Two suggestions to boost Aberdeen in the future. One a bosker, one in the category: “You’re havin’ a laugh.”
The decidely duff idea is the one run up the flagpole by the city’s Covid recovery Masterplan brainboxes – bringing back the trams. Where in the name of all that’s sensible would the cash-strapped cooncil manage to beg, steal or borrow the multi-millions needed to excavate roads across the toon, lay rails and buy a fleet of luxury liners? Jings, we canna even afford to fix the potholes.
For those of us who remember the jigglie green giants, talk of their rebirth brings back memories of just how wonderful they were. Clinking, clanking, occasionally flashing coaches which sailed across the city centre and into suburbs like Mannofield, Woodside and Bridge of Don.
How we kids adored getting on or off at a terminus and reversing the seatbacks so passengers were always facing forward. So much did they shoogle, I once fell from top to bottom of the stairs at Balgownie – a particularly embarrassing manouevre since I’d only just hitered, fully clothed, into the Dee and was literally in a state of tweed coat and nae knickers.
But the sage corporation cooncillors reckoned the future was petrol buses rather than electrified vehicles. Oh, the irony. Ripping up the tracks, they sentenced the wonderful trams to death by fire. An Evening Express photographer who was there that awful night of the bonfires said many bystanders were in tears, including him.
But the north-east transport wreckers had only just begun. A pucklie years later, Dr Beeching took his ruthless, senseless axe to our wonderful Deeside, Shire, Buchan and Banff railway systems. What a joy to see some of them being revived and well-used.
Why have we waited so long for a medical museum?
The bosker of an idea comes from ex-children’s surgeon, George Youngson. With ongoing uncertainty about the old Woolmanhill Hospital building, the prof has come up with the inspirational plan of creating a medical museum, prompting the question: why has no one thought of this before, especially when we pioneered insulin, the iron lung and the MRI scanner? Apparently Marischal College is packed with potential exhibits, while more valuable ones have been loaned out across the world.
My outstanding memory of the old hospital is so bizarre, I wonder if I’ve made it up. Me and some of the other quines from Babs Wilson’s dancing used to dress in our spangly costumes and troop into the dark and spooky reception area in Woolmanhill’s casualty department to treat waiting patients to the songs and dances from our shows.
I’ve often wondered whether our rousing renditions of Oklahoma! and Broadway Melody actually cheered up the broken and bloodied captive audience – or fair scunnert them!