MISSION COMPLETE

That's me done.

My wee offbeat look back at what life was like for my generation growing up in Dundee during the 1960's - 1970's - 1980's has now reached journeys end and so I'm away to put the time-machine back in the garage and chuck the cover back on.

For those of you who find Retro Dundee for the first time after this date, here is a quick overview.

It started up back in summer 2008 and all the items I have posted (over 1300) are still available to view in the Blog Archive running down the left side of the main layout. You can click on the dates to open up the content and you can scroll through the material month by month or by their title. There is also a Search Box top left if you are looking for something specific where you can scroll through the posts it finds.

You'll find a mixture of photographs, adverts, audios, film footage, publications & ephemera on all sorts of subjects relating to Dundee's retro decades - school, fashion, bands, events, pubs, art, sport, restaurants, gigs, shops and on and on. So if you were kicking around town during this period, there's a good chance you'll spot a few things here you'll enjoy seeing again.

You won't find much in the way of official academic historical accounts as this is more of a retrospective trip off the beaten track than an everyday visit to the museum and library.

The majority of stuff has come from my own personal collection but quite a few others have contributed too.

As for the "Followers" who have been keeping their eyes on Retro Dundee for a while, well there will be no more new posts, so I suppose nothing else for you to follow here anymore.

Thanks for visiting it regularly, and also for those who supplied genuine comments, much appreciate the added extra info.

I will, of course, keep Retro Dundee up & running for as long as I'm around, or as long as time will allow, so unless Google's Blogger shuts down or something, Retro Dundee will remain on the Internet to bamboozle researchers & historians and it will still be kept active for you to drop in, send stuff or leave comments.

I'll also keep my Retro email open should anyone want to get in touch - and stating the rather obvious, you'll find the address top left of the layout where it says "Contact".
Remember, it is just the regular daily posts I've stopped, not the site, I will still be continuing to add fresh content to Retro, so keep sending material in - there's lots of gaps to fill..!!

Anyway, can't stay here yacking all day, I've got a ton of other things lined up ready to be cracking on with, so it's time for me to set off for cyber-pastures new and move on to my next bundle of Internet activities.

That's yer lot then.

Eh'll awa now.

GG

P.S. - Check out my other Retro Dundee related sites...

Dundee Band Index - Dundee Gig Time Machine - Tayside Bar - Bruce's - The Bowlin' Alley - Word From Dundee (fanzine archive).

Lots more Retro Dundee music goodies to dip into!

Links to all at top of page.

AND A BIG SHOUT OUT TO...

I was originally planning on doing Retro Dundee for around 2 years, that being how long I thought I would be able to post items regularly based on the amount of material I had in my collection, however, because of all the items I had sent to me, I managed to keep going for another year and a half!

So to all the people who chipped in with their stuff - a big THANKS - great to know that lots of you kept all those old rarities tucked away after all that time.

Here is a list of those who helped contribute to Retro Dundee...and in no particular order...

