Blast from the past

A few months after the launch of the website friendsreunited - which seeks to link up old school friends who have lost touch with each other - I wrote a personal piece about it for the Scotsman newspaper.

I lived in Kirkcaldy in Fife between the ages of eight and 13, and beyond the age of 15, I'd never spoken to anyone I'd known from those days. Until my article appeared. After which several former pupils and one teacher got in touch with me.

I thought about this article and those days after I'd heard the first minister Alex Salmond proclaim, among a load of saltire-waving school kids, "they don’t need any encouragement to celebrate their Scottishness." Quite right. As the only kid with an English accent in my class, I can well remember the really big Scottish celebrations. Like on 14 June 1970, after Germany knocked England out of the World Cup. They didn't need any encouragement then. I was nine, but I thought I'd died and gone to hell.

I've changed some of the names in the article which was written in 2001. You can read it in the next entry, 'Let's all meet up ..." The photo above must have been taken in 1971, and the picture below is about the same time. Since I wrote the article, friendsreunited has spawned many imitators, notably http://www.convictsreunited.com/

Let's all meet up in the year ...

Manchester people by birth and outlook, my parents had taken us to live in faraway Fife when my mother took a phone call which told her, suddenly and shockingly, that her father had died. She wept (I'd never seen a grown-up cry), my father fussed and I was devastated.

My grandad, Fred Williams, had lived all his life in Hyde, and though I'd seen him infrequently in my first ten years, I loved him uncritically as only a child can. Nor did distance dull the pain of his passing, and a week or two after his death I found myself one school break-time lying flat on my back crying my eyes out.

It was then one of my tiny buddies pottered up from the playground to ask what was wrong. He listened to my bad news, sat down and soon we were both staring up at the sky, talking about heaven and the probability that my grandfather was looking down at us at that moment and smiling. My ten-year-old friend had really helped me feel better.

This sentimental image is my one clear memory of Dougie Ross. At the end of the year he moved away from Dunearn Primary School and out of my life. I was happy enough to be left with the memory but, cajoled by the people I call friends today, I logged on last week to an internet website at www.friendsreunited.co.uk. And there was this Ross, no longer in short trousers, but instead grown up, called Douglas and teaching in London.

One of the media phenomena of the year, friendsreunited is the most successful of a number of sites that are making the most of some people's strange desire to dig up their pasts (rival sites are www.oldschoolmates.co.uk and www.lostschoolfriends.com). None of them are produced by the schools organisations, but instead by faceless IT people who have cleverly wrested control of the rose-tinted spectacle industry from Channel 4 and come up with a new way of making money from nostalgia.

Last week Marketing magazine reported the number of visitors to friendsreunited had doubled since July, from 542,000 unique visitors to 1.1 million in August. That made it the 29th most-visited website in the UK with visitors spending an average of 40.7 minutes there over the course of the month. That's serious traffic as any computer nerd could tell you.

It works like this. The site has a database of 22,000 schools and under each institution there is an ever-expanding list of former pupils who have signed up in search of their pasts. Many of these schmucks provide an account of their lives since leaving school, which range from the pitiful ("I am now blind but can typpe verry well so pelase get in toucj") to the plain harrowing ("Sales director of leading-edge marketing company. Drive Jaguar. Married to Sally, three kids").

To get full use of the service you'll have to register for a fiver - allegedly to discourage unsolicited e-mails and "spam" - and the evidence of your eyes will tell you that thousands of people are handing over their money. Someone, somewhere, probably with big thick glasses and precious few social graces, is making a heap of money.

For the well-rounded but curious punter the site is like a bad accident: you don't want to look, but you just can't avert your gaze. Through endless school noticeboards, it is a storehouse of semi-literate sentimentality and the chillingly mundane. It acts both as a repository of the saddest people you ever knew and as a place for bigheads to brag about their successful careers in IT.

The worst offenders? Possibly those who, in their mid-forties, refer to themselves by an old nickname to try to encourage communication from others, long gone from their lives. Thus one 41-year-old former pupil of a minor public school details herself "Linda Rankine (Skunk)"; from another we find "Mark Rhodes (Cecil)". How long did these people take to live down those nicknames only to paint them up in public view again?

Add to them the people whose lives you don't want to share. "Worked for Braithwaites' Prime Meat for the past 20 yrs. Started as a van boy now I'm the buyer." If you think that's a pretty tragic life, think again, for our subscriber adds breezily: "Can't complain". Or there's this: "Working in telecoms, Bristol-based and still playing the organ". Good for you, mate. Now get a life.

