ON THE TRACK OF TRAINSPOTTING
Local historian marks 25th anniversary of Welsh novel by publishing insider’s guide to his adopted home
How the people of Leith finally came to embrace novel about 80s drug culture
WHEN Tim Bell moved to Edinburgh from northern England, he had no idea he was getting in on the ground floor of one of the city’s great modern revival stories.
Or that he would one day play a part in telling and documenting that story.
Tim arrived in Leith at the start of the 80s, when the drug subculture at the heart of Trainspotting was at its height. By the time the novel was published in 1993, he had come to call the area home.
The local historian, originally from Northumberland, is a tour guide in his adopted home town and has been running Trainspotting walking tours in the area for many years.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the novel, Tim has published a guide to the locations and the history behind Irvine Welsh’s celebrated stories of Renton, Begbie, Spud and Sick Boy, Leith’s gentrified revival and how the area has been changed and influenced by Trainspotting.
His book Choose Life, Choose Leith examines the history and the modern cafe culture renaissance and takes readers on a tour of the streets, pubs, communities and personalities who provided the inspiration or backdrop to Welsh’s work. Tim, 72, starts his tours at various ends of Welsh’s Leith – either down at The Shore, where Spud’s beloved dole office has been replaced by a posh cake bake house, or up at the Leith Dockers Club, a favourite of the Trainspotting lads’ parents and one of the biggest community hubs remaining in the area. When Trainspotting was published, a literary phenomenon was born. It’s now regarded as one of the great modern novels and one of Scotland’s all-time classics, while the 1996 film and its sequel, T2 Trainspotting, are among the most successful features to ever come out of Scotland.
Renton and co went on to appear in books including Porno, The Blade Artist and Skagboys, and their antics have been told in several theatrical interpretations.
These days, the books, films and the contribution of Welsh in general are venerated across the community. But it hasn’t always been so.
Tim moved to Leith in 1980 to take up a job as a social worker and has seen all sides of the Edinburgh community for almost four decades.
He started his Leith Walks business in 2003, creating the Trainspotting tour a year later due to popular demand.
His tours are still popular with visitors and academics keen to study the locations mentioned in the book.
The timing was fortunate, as that
was also when the book was winning over even its harshest local critics and being rightfully celebrated as a key part of the city’s literary heritage.
Tim said: “It was good fun reading Trainspotting on location but if this had been set anywhere else but in the community where I lived, I wouldn’t have gotten into it.
“The book came out in 1993. Leith had been through the ringer since the war and a lot of people said, ‘We don’t need this, we are just trying to get back on our feet’, and thinking they didn’t need this going worldwide.
“Some people were appalled that Leith was tarred with this kind of lifestyle. But they think differently now, and it’s seen as very positive.
“When Edinburgh became a UNESCO City of Literature in 2004, they could do nothing other than recognise Irvine Welsh’s place in the city, and things flipped round then. People had been taking potshots at Irvine but then he was recognised and things were changing.”
When Tim takes his clients around the old community, he’s quick to point out the differences between the book and Danny Boyle’s film.
He said: “Most of our punters have seen the film but the tour doesn’t really have as much to do with the film because Danny Boyle largely took the story out of Leith. It is more of a universal story of a young man who gets into heroin, has some laughs, sees the problems and tries to get out – you could tell that story in New York.
“But the film was very important, too. This was an opportunity to send a message of assertive insolence. This was the days of the Major government, the democratic deficit in Scotland, which was overlooked by Tory governments, which would lead to Tony Blair calling the referendum on devolution.
“And Trainspotting added to the clamour and the noise coming from Scotland.”
Tim takes visitors to landmark locations such as the Persevere “Percy” bar and the spot on Leith Links where Sick Boy shoots the devil dog with his air rifle from the window of a flat in which Welsh himself lived. He also visits the rundown high rises of Kirkgate, a symbol of Leith’s urban distress, and the remarkablelooking, and genuinely bendy, Banana Flats, where Sick Boy lives in the book.
He swings by Leith Central, at one point the biggest new train station of the 20th century, which lay derelict as a magnet for drug abuse and prostitution throughout the 80s. With grand development ideas squandered, the historic building has been reduced to a facade which backs on to a supermarket and a soft play centre.
Tim, as you’d expect, is a massive fan of Welsh and his work. They appeared on a Dutch TV documentary about Trainspotting Leith and Tim said he’s a genuine local hero.
He added: “In the last 25 years, there has been a major impact on tourism, for one, and he is also a patron of Leith Theatre and has done a lot of good work there. He lives around the world but is still present.
“Trainspotting is filled with local knowledge and his own imaginative twist on it.
“What my book aims to do is help people with the local knowledge to help understand the fiction.
“I wrote it because I got so caught up in the fiction, I could see it had energy and set about trying to unlock it and come up with the analysis of the history and the literature.”
There have been lots of changes to the area since Renton and his pals were running amok in 80s Leith.
But some things stay the same. As Tim said: “Things have changed but it’s still got heart. It’s not a ghetto, it’s not a suburb, it just is Leith.
“The dole office is now a cake shop, and where there were docks and shipping offices a long time ago, there’s now a Martin Wishart restaurant and a Pizza Express and so many cafes.
“But at the same time, 25 per cent of children in Leith are still in poverty, so it hasn’t changed that much.”
Choose Life, Choose Leith by Tim Bell is out now on Luath Press, £14.99.
Things have changed but it’s still got heart TIM BELL ON LEITH’S GENTRIFICATION