such as ‘Whatever happened to sporks?’, ‘Slipper socks changed my life’ and ‘Is it just me, or are squirrels getting cheekier?’. But my heart’s not really in it; and in any case, as the homeworking parent of a toddler, my daily routine is currently so banal as to make Adrian Chiles seem like Ozzy Osbourne. So it’s going to have to be a Luhrmann. This is based on the film director Baz Luhrmann’s spoken word hit Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen), which takes the form of short, largely unrelated pieces of life advice set to a musical backdrop. The lyrics, often wrongly attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, in fact came from a column by the journalist Mary Schmich. For my version, please choose whichever musical accompaniment that seems apt, and do feel free to misattribute my words to Kurt Vonnegut. And as tends to be the way with unsolicited advice, I offer it up not because I’m particularly good at following it, but because I’m prone to forgetting it.
Be kind. Shop small. Dream mediumsized. Go to gigs (small to medium-sized, ideally). See the film Since Yesterday. Support crowdfunders. Try pottery. Remember what makes you laugh the hardest and turn to it when you need it. Don’t boil courgettes. Buy a stick blender. Make stock. Take stock. Be kind, and beware those who are unkind. (Not just the ones who have been directly unkind to you.) If you regret losing touch, get in touch – not everything is easier nowadays, but this is. If you regret being in touch, slip away. This, admittedly, is harder.
Be kind, including to yourself. Accept that you can’t do everything, or even most things. Nor can anyone. Make tiny changes. Donate to Tiny Changes. Be kind, and have a good Christmas. And if by some chance it’s not Christmas, have a great whatever day it is. n
Tom Wheeler
Kennedy Wilson on three giants of American politics and Welles
In Ask Not (Mudlark £25) Maureen Callahan reveals a murky side of Camelot, namely the way the Kennedy clan mistreated its women. JFK’s tragic affair with Marilyn Monroe was an eerie echo of his father’s with silent star Gloria Swanson in the 1920s. And Jack Kennedy’s brothers Bobby and Teddy and his son JFK Jr all had disastrous relationships with women. Jack Kennedy’s sisters Rosemary and Kathleen were treated abominably, the former on account of her mental incapacity and the second for daring to marry a nonCatholic. ‘Kennedy men have been valorised for nearly a century’, writes Callahan in the book’s prologue. ‘But the women they’ve broken, tormented, raped, murdered, or left for dead have never really been part of their legacy’.
Another president with film connections was Ronald Reagan. In Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot (Norton £35) readers are reminded that Reagan and Trump were the only American presidents to have their own TV show. Reagan was a pretty dud actor in the 1940s; a third-rate Errol Flynn appearing in a series of forgettable westerns and war films. His acting can best be described as balsa. But his presidency, it’s argued by Boot, helped usher in the dangers of The Donald: an empty-headed mouthpiece for crazy, ill-informed ideas.
In 1983 Reagan sent ill-prepared US Marines to Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping mission only to see more than 200 of them killed in a huge truck bombing. Public pressure forced him to withdraw from Lebanon within a few months. Reagan became governor of California in 1966 and his later presidency helped shape the ‘greed is good’ 1980s. He was never the brightest crayon in the box and, like Trump, relied on aides and like-minded yes-men senators to take his hand.
Holding Reagan accountable ‘felt like trying to convict a squirrel for trespassing’ writes historian Daniel Immerwahr. Iran Contra, in bed with Thatcher, and his bungling of Aids healthcare, were just some of Reagan’s blunders.
Pamela Churchill Harriman was a woman who grabbed life by the throat. She was as at home with movie people as politicians. She had film-star looks and in 1960 married her second husband the Hollywood agent and Broadway producer Leland Hayward. It was a relationship complicated by his troubled children from a previous marriage. Leland Hayward managed stars like Fred Astaire and Judy Garland and he once dated Katherine Hepburn. In 1961 Pamela’s stepdaughter Brooke Hayward married the maverick actor Dennis Hopper much against Pamela’s wishes. Brooke later wrote a tell-all memoir about her dysfunctional family.
Sonia Purnell’s Kingmaker (Virago £25)
When sex and politics were not topics for polite conversation
is a heroically-researched biography of sex, politics and star power that sets out Harriman’s place in modern history. ‘Pamela is almost forgotten now but she was arguably the most famous diplomat in the world and the most powerful courtesan in history,’ writes Purnell. Admired and loathed during her lifetime she was ‘the subject of multiple blood feuds, four excoriating books and a litany of lawsuits’.
Purnell tells a gripping tale of Harriman (quite at odds with her reputation as a scheming gold-digger), a woman who left school with no qualifications but used her aristocratic lineage and good looks to connect with such powerbrokers as Nelson Mandela, Joe Biden and the Kennedys. ‘She took hundreds of lovers, but what excited her most was power’, writes Purnell. In America she was a fierce Democrat backing Clinton’s presidency (he made her the American ambassador to France). She found the prospect of Reagan as leader of the free world ‘terrifying’. What would she have made of Trump?
For vintage film fans the glorious and beautifully illustrated The Third Man: The Official Story of the Film by John Walsh (Titan £24.99) looks at one of the
Holding Reagan accountable ‘felt like trying to convict a squirrel for trespassing’ writes historian Daniel Immerwahr
finest British films ever made. About to celebrate its 75th anniversary The Third Man (1949) is a brilliant thriller set in gloomy, black-market Vienna. It’s a superbly sinister evocation of the city at night: the wet cobbles, the chase in the sewers, the big wheel… and the famous quote: “in Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” (Only the cuckoo clock came from Germany.)
