George, New Kirkgate, Leith

“Her name was June Nisbet. It’s been very, very hard. The cancer had been going on for four or five years. She'd had two sessions of chemotherapy. She came out of hospital in October ‘21 and they said they were not going to do any more treatment.  Care home provision was between £650 and £1000 per week. The care service in this country is almost non-existent but the people who do work in the care service are just fantastic. We had people from Care at Home, basically from the hospital. They looked after her at home for the last four to six months. They were brilliant. She slipped away on the 24th May 2022 at half past 3 in the morning.

When I spoke her eulogy at Warriston I said, “She went upstairs and knocked on the door. And Saint Peter opened the door and said, ‘O hello June. Aye you’re on time.” And the first thing that June would say is, “What time is it?” She was a clock watcher. If I called her and said I'll be there in 10 minutes but took 13 I'd be in trouble. But I can imagine Peter saying to her, “Now June, time stops for you.”

I got a damaged heart, a broken heart since June died. She was unbelievable. I've never spoken to anybody else about it. Everybody is very busy and haven't got much time to spare.

I met her at a bus stop in 2009. I lived at the time at the bottom of Portland Street and every morning I used to see her going into the bookies. And I thought, poor woman she's hooked. But she actually worked there! So I plucked up courage one day to speak to her and she agreed we’d go for coffee. So, we went up the town.  Well, it had been 25 years since I'd met anybody and I didn't know the social proprietaries. So, we went up to the coffee place by Marks and Spencers up at the Mound. And we went in, and I realised I didn't have enough money to buy a cake. I could only buy a cup of tea each! But it was like we'd known each other all our lives. We just blended seamlessly into each other.

And she taught me to smile. She always said, ‘You never smile, you never laugh.’ And I said, ‘I don't know how to; physically I don't know how to.’ So, she taught me to smile. It's the best legacy.”

How do you view life now?

“Well, I take life one day at a time. And I’m busy. I work with the Pilmeny Development Project at Buchanan Street and I'm working with the Citadel Youth Club on Commercial Street. I've been doing that for the last 15 years. I mentor young kids. We do an intergenerational cafe where we get the young kids in and they mix with us auld yins, we auld decrepit buggers. I really enjoy it. Before COVID we had about 30, ranging in ages from six upwards. I basically taught them, don't do what I did when I was your age, because then you will shut the door to the world. Because all you need is a report about you to the police. You don't need a criminal conviction; you just need to be on a Police report and you can't go to America or to Canada or to New Zealand or to Australia. Your life is severely curtailed. So just don't be stupid.”

What other advice would you give to young people?

“Go and get a good education first. We don't need all the fancy garbage. You need basic English and maths, especially maths, possibly a science subject and a language. And travel, even if it's in your own country. Look and see what other people are doing because you might find something that interests you. Be open to others.

At Citadel we did a thing four or five years back on prejudice and we found out that Leith has a very low level of prejudice against other people because we've always had other people coming in. We can trace that back 500 years. We've got a Chinese community; we've got the Sikhs – very successful people - and we've got a myriad of others. We had them in small numbers to start: 50 here, 10 there, 20 there. They gradually got absorbed in the community and now they’re Leithers. Because we're still a village. I've lived here for 44 years and it's still a village. And that's the way it should be treated.

By the way, you know how Leith is to the north and Edinburgh is to the south? Well, it’s only natural that we look down on Edinburgh.”