Mid-Fife Newstape for The Blind.
A History of Mid-Fife Newstape for the Blind.
Written by Graham Garvie.
Chairman of Mid-Fife Newstape.
In April 1977, moves were afoot to establish a
Talking Newspaper in our area. Early moving spirits were Jock McCandlish, a
ex-RAF Flight Sergeant with a background in engineering and Forces broadcasting,
George Paton, Assistant Head Teacher in Auchmuty High School, a local clergyman
and a local bank manager. The one lay person and one who had much to contribute,
was Hilda Beard. (I think she volunteered after hearing about Newstape, but she
would have to be consulted about that.) The early cast list is completed by Miss
Mackie, formidable Superintendent of Fife Society for the Blind, whence came our
initial finance (of £500, if I remember). I suspect that they all became
involved in different ways, but I do not know the details.
I was Rector of Auchmuty High School at the time, and I did not enter the
picture until George came to me one day to ask if the Talking Newspaper could
have the use of the School’s Hitachi cassette recorder. I made him an offer
which he could not refuse. He might use the recorder, and I would help with the
enterprise.
One or two of the early editions were produced in School, but conditions
there were far from ideal, and operations were transferred to the School’s
Outdoor Centre at Pitcairn, whose development George had overseen. That proved
to be somewhat remote, and so Mid-Fife Newstape, as it was now known (with a
logo provided by George, who was an Art teacher with a gift for graphic design)
moved to become an out-of-hours operation in Townsend Place, Headquarters of
Fife Society for the Blind.
We had now been joined by Vi Birrell, who was blind and lived in Methilhill.
Hilda and I were her regular drivers, and she and one or two others operated the
copying machines. For the technically minded, we started with Wollensack
copiers, went on to Telex, and ended up with Sony. Master tapes were concocted
by George and Jock, and I contributed Sunday Post readings. Apart from editing
and operating the machines, Jock was an interviewer of persistence and genius.
He claimed the scalps of Meg Ritchie and James Dewar, among many others. My
favourite interview is the one he obtained from Ian Botham, who was walking from
John O’ Groats to Land’s End. Jock caught up with him in Pitlochry, to discover
that Botham’s pace resembled a jog-trot. Jock interviewed him none the less,
with Botham’s brief words punctuated by Jock’s heavy breathing.
We ambled along in Townsend Place. Miss Mackie retired, and Alan Suttie
joined the Society as Director. One of his early actions was to have the
Headquarters refurbished, which made for an improved environment. Unfortunately,
it meant that we had to move out of our little storeroom, obtained for us by
Kirkcaldy Soroptimists. Our precious copying machines were kept for us by St
Brycedale Centre, and the management there allowed us to continue to produce on
Thursday nights.
In due time the renovations were completed, and we returned to conditions of
comparative comfort. We were perhaps the only people whom they suited very well,
for with the numbers of rehab. officers growing, and the demand for their
services rocketing, it became necessary for the Society to find larger premises.
These were secured in the former Denend House, which after some vicissitudes
became Fife Sensory Impairment Centre. That is a story in itself, but it is not
Newstape’s story.
We were allowed to continue using Townsend Place when the Society moved out,
which was fine for privacy, but not great for heating, and so we were quite glad
to move into FSIC, both for the temperature and the company.
Other things had been happening while all this was going on. One of the
little chores that came the way of senior management in the Royal Bank of
Scotland, Glenrothes Branch, was the maintenance of Newstape’s accounts. The
last Manager to draw the short straw was Sandy McLellan, and he was still doing
the job when the time of his retirement came along. He took Newstape’s books
with him into retirement. He asserts that this is because no-one else was
prepared to do the job. All this was in 1989, and he has been keeping the
accounts, to Newstape’s great profit ever since, and this despite the fact that
he is Treasurer to a Charity much bigger than Newstape.
There had been a time in Newstape’s history when we wondered if the
enterprise could continue. That was when Jock retired (“Jock hangs up his
microphone” said the Fife Free Press) and Newstape was left with three active
members, Hilda, Vi and myself. I put to Hilda the question about whether we
should carry on, and she did not take much time to say that she thought so. It
would be nice to pretend that we were three gallant souls battling against an
indifferent world, but that would not be the truth. In the first place, our
finances were being soundly administered for us. In the second, we were
receiving practical support from Kirkcaldy Soroptimists, and from the Ladies’
Committee, a support organisation which had been in existence from the earliest
days of Fife Society. In the climate of the late Twentieth Century they decided
to disband, but also decided to continue to open, sort and prepare for dispatch
the wallets which carry our recordings through the post. It has been and is a
most valuable service.
So we carried on. Listener numbers increased, funding was found, and as we
became better known, people came to us to volunteer their services. One of these
was Ken Matthews, whose knowledge of computing and the potential of the Internet
was to take Newstape forward into the digital age, ahead of most of its
contemporaries.
And that is where we are at the moment. We are not at the end, nor yet at
the middle. In some respects we are at the beginning of the digital development.
The job we do is to let folk who can’t see know what is going on. The means we
adopt to do this will be what listeners find most convenient. The future is not
daunting, and it will certainly be interesting.