Eric Falconer wrote:
>
> "....There is nothing Kelso girls like less than a pretty face, unless it's
> long blond hair. The town is notorious for any girl who looks half decent
> getting waylaid and scarred
> for life by members of the plug ugly majority!"
>
> Oh David, how could you malign the young ladies of your adopted home town
> so??! Just when we're trying to get the tourists back too. I've taught the
> lassies of Kelso (and the laddies) at the High School for the last 12 and a
> half years. They're lovely - well, most of them. A town like Kelso needs
> jobs to keep its young people here. Hairdressing seems as good a trade as
> any.
>
Lovely girls, aren't they? Actually, it does sound as if the 'attack'
was less serious - more like just a part of the girl's hair getting cut
off, not a massacre. But Gemini II is a dangerous place to go if you
dress a bit differently. Actually, what Kelso needs desperately is
higher education. A town with no education after the age of highers
loses all the more intelligent kids over 17 or 18; all that remains is
what doesn't go to college. Even Hawick has Borders College, even Duns
gets an annexe, Kelso has little but one room for a mainly adult course.
Kelso will remain the way it is - visually attractive, pleasant enough
but devoid of any real culture apart from teachers, teachers' kids,
professionals and professionals' kids - until someone puts a decent
college level faculty in the town. My own kids say Galashiels is a safe
place to go, you can be whoever you choose to be, the Heriot-Watt
influence means that strange gothic beings and eccentric styles of dress
are normal, and intelligent conversation can even be found in the taxi
queue at 3.00am. Kelso is quite different. I'm not a fighter and I can
survive with a man grabbing my arm and telling me his laddie has just
spent six months in jile but he's a gud lad, would I sing Athenry for
him? And tourists, on the whole, don't see this side of it. They're safe
in bed. For the 17-25 age group Kelso is hell; the only kids who stay
here are in factories, on farms or unemployed. You teach the ones who
disappear and go to uni, or at the worst, drudge through a year or two
getting lists of modules from Borders College. It's very easy to shut
your eyes to the others since they leave school just when they are
getting really unmanageable.
We have a great folk session at the Red Lion, but it lacks traditional
input now since most of our traditional players are teachers, and won't
come. They end up face to face with elements they don't want to
remember. Actually, we don't like them much either and if we do any
serious folk 'bookings' we won't use the Red; these are not an audience
I would care to inflict on any visiting artist!
Despite this Kelso is the best place I've ever lived. It's fine for tiny
kids, young families, oldies. And on the whole, it's great for visitors.
The difficult elements are only that way with 'their own' and in their
own space. Jedburgh is supposed to be pretty rough, and one of the worst
Border towns for drugs, but my kids and their friends have always
reckoned it a safer environment for a night out.
David
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