MIKE FRASER - EDDIE G - CRAIG METHVEN (R.I.P) - THE SCOTSMAN - YVONNE J - STUART BETTY - NEALE ELDER - DREW RAMSAY - JOHN GURVAN - FRANK BOYLE - JIM GRIEVE - BRIDIE - MAC CARNEGIE - JOCK FERGUSON - NICHOLL RUSSELL STUDIOS - MIKE KANE - STEPHEN SMALL - GARY ROBERTSON - CAMERA KEN - BOB McGOULDRICK - ANDY GURVAN - DC THOMSON - GERRY MITCHELL - THE BEAR - ALI STRACHAN - RONNIE CHALMERS - THE ATTIC ARCHIVE - YVONNE McKINNEY - BRIAN WILSON - DEREK THOMSON - JOHN LUNAN (R.I.P) - JOE OGILVIE - PETER ROSS - EWEN ALLARDYCE - MARK MECHAN - KEVIN L GUTHRIE - AL McKEWAN - GORDON COBBAN (R.I.P) - GILLIAN JORDAN - DAVE McDONALD - JIM AIR - MIKE GALLACHER - SCOTT McKINLAY - GRAHAM GURVAN - GORDON WALKER - LLOYD SMITH - JIM WILKIE - LYKEN - LORRAINE WILSON - COLIN RAMSEY - WILLIE FORREST - LAURA WALKER - GORDON BAND - BILLY GRAHAM - ANGUS RAE - CAROLYN LOTHIAN - ECKY COCHRANE - DAVID ROBERTSON - MOIRA BIRD - LUDA ALBIT - DONNY COUTTS - VIKING STUDIOS (R.I.P) - MARK RITCHIE - BRIAN HUTTON - NEIL MENZIES - PETER ASHWORTH - JIM FARRELL - MARTIN KIELTY - ALLAN BROWN - RICHARD ROONEY - GEORGE DUNCAN - DEK McHUGH - DAVID PENTLAND - RICHARD C. - KENNY MACKINNON - ALAN WESTON - DEREK HIGH - MARTIN DUDLEY - ANGUS CARNEGIE - GRAEME WHITE - GEORGE ARTHUR RONEY - BRIAN PERRIE - GRAHAM KENNEDY - DOUG B - MOIRA BERNARD - NEIL HOWIE - ALISTAIR LITTLEJOHN

VIEWS FROM THE ATTIC

Many of you will have had a Viewmaster as a kid, the plastic toy binoculars you put card discs into to view 3D images.
Probably not so many of you had one of these gizmo's above - a slide viewer.
This was more of a photographers specialist gadget than a toy, allowing you to view photographic slides through a magnified lens. You'd pop the slide into a slot in the top, it would light up inside and you were able to see the slides like ordinary photographs, something you couldn't do with the titchy slides on their own.
This is our family one dating from around the late 60's/early 70's - a Halina Paramount Viewer to give it its full name.
This, along with a big bundle of original slides were found in our attic just a few years ago, after having been hiding there for over 3 decades. I actually thought the slides had been thrown out many years ago because I hadn't seen them since the 70's, so it was a great surprise when they resurfaced after all that time.
It was this recent find that after viewing the content, I thought would be worthwhile sharing on the Internet, because these were the original slides that contained those 70's aerial shots around Dundee, the David Bowie concert, Victoria Road demolition an so on.
So here - many still in their original Agfacolor box - are some of the slides that kick-started me into doing Retro Dundee in the first place.

ARNCHORY IN THE UK

A couple of publications I'd have been lost without during the course of doing Retro, were the old Dundee Directories and old street maps.
The directories have been particularly useful because they list all the shops, pubs, schools, businesses and so on - a very handy aid for fuzzy memories!
I have 3 in my collection, 1966, 1970 and the 1974 one in the photo above, which was the final year of their print run.
Having said that, despite the fact that many of us depend on such official publications for research and fact finding, I've discovered you can't always totally rely 100% on what they print.
Take for example, the street map in the photo dating back to the beginning of the 60's. When I was having a wee look around my old stomping ground - Craigie - I couldn't help notice what appears to be a spelling mistake. The road connecting Aboyne Avenue to Balerno Street, I've always known as BANCHORY Road - but they have it down as ARNCHORY Road, as you can see by my red arrow. They also have it listed in the map index as Arnchory as well.
Forward wind 2 decades to their 1983 map and by heck they still haven't sorted it out properly - now they've printed it out as BARNCHORY Road..!!
Looks like the Geographia Cartography office would have benefited by employing a Dundee taxi driver to help them out!

Since writing the above caption, the entire map has been scanned in and pieced back together again.
So if you want to download the 1960 map for your own research, here is the link... 1960 Dundee Map
It weighs in at 20MB and is good enough quality to zoom in and view all the detail up close.

RETRO ADVERT ARCHIVES

I've put dozens & dozens of local ads up on Retro over the years which have been really useful when referring to a place I don't have any photos of.

