We're going all out now for museum

Published on Wednesday 30 January 2008 16:48

PRAY it happens. South Leith Kirk's minister Ian Gilmour, prominent in the campaign to establish a Leith Museum, tells me the campaigners are searching for alternative locations to the front-running waterside Custom House in Commercial Street.

"We find now it's probably wiser not to concentrate our minds on any one site, namely the Custom House, because if that should fall flat our campaign would be deflated, back to square one.

"Talk of a museum for the port has been 'simmering' for 30 years and only in the last couple of years have we brought it to the boil, so to speak.

"Most of our plans have fallen on stony ground and at our latest meeting we decided on a more positive tack, there's so much at stake.'

"We'll look for alternative locations and broaden our thinking beyond the 3000 artefacts already gathered. In themselves they'll create a major impact.

"But we want to present, too, the more visual aspects of Leith's history through film and a website.

"Before the Coronation in 1953 an effective five-minute film was made about the port, involving actors in period costumes and the voices of women living locally at the time. We're thinking about making a new film, not just about Leith's past but also how it functions today."

So get on with it, reverend. Make a movie. Find a place.

On your bikes!

In Japan they get away with it. Bicyclists balancing a couple of kids on the frame or chatting on mobile phones, or listening to music players, or using umbrellas (all while they pedal) are everyday sights.

Come the spring such offences will bring 20,000 yen (94) fines. A clampdown, too, on the incessant ringing of bells on footpaths.

Here, far too many cyclists get away with virtual murder. No lights. And they use footpaths with impunity. When did you last see PC Plod pull one up for pedalling along Princes Street's pavements, often against oncoming pedestrian traffic?

And what, pray, is an umbrella? Whole lot of people out there wouldn't be seen dead using one. It's old hat. You can always spot them in torrential mid-winter rain. Drookit. Through to their semmits. (And, you will tell us, John, what a semmit is, exactly).