Orson Welles made his character, Harry Lime, one of the cinema’s greatest antiheroes. And the movie influenced an array of subsequent filmmakers from Kurosawa to Scorsese. The famous theme tune, played on the zither, still has the power to raise the hairs on the back of the neck. There’s a great cast apart from Welles. Joseph Cotton plays Lime’s buddy, out of his depth in a foreign city, and Alida Valli is particularly affecting as the woman lost to grief. n
Ê X: KenWilson84
The editor of this Priceless Organ has a page to fill…
Sea Change
Enduring Leith spirit helps power change
has seen many changes since I first moved decades ago. Whilst it may feel like all changed, the essence of who we are as a community and the strong sense of identity Leith has persevered and, I would argue, is Leith has been able to adapt and diversify throughout all the changes we’ve seen. This collection of stories lays clear how change allowed us to build the diverse, vibrant unified Leith we see today. We’ve grown stronger through the changes by maintaining famous Leith spirit, which will endure for to come.
Foysol Choudhury for Lothian Region, Convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Cross-Party Group on Culture and Communities
www.leithwritings.co.uk for edition 101 The Darting Salamander edition 102 The Seagull at the Shore edition 103 Small Talk on the Walk January 2025 for the theme for edition 105 and an invitation to send your work
works of adults using mature writing styles?’
We get away with it, he says, by selecting items that relate to the theme of change.
But it’s a good question. Is it an uncomfortable fit? Would we be better having separate editions?
Maybe it’s important to bring all voices together, in one safe place. They don’t have to agree. But they all need to be respected.
The anthology opens with Annie McCrae playing around with our theme: ‘Short change, loose change… change the clocks, change hands… change face… change your tune… step change… all change’
The last piece is from Mike Cowley, which seems to contradict the whole idea of change: ’When we met / Beneath the canopy of the spreading chestnut tree / We spoke of distant planets / And how the future used to be. / When wise men cautioned / Against the opium of hope…’
And plumb dead centre we put
Anthology of Leith Writing
Lawrence Dinse’s piece describing his working day before the last shift at Henry Robb’s shipyard in 1983, after which it was demolished and Ocean Terminal was built.
What a vivid, living, relatable, concrete demonstration of our theme!
Before Garry Stanton presented his piece, he paid homage to his old English teacher who he recognised: John Young. The years pass. Schoolboy faces change. The memory fades. It’s not certain that John recognised Garry.
Sea Change is a strand in the wider, endlessly diverse community of Leith
Sea Change is not just words. The cover artwork is by Norman Oyoo who is fresh from his native Uganda. He had two years at Drummond High School, and now he’s at Edinburgh College. He has provided the artwork for every edition so far.
The title was a gift to him. The cover depicts an enormous wave breaking up and crashing over a small rocky outcrop – or maybe it’s a concrete block – representing some sort of resistance to change. And on the
block is a pair of shoes, exposed and vulnerable.
The imagery says: good luck with resisting change. We who are older attest to the sober truth of this observation.
It is a scientific statement that no process can ever be exactly repeated, however similar a repeat may seem. Time itself is an irresistible dynamic force that forbids repetition.
We love working with Out of the Blueprint at Dalmeny Street. Bethany Thompson has a wonderful eye for layout on the page, and she has given us our house style.
The paper isn’t white, and the ink isn’t black. They use rice ink on 100% re-cycled paper. The hard copy has a lovely texture.
Pick up your own copy from various places around town. The main pick-up point is Argonaut Books at the foot of the Walk. And they will take cash donations for the next edition.
The libraries have it. And we have a digital version on our web site: see below.
We believe in the power of the page. Authors need to assemble their thoughts, fantasies, or facts, whatever they are dealing with, into an order that conveys something interesting, or fun, or instructive to others.
That process alone is worthwhile. If it is put between book covers and published, the effort is rewarded and it is encouragement to get more ambitious.
And it forms a community. Sea Change is a strand in the wider, endlessly diverse community of Leith.
Since our first outing four years ago, we have become a charity recognised by OSCR. This means that we can apply to funding bodies and increase the print run.
Sharpen your pen. Dust down your keyboard. Assemble your thoughts, or fantasies, or facts and see how they fit into next year’s theme.
And now, dear reader, I owe our Esteemed Editor two pints.
Visit our web site or comms in January. n Tim Bell Redux
Ê Info: facebook leithwriting; Instagram leithwritings; www.leithwritings.co.uk
Cover artwork by Norman Oyoo
I retired this summer. Of course, it’s been hard to step away. But I’ve always believed that life is about purpose.
So, what now?
This summer I’ve been reflecting on the conversations I’ve had with so many young people over two decades whilst building my charity, www.workingrite.co.uk, I must have spoken to hundreds.
It feels like a privilege to have heard the individual stories of a generation when they were teenagers, about to embark on their working adulthoods.
They came from all over Scotland; most had left school as soon as they could, usually without any sense of what they wanted to do. We helped get them into jobs with a future, usually apprenticeships. The oldest are now in their mid-thirties, many with children of their own. Some have since started their own businesses.
Nearly all the conversations were the same: what next for their lives?
They wanted a future: the right job for their skills, enough money to support their needs and desires. None wanted to go to university,
around the world are falling, whilst the over 65s’ tier of the population continues to increase. In Scotland, the so-called baby boomers now comprise nearly a fifth of our society.
A society where we have fewer new wage-earners to generate all the taxes the state needs to, amongst other things, finance the older generations’ longevity. Perhaps a debate as to whether this deal is fair or not, is one worth having. Otherwise, the notion that the next generation should have an improved quality of life than the last one, flounders in the face of impossible statistics.