There are quite a lot of old publications you can find ads from the past in, obvious ones like a Courier, Tele, football programme, What's On mag, theatre programme, school mag and so on, but the 2 sources I have probably raided the most are Gladmags and Official Dundee Guides.

Above are a sample of some of the 60's to 80's ones I've been dipping into.

HUNTLY SQUARE SHOPS - 1963

It doesn't look particularly wintery, but these photos were taken on 19th December 1963.

The square is located between Aboyne Avenue running along the top, and Huntly Road at the bottom.

We just called this place Craigie Shops rather than Huntly Square, this being my neck of the woods back then, and when schoolboy age went there almost every day as they were also on our school route.

Amongst the shops were - Jack Chalmers, butcher - Moore, grocer - Primo, chip shop - Black, baker - Steele, household goods - Stan Gordon, newsagent - Wallace's, baker - Gowans, draper, some of which show up on the pictures above. Needless to say, during the course of time, some shops disappeared and new ones opened, so later there was a Tudor Crisps warehouse - V.G. Store - Farmfoods shop - Dempsey's, hairdresser - a Police Station - Nan's, chip shop - Church of Nazarene, and no doubt a few others that have slipped past my memory.

It wasn't just a place we shopped, we also hung out there and turned it into a play area - football, hide & seek, pitchie, the usual kind of stuff. We also indulged in a game called "Follow The Leader" which was almost like a pre-cursor to present day Parkour. A snake of us would line up and we'd all have to copy the exact movements of the leader in front. Wherever the leader went or whatever they did, everyone else behind had to do the same, so there was a lot of running around, jumping over objects, balancing on structure, that kind of stuff - a bit daring at times, well for primary age kids!

Oh yeah, and it was also a great place to go stot your Superball..!!

Click on images to enlarge if you want to nose around.

Photos by DC Thomson.

DUNDEE'S 70'S BRAINIACS

1978 saw Dundee University win TV's "University Challenge".
The winning team above for the 77/78 series were - Tom McGhee - Isabel Morgan - Alistair Thomson - Enid Anderson.
I'm fairly sure this was the Dundee team who had a captain (so it would be Alistair) that answered every single music question that cropped up. What was amusing about it was he always supplied much more information in the answer than Bamber had written on his card, so generating a more enthusiastic applause from the audience each time!

The other quartet underneath is the Craigie High School "Top Of The Form" team of 1974.
This, however, was not the TV version or the radio version of the show, but a general knowledge contest between local secondary schools organised by the Dundee police.
In the photo, L to R - John Muir - Rab Gordon - Richie Robertson - Craig Methven.
CHS got through to the final but were beaten by those pesky swots at Morgan!
The Morgan winning team were - Kenneth Millar - Alex McMichael - Gwendoline Bowden - John Todd.
Thanks to Craig for the CHS snap.

CRAIGIE HIGH SCHOOL MAGAZINE - 1981

Now some pages from a 1981 Craigie High School magazine.

This issue covers the period from the end of 1980 to the beginning of 1981, and because 1980 was the 10th anniversary of the school, the first couple of pages take a look back over the decade. It refers to things like the first 300 pupils to attend CHS back in '70 (my mob) and also has a reminder of the 4 Houses that were set up in the early 70's. However, for some reason, CHS didn't retain the House system for very long.

Also news about new teacher arrivals and a couple of retirements, including Mr Higgins, the art teacher who designed the school badge.

The next couple of pages are an interview with Radio Tay DJ, Graham Stuart, the chit chat conducted by Mandy McQuire & Karen Conway.

Lastly, it's party time at CHS - 3 different parties in fact - first being a Fancy Dress Disco for Hallowe'en, followed by their Christmas Masquerade Ball, complete with visit from Santa, and finally another good night was had at the St Valentines Day Disco.

A few photos of the pupils in costume too - just click onto the pages to view the larger size.

I can tell the DJ played The Gap Band's "Oops Upside Your Head" anyway!!

Thanks to Neale Elder.