Then there are the sad boys, the ones studying physics you used to walk past at school who want to tell you how successful they've become. There are thousands of them out there justifying dismal existences - but behind the certitude of their CVs you sense a howling loneliness. "Living in Leicestershire with wife Clare and three children (ages 11,13,15). Following a degree in Economics and Economic History at Bristol Univ qualified as an accountant. Now working in Essex as commercial director for a private company engaged in retailing. Leisure pursuits are rugby (as coach and referee) and tennis." Or take David Toole from one of my old secondary schools: "I have my own textile business." Yes, but you're still called Toole.

Strikingly absent among this human detritus are people who live productive lives in the midst of healthy communities. Tinkers, tailors, soldiers and sailors are hard to find, or anyone else making something useful for the common good. Similarly, opinion formers, cabinet ministers, broadcasters or the otherwise rich and famous have not taken time to sign up here. At Morrison's Academy, for example, there is no entry for: "Ewan McGregor (Shorty). Just finished making out with Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge (and yes she Can-Can!)"

But at least at the same school we find one of the shafts of humour which are the site's redeeming feature. Rodney Munch ("Muncher") informs his pals that, after a career in Columbia with American covert ops, he is now working for Aeroflot and based in Moscow where: "I live with my partner Horst and two adopted children." If true, Muncher's invitation to the alumni dinner may get lost in the post.

In the same vein, alleged sex-changes are infrequent but funny. Michael/Michelle Graham of Annan Academy (alias "Poof" or "Girl") now lives "in leafy Tufnell Park, with a long-haired Chihuahua called Gerald". Fergus Stevenson ("Ferg") of Nairn Academy has come a long way since the class of '87. "Former research scientist at Huntingdon Life Sciences. Spend my day injecting cancer into puppies' heads. Very rewarding job. Making money to have a gender reassignment operation so that myself and Andrew Clucas can be legally married as man and wife."

At friendsreunited you can travel the length and breadth of the country to chuckle at freaks of all shapes and sizes. But when you narrow the focus and search for what's really important to you, the laughter stops and a happy memory is ruined by someone else's recollection.

For me, conkers and getting the bumps on my birthday seems an important part of the past. I don't recall the notion that one school friend of mine was "resolutely single and heterosexual" cropping up in a 1970s conversation, though nearly 30 years on, he feels his old mates should know he's "still the same guy".

And that's how it is with wee Dougie Ross. At the website he writes: "After school I went to Stirling to do economics, spent some time working in Edinburgh then went to teach in Japan. Now married with a two-year-old son." These days he might be short and bald with a beer gut and black teeth, whistling for his wife to bring him a bottle from the fridge while he gawps at the footie on the box. Alternatively the pair of them could be saintly figures, working with the street children in the east end of London, teaching life skills to make them whole again. Who knows?

In the spirit of professional nosiness I sent Dougie Ross an e-mail, care of friendsreunited. I hope Douglas Ross doesn't reply. I preferred him in shorts.

* Mike Wade lives in Edinburgh with his wife and two kids. He still plays conkers and drinks like a fish.

Waving the flag for St Andrew

The Times, Scotland, 4 November, 2007

According to legend, the appearance of a saltire in the skies over Athelstaneford in East Lothian once inspired a ragged band of Scots to defeat a mighty English army. Gripping the same emblem in his fist Alex Salmond yesterday pledged to lead his country to an equally unlikely victory, by establishing St Andrews Day as a bank holiday, despite the forces of bureaucracy ranged against him.

Surrounded by flag-waving school children, the first minister launched a St Andrews Day and Winter Festival, saying he would “lead by example” and establish 30 November as an official day off for everyone who works for the Scottish government. Other employers would quickly follow suit, he added.

However Mr Salmond’s desire to create a holiday to rival the exuberant and lucrative celebrations associated with Ireland’s St Patrick’s Day remains thwarted by legislation passed last year by the Scottish parliament.

A private member’s bill introduced by Dennis Canavan, the former independent MP for Falkirk, ended in a compromise under which banks and other organisations were permitted, but not compelled, to close on November 30. Business leaders argued successfully that the cost of a lost day’s production was too great for the country to bear.

This year, by using flexitime and by swapping holidays, government staff have been encouraged to take the day off. But Mr Salmond wanted something more formal, and said the existing “enabling” legislation would eventually achieve his goal.

