The city where my adult life began

Just don't ask me a single thing about it!

Jimmy and I are having an impromptu day out in Dundee. I have a real thing about this city. Having been desperate to leave home, I moved here at 17. I loved my new friends and my job at Jackie magazine the various flatshares I had. Dundee is where my adult life began.

However Jimmy doesn’t know the city at all. And as we wander around he keeps asking me questions about stuff I know nothing about.

We go to ScrapAntics - a treasure trove of salvaged art materials housed in a former jute mill. Jute played a huge part in Dundee’s industrial past and this part of the city is crammed with majestic brick built mills.

‘Look at these buildings!’ I marvel as we lug all the paints and paper we didn’t need, but bought away (I’m sucker for art supplies) to the car. Jimmy is amused that I didn’t know they were here - i.e., in the city where I lived for three years.

What was I doing? Walking around with my eyes shut?

We pass the Jute Museum. ‘Did you ever go in there?’ he asks.

‘Oh, it probably wasn’t even there then.’ (Obviously the answer is ‘no’).

Onwards we head to the McManus, a fantastic art gallery and museum in the middle of the city. It has a brilliant art collection and a whale skeleton and excellent displays about the many and varied aspects of Dundee’s rich history.

‘So you’ve never been in here before?’ Jimmy says, amazed. Actually I didn’t even know where it was. I had to look it up on google maps.

We step back outside and he glances over to another building which I’ve shown him already.

‘But didn’t you say you worked… right there?’ He points up at the old Jackie office.

That’s right, I tell him.

‘So you were across the road from the museum and never thought to go in?’

‘I didn’t know what it was,’ I protest.

‘What did you think it was?’

‘A church?’ In fact I don’t think I’d even noticed it so I didn’t ‘think’ anything. But I can’t admit that.

There’s a fantastic museum! Who knew?

We go to a lovely cafe for lunch, The Parlour Cafe, in a very pretty area of the city. Of course, none of these artsy places were here, back in the mid-eighties. There was no sourdough then. No kimchee. If you’d sat me in the Mastermind chair and asked, ‘What is a sharing mezze platter?’ I’d have been twitching anxiously and had to say ‘pass’.

‘But there was one nice cafe,’ I say, suddenly remembering, ‘on the Perth Road.’

‘But you never went there,’ Jimmy quips.

Next stop is Dundee Contemporary Arts, known as the DCA. ‘I don’t think this was here either’ I say.

‘Are you sure?’ Jimmy asks.

We wander around, looking for the River Tay which is about as wide as Belgium. Where is everything? I feel like the city’s been rearranged. Where’s the Spud-U-Like I kept going to as a hungover teenager craving hefty carbs?

We find the V&A, which definitely wasn’t here in 1982. Unless I missed it?

The V&A Dundee - NOT here in 1982. I don’t think…

And so it goes on, with my embarrassing lack of local knowledge being flagged up at every turn.

Jimmy is a mad keen football fan and Dundee has two teams. ‘Where are their stadiums?’ he asks.

He might as well have asked, ‘Who is the Bishop of Carlisle?’

Dundee ‘tour’ over, I’ve decided not to apply to go on my dad’s favourite quiz show, Tipping Point. D’you know it? The one where coins are pushed off a shelf, like penny falls at a seaside arcade?

He watches it nearly every day and I’d planned to try to get on it to surprise him. But actually, having questions fired at you, and being unable to answer any, is frankly humiliating. I’d be sweating on Tipping Point, my lack of knowledge about jute mills and football cruelly exposed, knowing Dad would be sitting there jeering (this is why he enjoys Tipping Point).

As for Dundee, I’ve been a terrible tour guide. What can I say? My parents had dropped me off with a few boxes of stuff at my new bedsit and driven away and I just knew my life was about to properly get started!

What was I going to do? Go and look at mills?

(Four decades on I was gutted that the jute museum was closed. Next time we’re IN).

Love,

Fiona xx

JUTE! Let me at it!

PS You can grab my latest book, The Woman Who Ran Away From Everything here! And you can preorder my new festive novel, ‘Tis the Damn Season (out on September 11) right here!