Going home to Wester Hailes ...

Cobbinshaw House, 12 storeys high.

I don't remember the place being so green.

The places we played and hung out were made of concrete slabs. Today they are scrubland - overgrown grassy carpets, and trees everywhere - but much of the fabric of the Calders hasn't changed.

I moved into Wester Hailes as a young kid. We were allocated a flat seven floors up in Cobbinshaw House, one of three multi-storey blocks which still dominate the Calders skyline.

From the kitchen we watched the traffic as if they were toy cars, and saw the shifts clocking in and out of Burtons' biscuit factory.

From the living room we looked across the entire estate, over the roof of Sighthill Primary, and on past Arthur's Seat

The building had two lifts, one with what looked like space for luggage at the back. Locals claimed it was to slide coffins in after folk died, otherwise they had to be carted out at a 45-degree angle until they reached the ground floor. I so want that story to be true.

The caretaker would occasionally tire of folk having a pee in the lift and chuck down strong bleach, giving them an eye-watering aroma  come Sunday morning when you went down for your newspapers.

Today there are entry intercoms, and the giant concrete stilts at either end - which formed part of our playground - have been bricked in.

Our kitchen window, seven floors up

There are grassy areas where we had three walls to stott a ball off after doing our homework; an activity that usually ended when some had had enough of the noise reverberating around the buildings, and a window flew open to tell us to shut it because they were on nightshift.

One of my earliest memories of living so high up was going to the cinema to see Towering Inferno. There's a scene when the fire chief explains his ladders can only go up to the seventh floor. I headed home strangely re-assured...

Some of the original garden fences still remain -low level barriers which consisted of a metal pole threaded through concrete posts which followed the curve of the road.

We'd hurdle them easily on our way to the shops which look as grubby as they did all those decades ago. Wonky shutters, scrawled graffiti and cheap signs above doors which haven't opened for some time.

The side of the chippie used to have a message declaring "John Lenin lives" - it appeared shortly after the former Beatles' star died in 1980.  It's gone, and the takeaway appears to have been concreted shut.

The chippie was where I first encountered Dandelion and Burdock - and then discovered the same drink tasted totally different when I moved to Ayrshire. The chemist is still at the other end of the row, while the back of the shops is as desolate as ever; air con units, overflowing bins, barbed wire and the occasional parked car.

Our flat in Calder Drive

Walking round the front of the multi-storey brings back memories of the bin room.

One giant chute ran the height of the building, and you tipped your rubbish in seven floors up.

If it stuck - which it often did - you got your broom, turned it upside down and rammed it in until something gave and everything plummeted into a giant metal box at the bottom. That room always stank.


The multi-storeys have all been given facelifts.

 The cladding looks new and adds colour, but some of the housing blocks are tired. Plaster is falling off, and the area is in need of some TLC

We eventually moved out of Cobbinshaw House across to Calder Drive on the other side of the shops.

The square had flats on three sides and a children's home on the other. In winter we'd throw snowballs at its windows.

Like all squares in Wester Hailes it had next to no greenery - today the place we used for impromptu games of football has been re-designed with grass slopes and trees, fences have all been improved, and gates added to the stairwells.

It feels much, much smaller too, and our old flat, on the top floor, appears to be empty.

It was an easy stroll across the road and straight into WHEC.

The grassy hill between the two was the scene of one epic bonfire which saw us collect every possible scrap of wood and unwanted furniture before setting it alight. It drew a fair crowd and kept everyone warm, until the fire brigade turned up. I suspect the scorched earth may still be there under the long, unkempt grass.

WHEC

A quick jaunt up the hill and Wester Hailes Shopping Centre is now a plaza. The dullest plaza imaginable.

The shutters remain down, post COVID-19, leaving me only with memories of how it looked with Presto dominating the ground floor for our weekly shop.

The petrol station is now a car lot, and the old Hailes Hotel, where we had one of our first underage pints seems to have gone.

I try to find the site of the portacabins which were home to the Wester Hailes Sentinel, the scheme's own newspaper - a proper, bona fide publication which gave me and many others a start -  but my geography is off kilter.

Up at Clovenstone, the  layout also feels very different.

The short walk from the shop - singular - to the school is the same, but it feels much more dense, with newer housing springing up around its perimeter, adjacent to original flats which look knackered.

Clovenstone

There used to be a concrete pitch in there somewhere which staged many 20-a-side football games, but we'd always have one eye out for Navvi and Caveman, the area's most feared duo. Our young radar never stopped twitching.

The grassy areas across Clovie are all growing wild, and  cover up the central path which cuts through the centre of the entire scheme and runs all the way back down to the shopping centre.

Wester Hailes may be tired and frayed, but much of it is also new.

The Water of Leith has been opened up to provide a path up to Kingsnowe, where the grass is always perfectly manicured,  the old multi-storeys at Hailesland have long since been pulled down, and there's now a multiplex cinema where, from memory, a grim old office block once stood.

It remains home to some 10,000 people; an overspill area built originally with next to no facilities. The architects did the bare minimum to make  residents feel like this was home.

Murrayburn

But it is. Everything it has today is because local folk scrapped and scraped for it.

I recall great gala days - The Rezillos, at the very height of the Top Of The Pops fame once played our school gala, belting out their songs on the back of a lorry trailer - and busy school fairs.

The community garden next to my old multi-storey looks like a  colourful hub, and WHEC, remains at the very heart of the community. It's already fended off one closure attempt by councillors.

Wester Hailes and the Calders are part of the Edinburgh that tourists don't get to see.

It doesn't fit the tick box tour of  bagpipes, heritage, tartan and castles. It's not the 'nice' middle class image Auld Reekie likes to project.

It doesn't have the street cred of Leith with its Trainspsotting past and bohemian chic of today, and it has a reputation which folk, who have never set foot in it, assume is the gospel truth.

Walking round the Calders today, for the first time close to 50 years, sparked nothing but many memories of good times with good friends ...

A place I called home.

The back of the shops at the Calders in the shadow of Medwin House