If you don’t want to be taken down a wee memory lane, look away now! We’re back where we started over 50 years ago.

In our previous post from The Dean we walked through Dean Village along the Water of Leith and came to Stockbridge where we used to live. If you carry on walking eventually you end up in the Port of Leith and the open sea. When we started our married life Stockbridge was relatively cheap compared to the rest of Edinburgh. However, even back then it was termed “up and coming” and now it’s well and truly “up”. With its cafés and bars it is seen as one of the trendiest locations in the city. At that time I worked along the road at the Western General hospital and Pat worked in Stockbridge House.

Get it right!

In some of our flights of fancy we like to think that we played some small part in the rise of Stockbridge’s desirability. Adding a sense of style and that certain ‘je ne sais quoi’. Seriously though, we lived round the corner from the notorious Madam Dora’s establishment in Danube Street. Covered in pictures of the local Tory candidate her handsome Georgian townhouse was very easy to spot at election time. Famously she paid her fines in cash from her handbag during her almost monthly court appearances and used the witness box to publicise her service. She implored the journalists to get her address exactly right. After a spell in prison, aged 76, she died and the business died with her.

Respectability restored

Now, Danube Street with its £1-2 million houses is the epitome of  respectability again, Even in our more modest little street, Leslie Place, our one bedroom flat would now cost about £300,000. A far cry from the £4,500 we paid for it. Nowadays, if we were starting over again we probably wouldn’t be able to do it here. From our flat, we could look out the back window and see Stockbridge House where Pat worked.  We thought we should see if it was still there.

It was always a facility for the elderly but now it has been renamed LifeCare. Apparently something to do with going from charitable status to a public limited company.

There’s a cafe called CafeLife where they were just finishing an afternoon tea event when we arrived. We were welcomed in, however, and shown to a table where they gave us tea and a cheese scone to share.

It was nice to see it still operating for the benefit of the elderly and they obviously felt that we now qualified to receive some of these benefits.  No topscone but great to explore the place again and chat to the  wonderful staff.

Don’t Pisco Me Off

After that we thought we should check out what used to be our local pub, the Rag Doll. Back then we were well embedded here. On occasions we even held the keys for the owner if he was away on business elsewhere. Trusting or what?However, after we moved to Northern Ireland the pub was sold and over the years has had many many incarnations under different names. Imagine our surprise to find it called the Rag Doll again. We were delighted.

Like the area, it has gone upmarket as well and is probably more of a cocktail bar than a pub now. We arrived just as it was opening and had a great chat with the new owner. When he took it over a few months ago he wisely decided to reinstate the Rag Doll name. To celebrate, we had to have a couple of drinks.

In case you’re wondering Pisco is an unaged brandy obtained from the distillation of fermented Peruvian grape musts; we didn’t know either. Great fun, we wish the Rag Doll a massive amount of luck going forward. We did warn you it was a trip down memory lane!

Washing our hair

We’re on tenterhooks waiting for the first TV Leader’s Debate later this evening … NOT! A Sunak/Starmer debacle for which we could probably write the questions and, although there won’t be any meaningful ones, we could probably write the answers as well. The only surprise is that Nigel Farage isn’t taking part. He doesn’t represent anyone but the media seem to love giving him airtime. Who knows, we might have to wash our hair when it’s on.

EH4 1JB        tel: 0131 343 0940              CafeLife

///mash.found.burns