Kirkcaldy Photo Gallery
Some photos of the place, and the pubs we drank in
The Ald Hoose pub, Kirkwynd. Probably due to the presence of the police in the canteen at the college, or maybe due to the presence of alcohol here, we didn't tend to eat at the college canteen, but came down here every lunchtime in my first year at college which was 1984/5. This was a wonderfully eccentric pub. It seemed to be staffed my around 5 ladies who were getting on in years (or so it seemed to me at the age of 18). In my last year before I became a vegetarian, I would have a hamburgers and have a pint of Tennants Special every lunchtime. Sometimes the one pint would blur into two or three, which made the afternoon at college pretty non productive. I'm cringing now at the unhealthiness of our diet. The army of ladies that worked there would yell over to us when our food order was ready and it was always touch and go if you got the right order or not, not that it mattered much I suppose. It was here over toxic food and Tennants Special that the name "Crucified Brains" was born. Our crowd for lunch would be Mark Deas of the band that would be the Crucified Brains, who was in my college class at the time, Chez Holmes of the Crucified Brains, Ian Cargill ex of the Crucified Brains and later of the Surgical Wars, Who Cares? and The Schoolhouse, Cameron Campbell ex of the Crucified Brains and later of All Days Fade, The Amused and Darlingheart and Stevie Simpson later of the Surgical Wars. I can remember seemingly endless conversations trying to come up with a name for the band that would become the Crucified Brains. The toilets here were also roughly the temperature of Siberia, no matter what time of year it was. The jukebox was eccentric too. It would often play the wrong song. Whatever I was trying to put on it often just played Adam and the Ants instead, how embarrassing. Some of our crowd, not me by the way, were too money conscious to buy the food there and used to bring in sandwiches and hold them under the table and eat them when the ladies weren't looking.Tony, who would be my flatmate later in 1985, got caught by one of the ladies having bought a pie and stuck it on his plate there, it was a scary moment.
A rather dodgy photo of 2 Sang Place Kirkcaldy, taken in July 1985. The was my first student flat. I moved in here in June 1985 with my flatmates Nicci and Tony. The place was a complete dump and we made it considerably worse. It had 1940's furniture and a toilet with a chain. But the great thing about it was, that it was exactly behind the college. So instead of the Ald Hoose for lunch, this became the centre of our social scene from June 1985 to January 1986. We had endless parties and the scene of freedom at the age of 18 was amazing. The happiest period of my life was spent here from and I still miss the guys, the music and those days. The only downside was the 40 pounds a month rent that made me occasionally have to miss gigs as I'd run out of money.
What can I say? Needs no introduction, Sleeves Record Shop in Wytescauseway. How many of us bought our copies of the Ghost Train 's first single "Killing Time / Hope and Glory" here? Someone told me recently that one of the guys from the Receiving End worked here, but I don't remember that. I used to rummage through the empty sleeves of records that were on display here in their plastic sleeves, the sleeves getting more and more bent as we rummaged, dreaming one day I'd have enough money to buy as many records as I wanted - my most important dream in those days. Andy Gyle, who was in my class at College, and was later a barman at the Abbotshall, used to talk about opening our own record store and cafe one day. I'm glad we didn't, I'm sure we'd have lost money. Sleeves stayed open way into the early years of this century, this pic was taken in 2000, although it is sadly defunct now.
A sad site. Sleeves after it's demise, taken in 2004 on an early cameraphone, so sorry for the quality. Sleeves - gone but not forgotten.