I think it’s the impact of speaking to so many of the same age, from a similar class background, over such a long period, that has given me an insight into a particular recuring agenda for them that doesn’t hit the headlines, and yet is so important to all our futures.
I was struck by some stark statistics in an article recently: birth rates across the nation, and
I can now see how fortunate I was to be born in the mid 1950’s. I saw most of my contemporaries benefit from the post-war investment in our futures with many enjoying their grant-funded time at university. Jobs were aplenty, as was affordable housing and mortgages.
Until the end of the 70’s things chugged along in a familiar pattern. Then came two key government initiatives, one in the 80’s and the other in the late 90’s, both of which have reshaped the deal within
and between the generations and sowed the seeds of a new class divide, shaped by inherited wealth.
The first was the Thatcher government’s experiment in socialengineering to create something called a ‘property-owning democracy’, by selling off the best council houses under the catchy label: Right-to-Buy. Long-term result: affordable decent social housing was condemned to the fringes, which has resulted in a major housing crisis for todays and future generations.
Evidence of who the winners were from the ripple effect of Right-to-Buy became clear when property prices rose by 130% between 1997 and 2004. Family wealth began to be measured not by earned household income but by property value. Despite the 2008 crash, the Sunday Times ran the headline in 2021: “Golden Oldies – 1 in 5 pensioners are millionaires”, a quadrupling over the previous decade. Indeed, more than half of all pensioners now live in households with over half a million in assets.
So, what are we/they doing with their wealth? For many it’s about becoming ‘the Bank of Mum and Dad’. The pressure on asset-rich babyboomer parents is full on: student fees and loans, first time deposits, childcare, grandkids, family holidays. They are the lender of last
resort - and I don’t blame them. If I had children, I would do the same. But I don’t have children, and so my attention is on the young people I have known and spoken to over the last 20 years. Also, on the households they were brought up in, where their parents, who missed out on the property bonanza back in the 80’s and 90’s, have been struggling ever since to bring their kids up well in the parts of their communities that housing associations and some councils have been able to salvage. Then, as the millennium approached the second policy
Long-term result: affordable decent social housing was condemned to the fringes
Sandy Campbell On the Loose
Thatcher’s Right-to-Buy scheme led to a major housing crisis for todays and future generations
to sow the seeds of a new class divide came from Tony Blair. Remember his mantra of ‘education, education, education’, which in hindsight seems more like a university confidence trick: a hollow promise of a better job with a higher income, in exchange for disappointing wages, crippling student debt, and continuing reliance on the bank of mum and dad.
Poor housing and long-term debt; a real double whammy at the start of adulthood. But let’s not forget that not all baby boomers benefited from the post war bonanza and the property boom. Only those who did are able to pass their wealth on. Good parents, but maybe not such good citizens.
Now I know that it’s human nature to look after your young. That’s not where my gripe is. Maybe these housing and education policies were inevitable, doesn’t matter, they’re here now. We as a society, including the elders, now need to learn how to deal with the consequences and shift the focus more towards the next generations, including the young people I have been speaking to, the offspring of those other baby boomers who took the brunt of the assault on the working class in the 80’s – ‘Thatcher’s grandchildren’.
Of course, the chances of that
kind of systemic change are slim. In terms of numbers eligible to vote, the over 60’s outnumber the 18–25-year-olds by 3 to 1. To make it worse, over 70% of pensioners consistently vote whereas the under 25’s voting figures rarely reach more than 40%.
But the young vote can rally sometimes. Jeremy Corbyn won the student vote in the 2017 general election, when he deprived Teresa May of a majority, capturing the university towns, but losing the English red wall seats. Bernie Saunders did something similar in the States in the run up to the first Trump presidency. And Nick Clegg did it back in 2010, and his party have paid the price for his monumental betrayal ever since. The young vote was very much in evidence in both referendums too, but given the figures above, it’s hardly surprising that the young find themselves on the losing side each time.
Campaigns to register young people onto the electoral register or creating consultive ‘youth parliaments’ won’t crack the problem. Only policies that speak to young peoples’ needs, student or not, will make a change. Such policies would mean investment and budgetary choices.
So, are there any politicians out there who are brave enough to take on the pensioners? n
Alex Salmond Paid My Wages!
Lawrence Lettice remembers the late former First Minister of Scotland
To some he was a towering 21st century Braveheart; yet for others, he merely peddled political myths of a fantasy Brigadoon that possibly lay over the horizon. Yet the recent sudden and unexpected passing of Alex Salmond, shook many who either revered, or reviled him.
After hearing of his death, my mind raced back to personal memories I have of the late SNP & Alba leader. Though if you are expecting a deep analysis of the political complexities of Holyrood and Scottish nationalism, you will be best placed looking elsewhere. Many have covered those areas with far greater authority than myself.
In fact, my most recent memory occurred back in August, during the height of the Edinburgh Fringe. I bought a ticket to see those two combative political journalists Andrew Pierce and Kevin Maguire cross verbal swords in front of a packed audience. Like former footballers from a bygone era, they are renowned for attacking the opposing forces from both right-wing and leftwing positions.
Just before the proceedings began proper, who calmly walked on stage (like a jovial Caledonian MC) than none other than Alex Salmond. The leader of the Alba party (channelling a bit of Andrew Neil into the proceedings) was now the genial host, presiding over the next hour of semi-humorous debate; whilst making sure that all was orderly and above board.