“We will be looking to establish ... St Andrews day as a full holiday. We are talking to our staff about that, and then will spread it from there. We know it has to be voluntary because of the legislation, but I think it will gather pace and become a national holiday over time. We will be leading by example,” he said.

This year’s St Andrews day is seen as a prelude to a winter spectacular of events, scattered over Hogmanay and Burns Night, once a simple night of poetry and haggis eating which has been magically extended into something the government calls “the Burns season”.

The first minister predicted that business would soon see the benefits of these celebrations. “As the marketing aspect of the Winter Festival kicks in many businesses will see the commerical as well as the social advantages of celebrating St Andrew’s Day and promoting Scotland over the winter months,” he said.

Taking his cue from Edinburgh’s Hogmanay – which has twice been rained off in the last four years – Mr Salmond said these events would combine to project “Scotland the place to be over the winter months”.

Cynics will suggest that Barbados has a strong claim in that respect, particularly since questions remain over the quality of the fare on offer which is intended to kick start Scotland’s winter tourism initiative.

Travellers who favour beach bars, palm trees and water skiing may not be tempted by St Andrew’s day celebrations which include a Doric cabaret night in Aberdeen, a ceilidh in Stirling and a living history display at Culloden, as well as a “shindig” in Glasgow, and a “jig” in Edinburgh.

A flavour of the joys to come was provided by the pupils of St Margaret’s primary school in Loanhead, Midlothian, where the first minister appeared with secretary for Education, Fiona Hyslop, and the London-based Scottish singer, Sandi Thom.

Adorned in tartan ribbons, the children performed Westering Home, Mairi’s Wedding and Scotland the Brave, favourites chosen from their repertoire of Scottish songs which includes Johnny Cope, a victory celebration of the rout of the English at the battle of Prestonpans in 1745.

Mr Salmond has faced criticism from some quarters this week for using children to promote nationalist propaganda, but he dismissed these attacks.

“This is not Scottish propaganda, this is Scottish promotion. This is Scotland. The saltire doesn’t belong to the SNP it belongs to the country. As you can see the children here don’t need any encouragement to celebrate their Scottishness,” he said.

“Schools are an essential part in celebrating the national day. You would have to have the most enormously developed Scottish cringe to believe [otherwise]. It is the normal thing for people in Scotland and across the world to celebrate their nationality and to understand and respect other people’s nationality. That’s what being a young self confident Scot is all about.” he said.

The first minister also dismissed the remarks of Jeremy Paxman, the presenter of the BBC Newsnight programme, who spoke this week of his pleasure in baiting “chippy” Scottish politicians.

“You have to take these things in good part. A gentle, patronising of Jeremy is the correct way to treat him. I enjoy his humour and I hope he enjoys mine. You’ve got to be grown up and adult and not too worried about banter, that’s the way it is,” he said.

“Jeremy believes that every Scot will rise to his bait. Here’s one Salmond that won’t rise to his bait.”

Desperately seeking success

The Times, Scotland, 4 November 2007

If you are going to announce yourself as the next singing sensation with your very first song on the West End stage, you might as well think big. Alec Newman, the Glaswegian who has landed a plum part in one of London’s most hyped shows of the new season, is definitely thinking big.

In a fortnight’s time, Newman will mark his arrival as a vocalist when he is cast as Dez, the main love interest, in the world premiere of Desperately Seeking Susan, a new musical which features the songs of Blondie. He opens his account with that classic of love and desire, Picture This, immortalised in 1979 by its original singer Debbie Harry. And Harry will be in the audience watching as Newman performs. From a bed.

“The mind boggles,” Newman acknowledges with a smile as he takes time out from rehearsals at the Novello Theatre. “But there is only one place to be singing that song isn’t there? You’d have to be between the sheets. And it’s worked into the show very well, there’s no sense of announcing ‘And now I am going to sing...”

At first sight, the show is an unlikely proposition, a remake of an inviolable piece of celluloid Americana. It was conceived four years ago by Peter Marino, a New York dancer who found himself idly wondering about pop acts who might benefit from a stage treatment. He landed on Blondie, connecting their songbook with Desperately Seeking Susan, the film which had made a movie star of Madonna.

It took a year to work up a script but after Harry enthusiastically endorsed the project, the show was on the road. It is premiering in Britain because the band’s music was first embraced here.

