Monkeys Parade

Before leaving Dundee, we lived in Annfield Street, above Mrs Ledger's shop, where she sold horehound toffee. I remember my mother used to give her most of her sweet coupons for her sugar and we would get cakes etc.

I was 10 when we left and I remember when the siren went, we had to go to a shelter underneath the tenement building; later I thought what a stupid place to go - if a bomb fell, we wouldn't have had a chance.

I also remember going for a walk with my father and usually on the way home, he would take us to 'Greenhills' for a 'Sarsaparilla', my father would have a liquorice one and we would have red ones.

We had a holiday hut at Auchterhouse, we would walk to Lochee Road and take a tram to the terminus and walk the rest of the way, one Sunday we reached the bottom of the road where the hut was and father discovered that he had forgotten the key, he left me and my sister Marlene sitting on a milestone while he went back to Annfield Street for it, I was 7 and Marlene was 5, you couldn't do that now.

Does anyone remember the 'Monkeys Parade'? After we had been to the Palais to listen to a band, we would walk from the top of the Overgate through the town, to the Wellgate and back, usually stopping on the way to have a chat with someone, there seemed to be hundreds of people doing this for around two hours, every Sunday.

I remember the going back to school parties, either in the street or on the back green. No TV then, we had to make our own entertainment, jam sandwiches and a bottle of diluted 'baby orange' and go for a picnic to the little park of Blackness Avenue.

I now live in Ayr and have been back a few times to Dundee but it's not the same, once you see all the changes.