From my home village a kick of the ball down the hill from the border stone at Carter Bar, on the English side, I found myself living in a cobbled street in Leith.

The removals guy said – “Is your place up a stair?” I didn’t understand the question. What was a stair?

Leith was a disreputable port town, always a bit rough, and now a gap site. It was the best move I ever made.

We were lucky enough to catch the tail end of the traditional Leith community.

On New Year’s Day a couple of neighbours invited themselves in and drank whisky round the kitchen table. This was 11.00 in the morning. I wasn’t used to this. It was effectively a welcome committee meeting.

Later, one of them, a welder in the docks, unasked, fixed a loose stave on our garden gate. The job has lasted almost half a century, no bother.

And, although I wasn’t a total stranger to Edinburgh, with school trips to the zoo and the castle and often coming to the festival, living here was not just a rural to urban shift. It was also a whole cultural shift. We were never taught anything about Scotland.

In England the establishment was the Conservative party and the Church of England. Here it was the Labour party and the reformed Church of Scotland. It all took some adjustment.

In 1980 Leith’s fortunes were on a downward trajectory. Leith is a small part of the conurbation that is Edinburgh which was de-industrialised. Like many such urban areas – the Gorbals in Glasgow, Byker on Tyneside – jobs and prosperity disappeared during the Thatcher years.

Leith wasn’t made a Development Area. DAs offered generous start-up and relocation grants. Edinburgh Crystal (a Leith firm) moved to Penicuik. Leith’s whisky bonding on Commercial Street moved to Broxburn. They took many smaller businesses in their wake.

The last ship went down the slip at Henry Robb’s shipyard where Ocean Terminal now stands, in 1983. The hundreds of jobs in the docks dwindled to dozens as Grangemouth usurped Leith’s place as Scotland’s premier east coast port.

Perfect conditions for heroin to thrive. And it collided with HIV. Edinburgh was shocked by the Sunday Telegraph headline in 1987: ‘Stately Edinburgh is the AIDS capital of Europe’. Leith was the hotspot. Irvine Welsh tells the story from street level in Trainspotting.

Things began to change in the 1990s. The Tall Ships Race started here in 1995. Unused sheds were demolished on Victoria Quay to make way for what was then the Scottish Office, bringing hundreds of secure well-paid jobs and supporting smaller businesses.

Former Royal Yacht Britannia was moored alongside the destination shopping mall Ocean Terminal. We thought there would never be enough business for the new Holiday Inn Express.

For the first time in a generation people beat a path to Leith. The 22 bus was a novelty. The new route through Henderson Street seemed like an intrusion into private business, wi’ aw they Edinburry folk starin’ oot the windaes.

Now Leith is one of the coolest places in THE WORLD!! VisitScotland says so. Must be right.

Have I changed along with the place I live in and call home? People I have known for 40-odd years said recently: “You’ve never changed, Tim.”

“Well, I’ve tried to” I replied, wanting to distance myself from the dreadful young man I remember from all those years ago.

“Oh no, you’ve never lost your accent.” This was a couple of Weedgies I was talking to. I don’t have to take it from them. It’s not me with an accent.

I must have crossed the border hundreds of times. Mostly on tarmac, sometimes over the heather and once or twice in my bathers (not recently).

So, am I an Englishman or a Scotsman? Either. Neither. Both. Who’s asking?

Probably 25%, maybe more, of the people coming to the village show in Northumberland come from ‘the Scotch side’.

If you liked Brexit, you’ll love Scottish ‘independence’. All my political instincts are to get the best out of collective action and solidarity. Independence would make a hard border at Carter Bar, driving a wedge within a cohesive and distinctive border community.

SNP dreamers – Alec Salmond called independence a dream – should have some respect for realities on the ground. There are reasons why constituencies on the border vote for unionist parties.

Born around 9 months after VE Day in 1945, I am a Celebration Baby. As a Baby Boomer, I’m a classic example of the genre. All my life I’ve had health care, education and opportunity laid out before me.

My generation’s parents, who lived through the war and afterwards under the inspired leadership of Clement Attlee, knew the importance of state investment in the future.

I no longer think of myself as a missionary.

Unfailing support for Newcastle United FC and the England cricket team notwithstanding, I’ve gone native.

Leith for Ever…

However cool it gets. ■