Many subjects were covered and aired that day including: the recent riots, Brexit, the new Labour government, Scottish independence, the scrapping of the winter fuel payments, and the present relevance of the monarchy. One lady in the audience displayed her growing agitation towards Mr Pierce, so much so that for one brief moment I thought she was about to chuck her paper coffee cup straight at him!
All this time, Mr Salmond (with a wicked, mischievous glint in his eye) received the biggest laugh of the show,
announcing to all in attendance, that Harry & Meghan were planning on returning to the UK, to set up a new home in the Scottish Highlands! I wonder if anyone there believed him?
I first properly became aware of Mr Salmond throughout the bulk of the 1990s. During that decade, he was a regular and welcome visitor to the old BBC Edinburgh studios at 5 Queen Street, contributing to a number of political and current affairs programs. Glancing back, it was a close-run thing as to whether he, or writer Iain Rankin, would appear (with increasing predictability) through the building’s front doors.
Yet, unlike the majority of the then Scottish politicians - who could be a right sour-faced, miserable and downright grumpy bunch - Mr Salmond was always friendly, relaxed and affable. Unlike the above, he didn’t brusquely demand free coffee, free newspapers or free use of BBC telephones etc.
As far as I was aware, he was wearing his own suit, his own glasses and didn’t attempt to scrounge free tickets for a Proclaimers concert! So numerous were his visits back then, that I half expected to see him turn up for the BBC Christmas lunch, with a wide grin on his face, clutching a bottle of wine!
Moving on to 2011, and just after I had been made redundant (for the second time in my working life) I received a phone call from a recruitment agency I had signed up with:
“Hi Lawrence, how do you fancy doing a few days’ work for Alex Salmond and the SNP?.” As a non-nationalist supporter, I must confess to being astonished at the question, so I wasn’t quite sure what to say? Nevertheless, I was intrigued at the prospect, so I said yes. Figuring it might be an interesting addition to my evolving CV. So, you could say that for a few days at least, Alex Salmond paid my wages.
Alec Salmond at jackdraws anything.com
He was wearing his own suit, his own glasses and didn’t scrounge free tickets for a Proclaimers concert!
What I was required to do was quite straightforward: I was to phone up many members of the SNP, and remind them to go out and vote, as Mr Salmond was relying on them.
It all went relatively smoothly, but then I called up one member (let’s just call him Jock Tamson) to elicit his support. I initially said the following words:
“Hello, I’m calling on behalf of Alex Salmond and the SNP, could I speak with Mr Tamson?” His wife quickly explained that he was having his dinner, but before I could utter another word, she shouted out – “Jock, Jock, I’ve got Alex Salmond on the phone for you!” I then overheard the weary and slightly annoyed voice of Jock (not exactly crying from the wilderness) but from his kitchen:
“For ****sake, he’s already got my vote, what more does he want?”
While attempting to suppress my laughter, I explained to them both, that unfortunately, I wasn’t Alex Salmond! An encounter that still makes me smile to this day.
So, farewell to Alex Salmond; he was ultimately never crowned the ‘King of Scotland’, but he held another title that possibly meant just as much to him.
He was once voted ‘The Curry King of Scotland’! n
A voyage round the Red Sandstone
TheLeithGlutton
Amos Karahi
The Red Sandstone Building 106-154 Leith Walk, Leith ( 0131 226 6611
Ican’t remember the full details of the furore over the Red Sandstone building on Leith Walk. If memory serves, some developer wanted to knock it down for student accommodation, housing, and a hotel. Leithers rebelled, revolted and railed against it and planning permission was refused.
And after a demonstration of power by the people, the art deco building still stands proud, with a whole new lease of life as a premier foodie destination on the lower stretches of Leith Walk. Where once there was a bed shop, now there is scran –and lots of it.
With selfless abandon, this glutton has been steadily chomping his way through the various offerings. Top marks go to Chorrito, of whom I have raved before. They make unsurpassable hot sauces for retail, and show how to use them in great Mexican dishes served over the bar and at a diminutive table.
It is a real Leith success story and consistently delicious. A glutton is never without one or two bottles of their hot sauce in the fridge at home. Currently, I am working through the chipotle, pineapple and garlic, having recently finished off the haberno, mango and turmeric. If you like the heat, these bad boys go with anything.
Next on my list of Red Sandstone Awards is Shawarma. You might remember the “Ottolenghi” sign going up outside when it was being converted from an empty shell. The thought that Yotam would be opening in Edinburgh caused a frisson of excitement to pulse through the Dudleys; another boon on top of the catchment area.
A woman in Morningside fainted at the thought that she might have to go to Leith for nibbles now. It was, of course, a great
joke played by no-one-quite-knows-who. This kebab shop really is great, authentic middle-eastern shawarma. The meat is flavoursome, the flatbreads good, and the shawarma all rolls up very nicely indeed. Next time you have nothing but a jar of hot sauce in your fridge, you know where to go.
Third on the list is newcomer restaurant Ella. It is badged as Greek, and Greek it is, despite the fact that the Albanian owner used to run an Italian catering company. Hey, Leith has been a melting pot for centuries.
The waiter valiantly tries to tell us that this is the first Greek tapas restaurant in the UK. Nice try on the marketing, but you can’t just replace the word ‘meze’ with ‘tapas’ and claim you’ve started a new thing.
Marketing aside, or perhaps because of it, Ella is buzzing. Six weeks in, they are crammed at night, and get rave reviews. I like it. The staff are exceptionally friendly, tossing around banter and plates. Flames leap dramatically from the open kitchen.
