The Ned Wood Archive

I always wanted new surroundings

Sally delivered.  I mean, she really delivered.  I got a call from her telling me to go over to an address in Marchmont.  I can’t remember whether I got the call at the Doric or at the department in JCMB, but she must have phoned to get the message to me quickly.  You had to move quickly to get what you needed.

So I rang the doorbell and knocked on the door of this ground floor flat in Marchmont.  A white door next to a few shops down near the Meadows.  This old guy opened it and showed me in.  Well, he wasn’t so much old as worn.  He looked tired and run down and worn out by life.  Shabby sweater.  Unshaven face.  Fag in his hand.  The flat was more or less empty, a couple of chairs in one room, a bed in another.  A third room empty, apart from some old junk in the corner.  Smoke in the air and the dull stain of nicotine tar on the walls.  He said he was moving out, but it didn’t really look like anyone had ever moved in.  His wife/partner/someone had left him and he needed to leave.  I didn’t blame them, to be honest.  

Sally had heard about the place from someone on her course.  They’d seen an ad selling coal and had gone to pick it up and found that the place was for rent.  Soon as they told Sally, Sally had got hold of me.  Strange thing was that there were no fires in the flat.  I could see the old fireplace in the lounge had been boarded up for years and I saw the walk-in storeroom where the coal had been kept for all that time after it was no longer needed; the coal had already gone, but the remains, the coal dust, was everywhere.  

But the flat was available, for rent, so I grabbed this bloke by the hand and agreed to rent it there and then.  We moved in the following week. As soon as we could. As soon as he’d moved his stuff out.  Gav took the small bedroom at the back, Pete took the large dark bedroom at the front, and I turned the lounge into my room.  I insisted on buying decent beds, so we got three from John Lewis for about £75 each which I got Dad to pay for.  Pete persuaded a bloke at the end of the Meadows to sell him a three piece suite for a tenner – a chair for each room – and we all scrounged various pans, plates, and cutlery from our parents.  Dad came up with me gran’s old fridge and an old chair that’d been rescued from a fire.  Pete got a couple of sets of drawers, he said they were from his Dad but knowing Pete they could have been from anywhere.  Just don’t ask any questions.  We had a marathon session over the weekend cleaning and scrubbing to try and get rid of the nicotine and then splashing a bit of paint around before it was habitable.  But we more than made it habitable.  We made it a palace.  Home for the next three years.  Yes, Sally really delivered.

Marchmont.  That fantastic wee town just south of the Meadows.  Noble tenement blocks of sandstone, grey in dull weather, glowing deep dark orange and pink when the sun is out.  All manner of roof decoration, triangular and diamond shaped stepped gables, cone shaped turrets, angular turrets, cupolas.  Bay windows on each of the four floors.  Dark passage ways to get to the stair and drying green, but, if you were lucky like we were, your own front door and a coffin-sized front garden.

Marchmont.  Home for the rest of my time in Edinburgh.  A quick dash across the Meadows into town or a leisurely walk up to Kings Buildings for work.  Round the corner was a co-op which supplied most of our grub.  Mingies the newsagents across the way.  I got the NME there sometimes and occasionally a paper, but the English ones were always late and I never got into the Scottish ones enough to fork out on them.  Anyway, they had papers in the Union at Kings Buildings.  Mingies the newsagent was alright, though, to talk to.  Told us about the princess that lived opposite us.  That was only a few years before we were there.  He told us to look out for her limo in case she ever came back.  I heard that story from someone else, too, so I think there must have been some truth to it.  Eastern European royalty in the Palace of Marchmont.  It fits.  Of course, Pete went to town on it.  Told us he’d spent some time with her.  Took her out a couple of times.  Got invited back to her pad in Transylvania.     

The Palace of Marchmont.  With Old man MacPherson above us and the Lawsons above him.  And some folk on the top floor that we never saw.  They were rumoured to be students and maybe they slept all day.  Or maybe they worked all day.  Or maybe they were spies. Eastern European spies. We never found out.  Then there was Mrs Adams, the widower, next door on the ground floor.

The Palace of Marchmont.  Gradually we turned it into home.  I persuaded the other two to pay a bit over the odds for each week’s rent so we could save a bit and buy ourselves a washing machine after a few weeks so we didn’t have to go to the steamie on Causewayside.  And we eventually got ourselves a rented TV from Granada.  That was the following year.  Just in time for the European Cup Final.  

We even tried to get milk delivered to the flat to make it feel like home, but that never worked.  You had to buy up coloured plastic tokens from the Co-op round the corner and leave them out as offerings like teeth for the tooth fairy.  The milkie would come round on his horse and cart and leave a pint for every token you left out.  That was the theory, but it never worked out for us.  When it was wet the tokens were washed away and when it was dry, they were lifted by passing youths – at least that’s what the milkie claimed whenever we castigated him for not having delivered our daily pinta.  And it was true that sometimes after a night’s rain I’d find our token halfway down the path rather than on the doorstep where it had been left.    

But it was enough of a home for people to want to come by and have a cuppa and a chat.  Fi and Cat came by.  Nessie came by.  Even Sally, just to see what she’d let me in for.  And for three and a half years, that place was the centre of my world.