For the characters in Trainspotting, Leith was a ghost town. Now a tour of their haunts explains why, reports Tony Clayton-Lea
We all know the film, and most of us know the book/stage play, but how many of us can truthfully say we know why Irvine Welsh called his debut novel Trainspotting?
It's a wet and cold September night in Leith. Three miles from Edinburgh, Leith was once a town in its own right but is now a town within a city, a suburb that hosts outward signs of shiny urban regeneration (the impressive Ocean Terminal shopping centre, an array of new bars and restaurants here, a new Holiday Inn and Malmaison Hotel there). Yet the ghosts of old Leith remain in curious places, a sense of residual impoverishment resides under the scrubbed surface, and one can certainly feel its city neighbours, under the looming shadow of the castle and the bright stone of Queen Street, looking down their noses.
Right now, though, we're in a pub called the Port O' Leith (Irvine Welsh was drinking in here when the present owner acquired it), and it's as far removed from Edinburgh's clinking-glass clientele as you can imagine. It's the perfect place to start the Trainspotting Tour, says guide Tim Bell, the man who devised and conducts the two-hour walk. In existence for more than a year, the tour has been modified and enhanced to the point where Bell has committed himself to a full summer and autumn programme (weather permitting). He's extremely knowledgeable, not just about the book (from which he reads extracts at pertinent points) and the film, but also about the social context that inspired the work.
"The book is specifically located in the years 1986/87," he tells a group of tourists in the smoky pub. "After the second World War, the maritime industries at Leith died. Gradually, Leith lost its soul. The characters of Trainspotting grew up after enduring several decades of loss of community. Their economic and job prospects disappeared when, among other business concerns, the Henry Robb shipyard closed down in 1983. The fabric of the town was knocked apart, and the community in which they lived was being fractured and dispersed. There was no investment and much social discouragement, so it's little surprise that the Trainspotting boys - Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, and so on - were vulnerable to drugs when they suddenly appeared through Leith docks."
For a brief period of time, Bell says, Leith and Edinburgh held the unwanted title of "Aids capital of Europe'. Of the real teenagers who were contemporaries of the barely fictional Trainspotting lads, many are dead. Quite a number of those who survived the ravages of hard-drug use are in prison.
THE BOOK, EXPLAINS Bell, is a series of loosely connected episodes, and so, as we try to avoid the spitting of the rain and the swirl of the wind, our tour ducks and dives from one scene to the next. We stand outside the Lothian and Borders police station, and hear from Bell the possible reasoning behind Welsh's derogatory term for the police there - Lab Dicks. "It's like NYPD, it could catch on!"
We walk on to Wellington Street, where, in a top-floor flat, Welsh tapped out Trainspotting. At this point, Bell reads out the Deid Dugs episode from the book.
Then it's on to Leith Dockers Social Club, where Welsh's father was a member and where, in the book, Renton and Spud, following a bout of shoplifting, discuss Kierkegaard. From there, it's a short walk to the scene of the book's pivotal section, the site of the former Leith Central Station, now occupied by the Waterworld swimming complex and a supermarket and car-park.
It is here that Bell comes into his own, delivering a passionate and insightful encapsulation of the core of the book. He sets the scene: the Trainspotting lads at the end of a year, still alive, triumphant they have survived the hard slog of violence, drugs and desperation. Renton and Begbie stand in Leith Central Station, closed since 1953, its platforms and large covered yards derelict. The metaphor is obvious: this is a dark place due for demolition and oblivion, and it could be the characters' turn next. As the lads use a section of the station as a toilet, an old drunk comes out of the shadows and suggests they take up trainspotting - albeit almost 40 years after the last train departed from the platforms.
The "ghost", Bell reminds us, is actually Begbie's father, the knowledge of which lends a certain level of sympathy to an otherwise vile character.
"Who or what does the ghost represent?" asks Bell. "A generation of unemployed men? Is he a man who has lost his life to alcohol? And what about the train he's looking for? Perhaps it's the glory days of Leith community and excitement, a time when Leith Central Station had access to the outside world. If you've only seen the film you have no idea why the title is Trainspotting, because this episode and the metaphor it conjures up is completely omitted from it."
After this tidy piece of detail, the evening winds up, apart from a post-tour natter in a nearby pub (officially it should be in the Port O' Leith, but it's generally agreed that it's too cold and wet to walk there).
Conclusion? It's an excellent, meaty, adult and often profane guided tour that tells us much about more about the book (plus its sequel, Porno) and the film than the average reading or viewing ever could. Social history and modern literature blend in a seamless, humorous and scabrous manner. It is, as Tim Bell would have it, literature live on location. It is, as Irvine Welsh might say, pure radge, man.
For more information on the Trainspotting walking tour, contact Tim Bell at 0044-131-5552500 or go to www.leithwalks.co.uk. For general information on guided tours in the Leith/Edinburgh area, phone 0044- 845-2255121, or go to www.visitscotland.com/citybreaks