The smoked aubergines are simultaneously deep and sharp, and taste great. The pita bread is decent, if bought in. Our cheese kofta is very good: juicy, flavoursome, served with mustard. Saganaki (fried cheese) came with a very good tomato jam. The star of the show was the fava: a yellow pea dip with excellent depth of flavour.
Moonwake have brewed a lager called Ella which tasted better than the Pinot Grigio sounded. Meze – sorry, Greek tapas – came to £30 a head including drinks. (Ella was good, but the best Greek food in Scotland is just round the corner at Kafeneion To Steki on Coburg Street.)
Bringing up the rear in this list is San Ciro, a remarkably cheery pizza joint. It might be last on the list, but that doesn’t make it bad.
It is perfectly capable. Their pizza base is good, if a little doughy, but the tomato seemed either too sweet or two watery, lacking intensity.
If you think the staff at Ella are friendly, San Ciro’s team are off the charts. But like Ella, it is eclipsed by the same cuisine being done better nearby: Razzo on Great
serve the best pizza in Leith.
Of course, there are other shops in the Red Sandstone. Tesco have an outlet there, in case it is too far to cross the road to, erm, the other Tesco. Cornelius will sell you a great beer or wine to take home; The Leith Depot will do the same sitting in. Hobz is doing a roaring trade baking bread and sought-after Viennoiserie; just avoid the wholemeal croissants.
Special mentions must go to Canderson’s traditional sweet shop, with jars and jars of sugar smiling down from high shelves. It is the kind of place that will still do you a quarter pound of soor plooms, or a small bag of chocolate mice if you ask nicely. Their line of sugared almonds meets with favour around these parts, in case you’d like to send me a small Christmas present.
O
ther news… reaches us of Askr, much vaunted in these pages. The doors are shut for good. Dan Ashmore
Junction Street really does
to right:
has parted ways with Dean Banks, or perhaps Dean has parted ways with Dan. No-one is talking much and the public statements all have a whiff of legalese about them: new adventures, next chapters, wishing the company well from afar etc. Everyone seems to have gotten up off the floor without too many bruises, however.
Dan is soon to start as Executive Chef at the Schloss Roxburghe down in Kelso, and Dean is taking on the Constitution Street venue as a second branch of his successful Dulse Further investigations will be undertaken on your behalf. n
P.S. A new chocolate shop La Chocolaterie by Marie Auriac. has opened on Maritime Street. Here’s wishing her well. Leithers rebelled, revolted and railed against it and planning permission was refused
Treat your taste buds to MICROGREENS!
Enjoy fresh, nutritious greens from our vertical farm, whatever the weather. We grow and deliver pea and sunflower shoots, colourful radish, broccoli, seasonal specials and micromixes.
Boost your salads and sandwiches.
Add to burgers, stir fry or pasta.
Packed with nutrients.
No waste 7 day shelf life.
GROWN LOCALLY
FREE DELIVERY IN EDINBURGH
Subscriptions, gift vouchers and wholesale available.
Left
Giant Mezze, Saganaki (fried cheese) tomato jam, Ella, Yellow pea dip
Your local specialists for boiler servicing, repairs and replacement HARBOUR MULTI-TRADES, 219 Granton Road, EDINBURGH, EH5 1AB
To get a free estimate, call 0131 552 6103 or head to www.tbmes.co.uk
Living with a LongTerm condition?
Compass Therapy Centre Is For You
Our charity has been helping people just like you for 40 years. We understand the unique challenges you face, and we’re here to support you on your path to a healthier, more fulfilling life.
Contact us now to find out how we can help you transform your life with our: Hands-on neuro-physiotherapy service
Innovative rehabilitation technology
Groundbreaking oxygen therapy
Extensive range of complementary therapies & wellbeing services
Once upon a winters night
Edmund Sears wrote the well-known Christmas carol It Came Upon the Midnight Clear in Massachusetts in 1849. Let’s imagine that he was the unborn child in this story.
TThe young couple at the Broomielaw had said their goodbyes back in Leith. Joining many Highlanders, they stepped up the gangway to the ship that was to take them to a new life in America.
It was their first time at sea.
On arrival, they joined a wagon train travelling up-country. It was a hard week, culminating in a dangerous crossing of the Connecticut river. Some folk already there, in a small settlement, told them there was some good country in the valley beyond those hills…
Over there.
Oh he was a big strong fellow. That, and she was a worker too. In a very few weeks they had built the beginnings of a fine wee house for themselves, and for the winter they went back to the settlement.
They sang the songs and they danced the dances of the old country. In the spring, they returned. They grew some crops the best they could. The house was nearly ready for the winter, but she was with child, and it was best they went back to the settlement.
A beautiful little girl was with them as they returned in the spring. A wonderful summer they had of it, and this winter they stayed in their new house. And, as these things happen, another baby was on the way.
It was Christmas Eve and he went out for firewood, for tomorrow he would not work. He had heard there were Mohawks in the area, but he had done them no harm and he worried not to leave his wife alone.
On returning he saw Mohawks dragging her out of the house. Like a fool he rushed at them, and in a moment he was face-down in the snow, held by far stronger than he.
Shortly they trussed his hands and feet and dragged him to sit against a tree while they burned his house. Many among the Mohawks would cut the throats and take the scalps of these intruders from across the seas.
Why not? The white men did not scruple to use their sticks of fire from a distance to kill their folk.
But the captain was under orders from his chief to bring back alive any hostages he may come across, for what purpose was not for him to know.
The baby was strapped to the man’s back. He could cause no trouble like that. They set out on a route-march, on the snow, through the woods, up and over the hills. It was a tense party as darkness fell and the moon rose.
The captain wanted to travel faster than this pregnant woman could walk.
