Society

Photograph of Onthank by Islay McLeod

My life in The Scheme

Islay McLeod

The room was full of excited chatter and laughter, with the smell of wax crayons and ink. Gold and silver glitter dazzling on paper – bright colours everywhere. This is where I splodged my feet and hands in paint, making green and blue prints on paper to take home to my mum. Where I starred in my first nativity as one of the less well-known shepherds, with tea towel secured on head. Where, with Olympic fever growing, I decided to become an athlete when I grew up.
     I was in nursery school – in Onthank Primary School – yes that's right, in the middle of 'The Scheme'. It was 1984. I'm sure Orwell would appreciate the irony.

So who lived there? Bobby Geddes was a retired plasterer and regular visitor to our house. A small, slim man, Bobby was reknowned for his brown, furry and hard-to-miss Russian hat. A quiet gentleman – hardly a waster. My house always buzzed when we had it painted or re-papered. Decorators Jackie and John, would be there when I got home from school. They were a double act, always having a funny story or quip to share. Family men. My dad would have 'card nights' with his friends from Dunlop – the 'country bumpkins' he would call them – and his other friends from Onthank, mainly tradesmen. My sisters and I would be tucked-up in bed upstairs but would hear the occasional blast of laughter erupt from the kitchen.
     On Saturdays during the summer boys from Onthank would walk up the Glasgow Road, past my house, with their fishing rods and lines. The old waterworks and reservoir were only minutes away – a local secret. I don't see them with their rods and lines now – the reservoir has been drained.

Not all memories were happy. Several times at Loanhead Primary School, across the road from Kilmarnock Academy, we would be escorted back inside to safety. Huge crowds of the notorious OYT, or Onthank Youth Team, would charge towards the academy, with bottles and sticks in hand, looking for members of the equivalent gang from Shortlees. The sight and noise was terrifying. Academy pupils got caught up in the riot, one stabbed. Police cars, vans and ambulances would line the street in an attempt to end the chaos.
     It's easy to get carried away with the BBC's restricted portayal of 'The Scheme'. Onthank isn't a sink estate buried deep in a forgotten pocket of a vast city. It is flanked by a middle-class area, Wardneuk. A paving slab separates them. 'The Scheme' focuses on the poorer streets; families who fell victim to the breakdown of the textile, locomotive and carpet industries. The static population of Scotland doesn't have mobility to commute away from a town with so little employment opportunity. And the tempting scourge of drugs has embedded its nasty claws, ripping away there as it has all over Scotland. Yet this is a community fighting for the right to reopen a centre, to bring residents together.
     Why are we so stunned about their lives? What inspiration or motivation is offered? Perhaps it is we who have had our eyes wide shut.
 

 
Islay McLeod is deputy editor of the Scottish Review