Forty years is a long time to be away from your birthplace. Forty years is a long time by any measurement. Only a quarter wit would expect nothing to change.
Then again, you could say that the person who returns once or twice a year is in a unique position to register these changes, perhaps more so than the resident.
It was on one of those visits recently, bumping down Infirmary St, past two of my happy places: James Thinns Bookshop (still operating under a different name) and Infirmary St Baths (long gone).
So far, so good.
When I saw that the Canongate Youth Project at the old South Bridge Primary School building was closed and being renovated to house the Festival Fringe Office, my heart sank.
My heart sank because I was pulled back in time nearly 50 years to a night in Craigmillar Police Station, where myself and three companions were receiving some heavy-handed treatment (possibly deservedly) from Lothian and Borders’ finest.
This new outrage (not the first, by any means) was the last straw, apparently, and led to myself and one of the others being put into something called intermediate treatment at the CYP.
We were already familiar with Father Graham’s CYP because of The Monday Club at Old St Paul’s in Jeffrey St, where he (and some other hippies, as we thought at the time) were engaged in starting a community project.
Intermediate Treatment was a long-gone scheme where young people “at risk”, generally of re-offending or being taken into care - List D School, habitual truants, etc.. though I am sure there were many other reasons.
The idea was to nip certain behaviours in the bud before these bairns were too far gone into the system.
It was there I came into contact with a man called Mike Tait, a working-class Leither (I myself had attended Leith Fort Primary before moving to the Southside) who became one of my heroes.
This did not happen overnight. Oh no. Looking back, we were not easy kids, not by any measure: defiant, contrary, reckless and self-destructive, but mainly just fucking daft (for whatever reason). There were broken kids too, deeply damaged; some made it out, many didn’t.
This is the 1970s, in a completely different Old Town, which bore fuck all resemblance to the Tartan Town you see now.
“I’m no here to wipe your arse, I’m here to give you a voice and a choice."
Mike Tait
And so he did. It’s an extremely long story, but he did.
I find myself wondering about the bairns of today. Are they to be sacrificed for the advancement of the latest “comedian” from the Cambridge fucking Footlights?
No place for them in Edinburgh Council’s theme-park capital for the rich and graceless?
Let’s return to the present day. What happened to my wee gang? Two of us are deceased.
One of us, after a rocky start, has had a 30-year career in the film industry. The other received an MBE in this New Year’s honours list. Yes, Mike, your two.
A voice and a choice!
I happen to think that the most precious resource any nation has is its young people.
What about the present-day wee radges like we were? Who will give them a voice or a choice? Not Edinburgh fucking Council - that’s plain to see.
They’d rather put their effort and your money into helping the next Michael fucking McIntyre.
Shame on them.
G. D. Dempsey
In memory of Mike Tait, who left us 27 Sept 2023.