The men grumbled that they should have finished the business where they found it. The white man anxiously calculated what to do for the best.
The forward scout whistled. It was not danger. He was surprised and puzzled. Proceed cautiously. A cloud slipped from the face of the moon, and the glade before them was lit near as clear as day.
There, on the snow, together, was a wolf, a deer, an eagle, a bison, a beaver, spiders spinning their webs between a moose’s antlers, a hare. Never was such a sight seen.
A man stepped forward raising his bow and arrow for an easy kill. The captain motioned him back. The man from Leith remembered it was Christmas. He made to explain.
– Speak, white man.
The story he loved so well rolled down the centuries and across the roaring oceans. He told how a young couple expecting a baby had to travel far for
The story he loved so well rolled down the centuries and across the roaring oceans
a census. How they found shelter in a stable, and at the birth angels sang and the stars moved…
The translator was having difficulties. What would an inn-keeper be? The captain was losing patience with this story. Why would people need to be counted? The woman saw, and drawing her skirts over her knees, knelt before the animals. In a quiet voice she told how God made all the world, and God loves everything in it.
– Ha.
She told how all creatures must live in harmony, and all must be respected. – Of course. This they understood.
How the creatures sitting before them was a picture of how the weak must be safe with the strong. Those who fly see things beyond the seeing of the earthbound. They must all share their perspectives, to form a wisdom. All have their place, their needs, their potential, their vulnerabilities.
The moon shone more brightly, and the men saw a woman with child who needed respect, protection and caring.
She carried the future.
As the light grew brighter still, they could see that they must esteem each other, share the land and its goodness. To work, and eat, to be truly alive, and make merry while they may. n
A cloud slipped from the face of the moon
A Village Meeting
Newhaveners feel that theirs is a history of being side lined — occasionally maligned. If it wasn’t for the Free Fishermen’s Society of Newhaven founded in the 16th century, which acted as a form of ‘town council’, this coastal community could have withered and died as a unique entity. The Free Fishermen protected and cared for the village and its residents through the ensuing generations for it became patently obvious at an early stage that the authorities were unwilling to do so following the death of James IV on the Field of Flodden. An ‘us and them’ mindset prevailed as a consequence, reinforced over the decades and centuries up to and including the time of Newhaven’s “Clearances” in the 6os and early 70s.
It still continues. The last significant expenditure that was spent on the village in terms of Newhaven’s environment was in 2015. Meanwhile, major projects involving significant financial commitments by Edinburgh Council are evident in Leith and most recently in Granton. As a simple example we cite the lack of signage at the terminus of Edinburgh Trams. These trams display “Newhaven” as its destination but deposit their travellers at what appears to be a modern housing complex. Since its inception in June 2023, Newhaven Heritage has pressed Edinburgh Trams to erect an arrow type brown tourist sign pointing to its “Historic Harbour” to help new arrivals to the area but to no avail.
Even the modest cost of such a simple solution appears to be a matter of contention between Edinburgh Trams and the Council authorities.
But this example pales into insignificance when compared to the state of the village itself which, as one travel review cited, has the appearance of a ‘third-rate council estate’. Newhaven Heritage, formed in 2007 to protect, preserve and promote the history and heritage of this age old district, created a self-guided heritage trail using QR codes which outlines the history of the area at 24 points along a route that
circumnavigates Newhaven Main Street and the Harbour areas.
Significant
financial commitments by Edinburgh Council are evident in Leith and most recently in Granton
What must the trail explorer think when they see the poor state of the buildings, structures and pavements, especially on the south side of the main street and its back closes? As you can see from the illustrations moss, weeds, large sections of harling that have fallen off the walls, overgrown trees and more are to be found at every turn
Local resident Emma Kemp, who leads the volunteers of the Newhaven Heritage Gardens Group, has made representation to council officers and even visited the surgery of a councillor to try to get some action but to no avail.
Eventually, knowing the significant concerns of the local residents, she organised a village meeting. It was heartening to find that Councillors Stuart Dobbin and Sanne DijkstraDownie readily accept the invitation to attend and were supportive of the meeting’s purpose.
From February 2025, Newhaven is set to become part of Trinity Community Council instead of the Leith and Newhaven Harbour Community Council area as at present. Accordingly the Chairs of each, Peter Rodger and Douglas Tharby, were invited to attend as well as an officer from the Council’s Housing Department. It was a full house in Newhaven Church Hall, there to discuss their concerns.
The main topics revolved around the roads, pavements, the poor state of the harling on the walls and street lighting.
Although not unique to Edinburgh, it seems commonplace to allow the verges and gutters to grow thick with weeds. This is not rewilding, this is short-term thinking.
Harling is falling off the walls of the houses and the drying green walls; gaps and trip hazards are opening up on pavements; some of the trees, planted about 50 years ago, have grown so large that they throw shade onto the balconies that overlook south-facing squares; street lighting is inadequate or uneven and impacts on the area’s security. Responsibility for the essential repairs in terms of the roughcasting is confused by who owns what — council or private home owner — due to the now defunct ‘Right To Buy’ scheme which ended in 2016. Chemical weedkiller, which before would have been sprayed between the paving slabs and the granite setts of the roads, is now frowned upon by the civic authorities due to the collateral damage to wildlife. And so nothing is done leaving the streetscape of this once proud village looking neglected and uncared for.
Throughout the meeting, Cllrs Dobbin and Dijkstra and the others on the top table listened attentively and sympathetically. The meeting was not all doom and gloom however for a number of positive suggestions, some simple and cost-effective, were made by residents. Copious notes were taken and all representative agreed that they would compare these and derive appropriate solutions wherever they could. It was agreed that a follow-up meeting would be held during 2025.