For Newman, 33, the role has brought a new set of challenges. It’s true that a training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art included singing lessons but nothing to compare with the intense regime deployed by Desperately Seeking Susan’s musical director, Matt Brind.

“It’s unbelievable. I have been getting what I can only assume are opera classes from him,” says Newman. “The school of thought is ‘the better the singer, the better it will be on the night’. It is a challenge, but it’s the classic thing – it’s good to stretch yourself and this is a stretch.”

Steeped in the music of the 1970s and 1980s Newman was a prime candidate for his role. His father, Sandy Newman, has been lead and singer with The Marmalade since 1973, and Alec grew up to a soundtrack of Paul Simon, Billy Joel and Wings. “It went in subconsciously. It dictated my musical tastes.”

If those tastes are profoundly MOR and Mid Atlantic, Newman has no doubt about his roots, even though the family quit Scotland for Berkshire when he was only four. His Scottishness was “positively bullied” into him by his father, and the end result is good, he says.

“I know where I come from, and I think that is important. Especially when you move around and live in different places,” says Newman. “I remember going into school as a teenager with this weird estuary English accent. And then one day I began insisting I was Scottish. That was me trying to asset my identity, but it ended in tears in a corner of the history class. For the other kids it was weird. Here was a guy coming in all of a sudden speaking in a Scottish accent.”

Newman has spent much of his working life in Los Angeles, where he lives with his girlfriend. He has he starred in two long-running US TV series, Dune and Children of Dune, but more recently earned a West End run in The Soldier’s Fortune at the Young Vic.

The Scottish connections are coming good now. Earlier this year he starred in the BBC production of Reichenbach Falls, an Edinburgh thriller about a crime writer and his creations. And next year Newman is slated to play opposite James McAvoy, in Three Way Split, a comedy drama directed Tom Hunsinger and Neil Hunter.

For now, the music of the 1970s and 1980s are his head, and Newman’s mind is turning to new possibilities.

“I found myself on the bus the other day with the Ipod listening to old Marmalade, the last big album, Heartbreaker. I thought ‘these are great songs’.

“It was like the musical, I was listening to a bit of the 80s, but I just hadn’t thought of my old man as an 80s thing before. Then I began thinking, ‘I wonder how you could cobble these songs into a musical?’ Because he owns them all and it would be cheap. It made me appreciate my dad’s work. I was quite something, sitting there on the bus, staring out of the window, listening to Heartbreaker.”

Marmalade: The Musical. We have been warned.

What's wrong with Edinburgh?

Two posts below about some of the changes which are happening to Edinburgh, one of the world's most beautiful capital cities. The first is an interview with Terry Farrell, a world-renowned architect who was appointed design champion by Edinburgh City Council three years ago, to help them develop a vision for city. As you can read, Farrell is not impressed with the mentality of many of Edinburgh's civic leaders, and sees failings in both the public and private sectors which are in grave danger of damaging the city. The second piece itemises recent work by Allan Murray Architects who are involved in a large number of new building projects in the city centre. These two articles appeared as a double page spread in The Times Scottish edition last month.

Murray responded to these articles with an essay of his own in Prospect magazine, which is dedicated to Scottish architecture. If anyone can supply a reference, I would like to link to it from this website.

City at risk from the forces of lethargy

It was the city “that Paris ought to be” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, a place so beautiful that George Eliot thought she “had waked in Utopia”. But now Edinburgh has been subjected to a damaging analysis by its own architectural supremo, Sir Terry Farrell. He says it in “dire need of regeneration”, gripped by “the forces of lethargy” and in danger of becoming “second rate”.

Farrell was appointed design champion in 2004 by the City of Edinburgh Council, but after three years of mounting frustration in the role, he has rounded on the council, attacking its leaders for their lack of vision, its “atrophied” planning process and a prevailing complacency which could “damage” the city.

His comments come as Edinburgh embarks on the most far-reaching building programme since the New Town was commissioned in the late 18th century. This will see the creation of a new seafront development in Leith, the rebuilding of the reviled St James shopping centre and the development of areas around Haymarket and Waverley Stations. It also includes new building on three sites at the heart of the Old Town which could have a dramatic impact on the city’s traditional architecture.

Farrell had not even been shown the plans for Caltongate, one of the most controversial of the Old Town proposals, but said he was dismayed by the almost every aspect of the council’s moribund approach to planning. This he contrasted with the dynamism of Manchester and the Medway towns in Kent, where local authorities and business leaders had combined to retivalise failing urban centres.

