Dalkeith, Midlothian
It’s strange how things manage to change but nonetheless remain the same. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, as Rush said – although they said it nicer, with accents in all the right places and I’m on a PC which isn’t kind to foreign languages.
A fair percentage of my memories of the eighties are centered around Dalkeith. In 1980 / 81 I was habitually hanging around in Ralph MacCluskey’s newsagent at the west end of the High Street – it’s now a tanning salon. MacCluskey’s had a full stock of Star Wars and The Black Hole action figures, and I coveted the tiny little models of Dan Holland (fully articulated, I’ll have you know), Chewbacca and VINCENT (Vital Information Necessary CENTralised – the most contrived acronym I’ve ever encountered) like a coveting thing.
Skipping forward to 1982, it was the John Menzies store at the other end of the High Street which was the main attractor to my lack of cash. Spectrum games this time – Froggy was the first and by god was I stunned by those “arcade quality” graphics. The arcades were pretty bad in those days. Glug Glug was another one I lusted after but, being 12, £5.49 was kinda hard to come by. These days, of course, I can pop along to World of Spectrum and download to my heart’s content.
I guess that’s where it all started to go horribly wrong – or right, depending on your point of view. ’84 onwards saw me covetting the Jethro Tull, Marillion and Iron Maiden albums in the record department. There was something wonderfully nice about buying a nice chunky 12″ vinyl album with covert art large enough to actually appreciate. I think I singlehandedly kept John Menzies afloat in those years.
1986 saw a return to Ralph MacCluskey’s, but this time for more nefarious reasons. I had decided, for some reason utterly unknown to me, that what I really needed was a PIPE. No, really! Bordering on obsessive with Fantasy stories – primarily Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, and a fair degree of victorian romance, I’d decided that the humble pipe was the mark of a Good Guy. I still have a vivid recollection of the bemused look (followed by the rolling belly laugh) when I requested a “half ounce of best shag” from the gentleman behind the counter. The sum total of my tobacco knowledge came from Tolkein and Sherlock Holmes and, well, it didn’t occur to me that things may have moved on in the last hundred years. So there we have it gentlemen – it was HOBBITS that got me smoking, little furry-footed gits that they are.
Both MacCluskey’s and Menzies are now long gone spectres. Menzies got off lightly because it’s now a WH Smith – which at least sells similar things. But that’s the strange thing about Dalkeith. In a “Mighty Boosh” kind of way, it changes but does it REALLY change. I can still pop out of the flat and wander along the road at any time of day or night without being accosted by Burberry-capped morons clad in nylon sportswear. What members of todays YOOF you encounter are invariably polite and considerate. It’s a nice place – everything a market town should be. And I still think it’s great. Coming home to Dalkeith is still as special as visiting Dalkeith was twenty years ago.
All of which does very little, of course, to explain why I’m leaving to live in Australia. But then I never said I’d make any sense.
As a postscript – it’s strange the way things hang together. I read Lord of the Rings because I liked the Hobbit when my teacher read it to me. I listended to Marillion because I’d read that they were named after “The Silmarillion” and I liked all things Tolkein. I got into Genesis (Gabriel period, natch) because I read they sounded like Marillion (or vice versa, for the purists among you). I listened to Jethro Tull because I saw an illustration of Ian Anderson and he looked like the Jester from the cover of the Marillion Albums. Jethro Tull taught me that they weren’t going to be pigeonholed and I should stop bloody reading about music and start listening to it.
As a further postscript, despite having returned to Scotland nine months ago, I haven’t been back to Dalkeith and have no intentions of ever doing so. I loved it at the time and want it to stay as I remember it forever.
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