The general consensus was that the village meeting was the first stepping-stone of the village’s overdue rejuvenation. Democracy in action! Most importantly, the residents of the village for whom Newhaven is home deserve nothing less. n
Harling falling off walls and drying greens, trip hazards on pavements
Searching for a bridge I was vaguely aware of, I found myself standing on it without knowing; my judgement clouded by the dense aluminium fencing that engulfs it. Only by peering through the razor sharp slits could I spy the gurgling water below. This slightly mysterious ex-railway bridge that sits over the Water of Leith, connecting Powderhall with St. Marks Park, a nodal point in North Edinburgh’s path network.
As I neared the security fence separating the southern end of the bridge from the construction site at Powderhall, a gaggle of youngsters were enjoying the sunshine. Sitting listlessly, they smoked something organic and pungent. Concerned that I might get passively high, I made my way back.
Dense with paths
After a buffer zone, the path narrows appreciably. Above you to the left sits the Craigroyston football ground; below you to the right lie a group of well sheltered allotments. Within a few yards you are back on the mainstream path network, with the crescent curved Chancelot Path extending in front of you. As you look back it is notable that the rough section of path towards Powderhall has no signage. Exploring it is not promoted, not encouraged.
I’ve often reconnoitred around here but after each visit, I feel the need to examine it again on a map. It’s not easy to make sense of. The area is dense with paths and routes, only some of which are well used.
The disused and neglected also offer radical potential, streaming into the future. Degeneration and regeneration running on parallel lines. Edinburgh is already blessed with many great routes for ‘active travel’ but also has several potential paths as yet unrealized. The idea of developing this disused railway line at Powderhall into an ‘active travel corridor’ has been mooted and feasibility studies published. Where would it take us?
A wasteland waits
It would take us eastward to Abbeyhill and Meadowbank. The back of Meadowbank Stadium is, these days, rather an unprepossessing place. Scruffiness abounds and wasteland waits to be transformed. Looking over the fence to overgrown terracing it’s hard to imagine that this place was packed with cheering crowds in both 1970 and 1986, for the Commonwealth Games. Near the back of Meadowbank, on Marionville Road, there is a glimpse of the potential path. On a cold winter’s day, the abandoned line looked bleak and forlorn, with trees shorn of colour encroaching the line.
Jungle
Closing my eyes, I imagine myself trundling along it, looking up at newly built brick flats as the path makes its way west towards Easter Road. To get there it passes under Crawford Bridge, also known as the ‘bridge of doom’,
Powderhall’s Potential Path
synonymous with football violence in the 1980s and 1990s. Stories abound of ‘casuals’ forced to jump from the bridge into the overgrown ravine below.
At Easter Road, this green corridor is engulfed in vegetation, with bushes and juvenile trees assertively sprouting up among the rails. At present, it would require a determined troupe macheting their way through the thicket. The potential path would then run under Leith Walk, beneath where the Police Box sits. Peering over the edge you can see the line heading inexorably towards the chimney of Shrubhill Power Station, itself part of another lost transport system, the cable-tram system.
It passes under Crawford Bridge, also known as the ‘bridge of doom’, synonymous with football violence in the 1980s and 1990s
Leith Water
The final leg of the journey would take you past the fast changing Shrubhill area, towards Powderhall, its final rusting rails lie in the undergrowth surrounding St Mark’s Park. Leafing through a yellowing copy of An Illustrated History of Edinburgh Railways, I find a photo and description of the old Powderhall Station and the way ‘the track dips down to a bridge over the Leith Water, to rise thence past the woodland of St. Marks Park, where the lines to Bonnington and North Leith diverged’. I love the old fashioned
‘thence’ and also the description of the river as ‘Leith Water’; they transport the reader back in time.
Action Plan 2030
When I first stepped into this hidden nook in St Mark’s Park, I thought the line might still be active; it was so well preserved under the canopy of trees. Indeed, it was only in 2017 that the line was placed, by Network Rail as being ‘temporarily out of use’, usually the first in a series of official steps to formally close a stretch of railway. According to railway expert Andrew Boyd, the section near Meadowbank may be retained to relieve the main line out of Edinburgh, but the abandoned branch to Powderhall is unlikely to be used again. So a path seems a no-brainer.
If this dream comes true, it will add another key piece to the lattice work of paths on the north of the city. Edinburgh Council’s Active Travel Action Plan 2030 lists this a ‘new path along former rail line from Lochend Park area to St Mark’s Park’ as a scheme that might be ‘delivered post 2026’.
Will the past be the future? We shall see. n
Charlie Ellis, the author thanks members of the SICK Writing Group for their helpful comments on this piece
The Powderhall Path
We can take it out and replace it with a fresh new bead of silicone. It not only gives a fresh new look, it also helps prevent water damage to your property.
We also reseal windows, doors & conservatories.
OUT NOW IN PAPERBACK
10 Scotland Street by Leslie Hills
“This is a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable book”
Alan Massie, The Scotsman
David Kedie Whytt, a purser, a naval agent and secretary clerk to three admirals in Leith during the Napoleonic War, auctioned prize goods – sails, spices, salt cod, rose copper and cannons … at the Vaults and at Mr Grinly’s saleroom in Paterson’s Court, and sailed from the Admiralty on the Ariadne, a sloop of war carrying twenty guns.
With his growing family he lived across Leith from Sheriff Brae to George Place on Leith Walk before buying his final home in the New Town. This story of sailors, silk merchants, preachers, politicians, cholera and coincidence and widespread connections of one house over two centuries and across the globe, is a perfect Christmas gift.
