by tim_bell | Nov 30, 2023 | Uncategorized
It’s been a while since I paid this site any attention. Not that stuff hasn’t been happening. I think there’s only one copy of the reprint of my book (at Topping bookshop). And we’re going to a second edition, due out in February, timed to...
by tim_bell | Nov 13, 2022 | Latest News
A chap I knew as a laddie, 30-odd years ago, died last month. He was a nice boy. Probably consequent upon a youthful experiment in his teens, he had a drug problem for about 25 years. His own family had to keep him at a distance, for their own protection. It was...
by tim_bell | Jun 30, 2022 | Latest News
It’s been a while! Hello again. I’m as keen as ever to claim Trainspotting for Leith. It’s a local story. Leith disappears in the film, but it all started here. Read all about it in my piece in The Leither . Then see The Proclaimers take away A...
by tim_bell | Apr 30, 2022 | Uncategorized
A centenary only comes along when you haven’t had time to get ready for it. Didn’t see it coming. That wasn’t the reason for missing the centenary of the amalgamation of municipal Leith with municipal Edinburgh in 2020. The centenary was in 2020, you...
by tim_bell | Dec 31, 2021 | Uncategorized
Scotland – the state of play on the cusp of 2022 What State? We’re in a poor state. The SNP, always wanting to say things would be better in an “independent” Scotland and in government unbroken since 2007, has no interest in making devolution work well. Beyond its...
by tim_bell | Nov 12, 2021 | Uncategorized
It was Harry Gibson (the play) and Danny Boyle (the film) who took the Trainspotting story away from Leith. Irvine Welsh’s focus was on the collapse of the community of Leith – the demolitions, the dispersals, the diaspora – into which heroin and HIV...
by tim_bell | Nov 3, 2021 | Uncategorized
It’s out, on the streets of Leith, a collection of writings marking the centenary of the amalgamation of Leith and Edinburgh in 1920. OK, we’re a year late, so it’s edition #101 and we’ll hit #200 in November 2120. Fifteen different voices, all...
by tim_bell | Oct 29, 2021 | Uncategorized
It’s not just the Hibs. It’s not just Stella Maris church and the first presbytery house in post-Reformation Scotland. The Irish built a good part of Victorian Leith streets, and they have one of the very few 19th century positive acknowledgements of their...
by tim_bell | Aug 20, 2021 | Uncategorized
See my letter in The Herald or read it here. The “War on Drugs” isn’t a war, it’s big business. Few politicians have the courage to acknowledge this, and none of them is in Scotland. I know little of Afghanistan other than general knowledge and...
by tim_bell | Aug 10, 2021 | Uncategorized
Just too late to join the row about the record-breaking illegal drug deaths in Scotland, here’s a letter I didn’t send to the press. Recent correspondence is quite right to point out that the cause of the scale of the Scottish drug-related deaths is...
