Some background.

I have now been back in the village for exactly a year and I am going to write a couple of posts over the next two days about what I did in the years I was away and what changes I have found in the village since I came back.

I left Silverton at the beginning of February 1986. I moved to Ayr in the west of Scotland to be with Irene, a woman I met through a penfriend club, who I subsequently married in 1988. Besides wanting to be with Irene, I had become disillusioned with what was happening in Silverton and in England in general at the highpoint of Thatcherism and considered that Scotland might well provide a new start somewhere a good deal more sceptical about the Iron Lady and all her works then seemed to be the case here. I was unemployed when I left but decided that, rather then remaining so, to take up an opportunity to return to education that arose soon after I arrived in Ayr. This was, as I soon found out, a course of action that many of the mature unemployed took in that area at that time. I started a general studies course at Ayr college in august 1986 and soon became involved with the Student Union there. I also joined the local branch of the Labour party. From September 1986 until June 1987 I was secretary of Ayr College Student Representitive Council executive council and Ayr delegate to the west of scotland area executive of the National Union Of Students. This was at the high point of the struggle between mainstream Labour and Militant tendency and was to say the least, an interesting experience. From autumn 1987 until summer 1988 I was treasurer of the WOSNUS as well as being elected president of Ayr college students association. Despite these extra curricular activities I also got the necessary grades to ensure a place at the university of Strathclyde in Glasgow and began a course of study there in September 1988.

As well as beginning a course of study at Strathclyde uni I was also elected to the executive of the National Union of Students (Scotland) and served as an executive officer on that body for a year. I also during that period served as chair of Strathclyde university labour club where my vice chair was the now recently appointed secretary of state for Scotland, Jim Murphy about whom the less said the better. I parted company with the Labour party in 1990 for the first time.

Also in 1990 I became chair of Kingcase Tenants and Rsidents Association in Prestwick which covered the Arran Park estate where I lived from 1989 to 1998. I was chair of the association until 1994. I graduated from strathclyde University in 1992 with a joint honours degree in economic and social history and modern history (2:1). I soon discovered that to a mature student a history degree was about as much use as a chocolate watch.

Rather then returning to ful unemployment, I took up voluntary work as a sessional support worker with a mental health project which son turned into a paid part time job. I remained with the project until it was absorbed by Ayr Action On Mental Health 1n 1997. I also, by force of necessity, took a job as an estate caretaker on the Arran park estate in 1994 and retained it until 2002. It was a thouroughly disheartening and depressing experience which saw long periods of tedium interspersed with incidents such as an armed siege and vandals setting fire to a block of flats. I saw the worst of people and some of the best as people struggled to make a life on an estate which was largely neglected by the local authority until it became a costly embarrassment. I rejoined the Labour party in 1994 and was chair of the Prestwick branch for a year including the period of the 1997 election but left when it became clear that the Blairite labour party was essentially Thatcherism with a slightly human face. I subsequently joined the Scottish Socialist Party.

I had problems with my own health, cataracts with complications and depression due to my employment from 1998 to 2001 and then my wifes health began to deteriorate due to a lung condition (COPD) probably brought on by previousv employment. I became her full time carer in 2004 and she sadly died in january 2007.

Being close to 60 and again without work I decided that perhaps the best thing would be a return home. Having no family in Scotland made this less of a wrench then it might have been but I still had to leave behind some close friends and it was not a straightforward decision. Having been offered a room back in the village by my good friends the Frosts I returned here in October 2007.

Thoughts on Silverton today will appear here tomorrow or sunday

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