Pensioners at the heart of hotel protests

Published on Sunday 28 June 2009 21:59

PENSIONERS Agnes and Donald Dick, who live in the Dalry Colonies near Haymarket train station in Edinburgh, hardly fit the profile of 21st-century urban campaigners.

They describe themselves as "old school" and don't own a computer or mobile phone. They prefer quiet evenings at home in the house where Mr Dick was born. Mr Dick, 76, a keen Hearts supporter, likes watching war videos such as The Longest Day while his wife enjoys romantic wartime fiction.

But their cosy upstairs home has become the beating heart of a campaign to prevent Tiger Developments building a "landmark", 17-storey hotel, part of a 200 million project on the edge of the city's World Heritage Site.

Like younger campaigners, the couple say they are not against the site being developed, but they argue that it is out of scale with the surrounding area.

The couple's biggest weapons against the developers are their memories of the Dalry Colonies and a way of life they have perpetuated and which has galvanised younger campaigners used to a faster, but more impersonal, way of life.

Mr Dick keeps campaigners invigorated with stories of his childhood. Typical tales include him helping Tynecastle Homing Club take racing pigeons in baskets to Haymarket station to be released by station masters along the route at places such as Riccarton and Penrith. "I used to love race days," he says. "We'd sit with our tins of maize on a Saturday afternoon at the dovecot just up the road, rattling the tins to get the pigeons to come down to get clocked in. There was great excitement once when a strange pigeon flew in."

His wife says: "We feel that, at our age, there's not a lot we can do about the hotel. But we're worried if the hotel goes ahead the street will get a lot busier with cars and the hotel will overlook us.

"The hotel is far too high – it's as if the rest of us don't exist. The Hearts clock which sits in the middle of Haymarket has been our landmark and we don't need anything else."

She says that despite more "new people" moving to the colonies, the community is a peaceful haven in the city, both for them and for the pensioners in the nearby Fraser Court sheltered housing complex.

"It's so quiet here it's like being in the country," she says. "When you're walking you can hear the birds chirping and you rarely hear traffic. Going to the shops takes half an hour because people want to stop and chat."