Come on board and let Unicorn work its magic

THE LANDMARKS by which I navigated my way through a Dundee childhood are, inevitably after such a wheen of years, a much depleted tribe. First among these were the prefab in Glamis Road (the Glammy) that was my childhood home and my grandparents’ tenement in Logie Street where I routinely met my mother several days a week after school. Both of these are long gone.

That school, Ancrum Road Primary (the Anky) is alive and well, as are its near neighbours, Lochee Park and the Balgay Hill, and these formed the landscape of childhood, or at least they formed half of it. The other half centred on Elmwood Road (the Elmy — we were nothing if not consistent in our renaming of the local geography), a country lane among the fields of Hillside Farm, all of which has long since morphed into a road among bungalows and Menzieshill. No longer is Glamis Road the last street in town with spring skylarks.

The tree halfway up Elmwood Road (the Bushy) that my gang of pals claimed for our own and knew our way up and down every limb in its amiable embrace was cut down by the bungalow builders and the writing was on the wall from that day hence.

Of the Lochee cinemas my grandfather managed, the Astoria is barely more than an outline of an echo of a memory, but the Rialto still stands, albeit such a ruinous insult to its own era now that it causes me almost physical pain to look on it. I think often of what has been achieved at the Birks in Aberfeldy and I fail to grasp why Dundee showed not the slightest interest in even attempting what Aberfeldy has achieved.

All the Lochee shops where all my family were known by name are either something rotting, something else or something demolished. Auntie Meg’s house in Byron Street still looks trim enough from the outside, and whenever I pass that way now (invariably on the way to Dens Park — oh, don’t get me started!), I wonder if starlings still nest in the roof.

Everything else was “in town”, the whale, the library, the Overgate, the Wellgate, the Old Steeple, the docks. Ah, the docks — the Vicky Arch (gone, hooray, I loathed its black Victorian arrogance), the wee trains that shuttled in and out, blackening her skirts (gone), the swimming baths by the river (we used go there every Monday night with the Post Office club — gone), the Cressy…

Ah, the Cressy, the mysterious, slightly exotic yet somehow paternalistically reassuring black and white bulk that nuzzled the quayside next to the baths, she’s still there, like a foster mother to the memories of that childhood and as eternally Dundee as what we would cry the Lah Hull. Like most ladies of a certain age, she has changed her name, more than once as it happens, and it may be that you only know her as the Frigate Unicorn.

So what brought all that on? Well, I have just been back to visit her after (it must be admitted) rather too long an absence, and that visit stirred up more memories than there are hornets in a hornets’ nest. In fact, the Unicorn has been no stranger to hornets’ nests in recent years, the last of which was buzzing angrily with the utterly absurd threat that she might have to be taken out of Dundee for her own good, a threat that was the culmination of some strife or other within the Unicorn Preservation Society.

The society, whose invitation was the reason for my visit, would appear to be on an even keel again and well set up to give the Unicorn a new lease of life. I am inexplicably moved and reassured by that. Gone is the slightly arrogant presumption that the only future for the Unicorn lay in a new berth alongside the Discovery and the V&A. As Catherine Erskine of the society pointedly remarked: “We would have looked like the ugly sister.”

Rather the society is pursuing a future for the Unicorn just where she is, in Victoria Dock, only out of the water rather than in it. Her 190-year-old bones are best served by being in a dry dock, to which end the society is planning new overtures to the Heritage Lottery Fund. The connection between the Discovery and the other artefacts and episodes from Dundee’s astonishing maritime story would be achieved with a maritime trail, a purposebuilt walking route threading the waterfront and the docks.

And what does this have to do with you? Just this: an exploration of the four decks of the Unicorn is a head-spinning realisation of the astonishing heritage and heady series of atmospheres between the quarterdeck and the hold, deep below the waterline. For too long now she has lived in Discovery’s shadow as Dundee’s other old ship.

The thing is, she is open for business. First and foremost, come aboard and have a look and marvel and reclaim a piece of your heritage that you had probably forgotten all about. She’s a jazz and folk music venue, she’s a wedding and private function venue, but, mostly, she’s something of an historic miracle.

So, an old lady I went to see made a point of asking after you, and she expressed her sadness that she doesn’t see you as much as she would like. Oh, and she said to bring the children, or the grandchildren, or both. And whatever you may have read recently, she’s going nowhere. If you were to cut into one of her old oak timbers you’d see that it says “Dundee” all the way through.

See what you’ve been missing at www. frigateunicorn.org. She’s full of surprises. She surprised me because when I arrived, there was a small group of starry-eyed children on the quarterdeck and one of them looked just like a wee prefab laddie I used to know, and surprised me into writing this.

The frigate is open for business and full of surprises.