On sale at Argonaut Books, Typewronger and Toppings on Leith Walk – and other bookshops and Amazon.
10 Scotland Street the story of an Edinburgh home and its cast of booksellers, silk merchants, sailors, preachers, politicians, cholera and coincidence and its widespread connections over two centuries
Imagine an intense heat…
TracyGriffen
Writer without portfolio
burning you up from the inside out. The heat starts in your chest, and spreads like molten lava through your body. You get hotter and hotter until it feels like you’re about to explode. There’s no way of stopping it…
Looking around, I realise there’s a pile of my clothes on the floor beside me. I’m in Weigh to Go grocery shop on Leith Walk, with a dog lead wrapped around my legs and a queue forming behind me. A normal episode in my life, then. The pile of clothes I unzipped and dumped on the floor as I felt my core temperature rocket to an unfeasible high getting in the way as I juggle milk bottles, jars of dry goods and a hoover for a dog intent on vacuuming up oats spilt on the floor.
“Hot flushes, how bad can they be?” In the past I’d even joke that they’d be welcome over winter. You’d be excused for thinking the same if you’ve never had one. One might not be bad, but the sheer number and terrible timing (always when you’re stressed or sleeping) and resulting lack of sleep that wear some of us down.
The extraordinary thing is that no one really knows why they occur. It seems that the hypothalamus over-reacts, causing the body’s internal thermostat to malfunction. Imagine a boiler heating up without an ‘off’ switch and you get the general idea. Not that I’m calling myself an old boiler, but there are parallels.
The body gets hotter and hotter, and then as an emergency measure, starts sweating profusely to cool down. For many women, it’s sweat-soaked bed sheets that signals the start of something happening. And then you’re up at 3am shoving a load of sheets in the washing, remaking the bed, showering then trying to get back to sleep.
Or isolate yourself on the sofa, which is what I did so as not to disturb the household early days, when they were at the worst. Even snuggling up to your favourite pet can become unendurable. Poor pet has no idea that their usual hot-water bottle properties are not appreciated. HRT is an option, but side effects affect us all in different way and it was a route I tried and rejected. I figured if I’m going to be an old boiler at 50, I needed to embrace the heat.
The first thing I did was read everything I could about it - and guess what, even though there’s loads of literature on menopause, information on hot flushes (or hot flashes if you’re American) is thin on the ground.
“Take HRT” or “avoid spicy foods” is the general advice offered. Given that it affects around 75% of women at some point you’d think more would be understood. I’m sure if it happened to men there would be a solution pretty quickly. So as the lone female columnist for this fine magazine I offer my top tips
Imagine a boiler heating up without an ‘off’ switch and you get the idea
for living with a fiery inferno…
} Stress can be a trigger, so flushes can give you a good idea of what situations are stressful. A good rule for life can be learned here, and you may find yourself opting out of certain things to have an easier time.
} Weirdly sometimes when we’re stressed we hold our breath. I don’t know why, but a lot of us do. Take three deep breaths - it can take the edge off an impending hot flush.
} Save on heating by switching it off.
} Start a fan club: Whether in the bedroom or a mini-fan on your person, it can help. My USB chargeable fan was a thing of envy in crowded festival gigs. Don’t be afraid to proclaim an inconvenient flush. Sometimes naming it can make it easier, sometimes worse. But if you have a fan, you can always keep your cool.
} Fast wicking clothes are those fabrics that draw moisture away from the body. Very good if you’re sweating numerous
times in a day.
} Likewise, zip through hoodies are an essential hot flush accessory. You can unzip and whip off a layer pronto, and it’s much less obvious that trying to hoick a polo neck over your head whilst talking to someone. There’s a fine selection on Vinted (none of them are mine, I love ALL of my hoodies).
} Eat well: Recommended extras include soy (for the oestrogen), pumpkin seeds, Evening Primrose oil, flaxseeds – see if they help. I’m not sure if they do, but they are good for you. Avoiding booze is also helpful.
} If you’re up numerous times in a night, you will lose sleep. Pre-empt this by getting to bed a good hour earlier. Confuse your household by changing from night owl to early bird.
} I couldn’t get a hormone test through the NHS, so I paid Randox to take my blood and discover my hormone levels were at an impressive low. It gave me information I needed to progress.
I know I’m lucky to be here, and even though my body can feel like a warzone, I’m safe and healthy. Now we just need to get some more women’s words on these pages. Until then I remain your writer without portfolio. n
Ê Twitter: Bluesky@tracygriffen
Ê Instagram: @griffenfitness
Cuts, blow drys, full head colour, foils
Semi permanent, perms
Ladies, gents & children all welcome
Partime qualified hairdresser required with flexi hours to suit
Self employed or Employed Chairs to Rent
Barber now available Friday & Saturday
Hair cuts – Hot shaves – Mens Waxing
Christmas gift vouchers now available
150-152 West Granton Road Edinburgh EH5 1PE ( 0131 551 2056
TO ALL EH POSTCODES £3.99
FREE TASTINGS THURSDAYS 18:00–19:30 All free & no need to book!
7th November TBC (see our socials) 14th November WHITEBOX COCKTAILS 21st November OTHERWORLD BREWING 28th November SIMPLE THINGS FERMENTATIONS
5th December WINTER WINES & CHEESES 12th December NINEFOLD RUM & SECRET GARDEN GIN 19th December HOLYROOD DISTILLERY
Open Tues-Sat 9 -5, Thursday 9-8 @leithbottleshop