“Edinburgh is a town which has dire need of regeneration. But nobody believes it – because there is a fantastic festival and the world heritage site is in the middle,” said Farrell. “There’s no-one beginning to think that they even need a vision. Not just at officer level – it’s very apparent there – but also in the elected leaders. There is no belief that they need do anything other than sit back. I despair of Edinburgh recognising that city making, which is the greatest tradition in Edinburgh, is ongoing.

“Towns on their knees like Manchester after the IRA bomb, or Medway after the royal naval dockyards closed, can see it. They are in there playing the bigger game. Here I can’t make any headway.”

Visionary city making and wealth creation would only come through proactive planning said Farrell, but the Edinburgh system works in the opposite way, devolving big projects to private developers who sought approval for their plans through the council’s development control department.

This entirely reactive process encourages “shooting and sniping” he said. Changes in full-time personnel and in the political leadership of the council were unlikely to improve the situation, particularly as the authority faces a £14million deficit this year.

The last Labour administration approved several big projects by the architect Allan Murray. While Farrell had no criticism of Murray he said that proactive planning would attract architects of the highest calibre.

Farrell added that £600m tram system adopted by the council had likewise been selected with little consideration of its visual impact. Its carriages require raised platforms and intrusive safety poles. “If you do it wrong, it will be detrimental,” he said.

When he embarked on his unpaid role as design champion, Farrell’s ambition was to help Edinburgh “get its act together,” he said. “Now it’s in danger of becoming a bit of a failure. The impediments to getting things done in a local authority set-up are major. One is up against the forces of lethargy. They are so great. You need a city leader, you need chief officers, a supportive council – it’s like Tony Blair turning Labour round, for good or ill – you need that kind of will and a group of people behind it. Edinburgh needs that.”

If Farrell had his way, Princes St would exploit its position as “the best urban promenade in the world”, abandon its attempt to compete with out-of-town shopping centres, and retain substantial retail only at its east end. Pavements should be wider, al fresco dining encouraged and apartments and boutique hotels should flow into upper floors currently used for storage by chain stores.

Moira Tasker of the Cockburn Association – the Edinburgh Civic Trust – welcomed Sir Terry’s intervention. “There must be more coherence, vision and leadership, and less short-termism,” she said.

Farrell added that often only a crisis provoked civic leaders to take city-making seriously. “Manchester had the bomb. Then they had to do something,” he said. “What will make Edinburgh people feel they’ve got to do something?”

A spokesman for the council said: “Sir Terry’s appointment indicated that the council was passionate about design and determined to secure the highest standards in design for an international capital city with World Heritage status.”

Man whose vision will dominate Edinburgh

Allan Murray’s work is not yet cherished like some of his illustrious predecessors in Edinburgh, but soon it will dominate some of the city’s most beautiful and famous streets.

Murray cut his teeth as an architect in America, returning to Scotland to establish a private practise in 1992. He has since put his stamp on a series of very visible and potentially controversial projects many within the area designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage site.

It is Murray’s vision which will raise a new hotel – The Bridge – high on the Royal Mile, on the site of the old Lothian Regional Council offices. And it is Murray, who, with his plans for the Cowgate Bridge site – cleared by fire in 2002 – will create “a vibrant new city district”.

He is also the lead architect on the £300 million Caltongate development that requires the demolition of two listed buildings. These proposals have outraged conservation groups and residents and the project has been referred back to planning.

His practice handles an extraordinary volume of work. His buildings dominate Leith Street and Greenside Place. His masterplan gave the city the plate-glass façade of the Omni Centre and he designed the adjacent Calton Square offices. Recently he was appointed to prepare designs for a new St James centre and has planning permission for offices on the site opposite. Between 2002 and 2004 he completed the Tun on Holyrood Road, the adjacent clock tower and the Cowgate Nursery.

The practice does not confine itself to the city centre. It has completed three corporate buildings on the Edinburgh Park estate, with a combined value of more than £25m, for New Edinburgh, a joint venture between the Miller Group and the city council. He is masterplanning the re-generation of a 32-hectare site in Fountainbridge and in Leith, Murray has designed phases one and two of Coalhill., for the developer Buredi.

With commendable chutzpah, he announced that the dome on the top of his South Bridge Building is inspired by the nearby Old College, designed by Robert Adam, Edinburgh’s great architect of the Enlightenment. Who knows, in 200 years, designers might be erecting plate glass walls in homage to Murray?