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Pregnancy Massage Open 7 Days. Outside seating relaxing and therapeutic for mum to be. Dogs eat and drink free (outside!) Can help low back pain… SUPPORTING & SOURCING Irene Sandham t. 01506 846799 PRODUCTS LOCALLY email: [email protected] www.massageforeverybody.co.uk t: 01506 843333 3 THE CROSS, LINLITHGOW BENEFIT FROM PARKING AT THE DOOR 2 Black Bitch Issue 35 July 2015 Contact the Black Bitch Contents For editorial and to advertise: [email protected] Editor: David Tait, 07767 713024 Folk Fae Lithgae – 4 Elisabet Thorin Planning 5 debacle 100% Linlithgow Young LOCAL 6 Housebuyers? No chance! Perambulation – 7 around we go again! Canal Boat Race – 8 that sinking feeling Our old favourite – 9 Scotch Hop New Hopetoun Gardens 10 – Garden Art! www.linlithgowcommunitymagazine.co.uk St Michael’s Flower 11 Festival of Light We’re Linlithgow’s Party at the Palace – Community Magazine - Planning 12 the line-up your local magazine with decision Shock! Electric Bikes – local news & events. 15 on trial with Alistair Complete Health – 16 with a smile P5 Young footballers – No place for first time buyers 17 another great season John Dodds – new 19 author in town P6 Party at the Palace 22 Ticket Competition Get on yer and Discounts (electric) bike! Next copy Your guide to deadline 23 Local Events 11 Aug 2015. P14 The Linlithgow Community Magazine (aka The Black Bitch) is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO): SCO42542 Find us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter The paper we are using is FSC approved. Images - P4 Folk Fae – Martine Stead, P5, 15 – David Tait, Page 7,8 – David Shirres P9 – courtesy of Sue Anderson, P10 – Dougal and Lesley, P16 – Linda Martin Want to comment? Get in touch at: [email protected] 3 Folk Fae Lithgae ELISABET THORIN t is now twenty years since Elisabet Thorin and her “I’ve started doing a bit more with people, which is partner, Gail Boardman, opened up the Line Gallery something I have never really done, partly because I’m in Linlithgow High Street. fairly shy. You need to be confident to approach people. I I’m practising at being a people photographer. Usually The Line is an independent contemporary art gallery, my work involves nature, a lot of ruined houses and showing regular exhibitions of fine and applied arts. atmosphere in nature, I want the before and after in my Exhibiting artists include painters, basket makers, pictures, hinting at something beyond the image itself. I am interested in the intensity, clarity and uncertainty jewellers and photographers. Elisabet herself is a contained within a moment frozen in time.” photographer, something she was first involved in Photography has been a life-long passion for Elisabet and as an eight year old in her native Sweden. she feels she is still learning, whether that is on her travels abroad, to countries such as India, or in the local area. Elisabet graduated at Boras and Uppsala Universities and It is something she would love to devote more time to. was Director of Culture for a large local authority in Sweden, Away from helping to run a busy art gallery and taking before coming to Scotland in 1994. Having run art galleries photographs, in recent years Elisabet has taken up for other people, she always wanted to open up one of her beekeeping and has several hives around Linlithgow. own, a dream she finally realised the following year. “It’s a thing you can do for the environment that isn’t all “It was an adventure and still is”, she told me. “It’s a huge that difficult”, she says, “It’s educational and interesting amount of fun and a huge amount of work and now we are and you learn a lot more about nature.” Unfortunately, doing lots of other things too. We have twelve exhibitions in the poor weather this year has caused some of the hives to a year, for about three to four weeks each. We have staged swarm, which means that the bees have left to find a more so many artists over the years, I couldn’t count them all.” suitable environment. The Gallery has a great reputation for encouraging young Another great passion is taking part in field trials with her artists, as Elisabet explained: English Pointer dogs, Talisker and CJ, and the three of them “A lot of artists, like Lesley Anne Derks, have stayed are well known to dog walkers who go round the loch. with us. We meet them when they’re young, we show them Elisabet loves Linlithgow and feels it is a privilege to live and support them and then they stay with us throughout here. “Linlithgow is great. It suits me size-wise and there their careers. We also help to encourage artists who are lots of activities within easy reach. It’s a small town perhaps haven’t shown for a number of years and surrounded by lots of nature and yet it’s a vibrant town. I really enjoy that.” It’s a really, really nice place to live and I like the people a lot. If you smile, you get a smile back.” An exhibition in June featured a range of Elisabet’s most recent photographs, many of which are a departure from her usual work. Murdoch Kennedy 4 Black Bitch Issue 35 July 2015 LINLITHGOW ABANDONED? Town Groups Reeling from Lack of Council Support by David Tait, Editor embers of several town Council – sits on around £350,000 of groups who take an available funds, with town enhancing Mactive interest in the projects approved but little or no development of Linlithgow have been action taken for nearly two years. Sheer left shocked by a recent decision by frustration has caused the departure of West Lothian Council to approve an members who have over many years application to build another out of made exceptional contributions to the centre supermarket on Edinburgh enhancement of the town – how can Road in Linlithgow. lost goodwill be better engaged for The decision seems to fly in the face the future? not only of the Council’s current Local To that can be added the Council’s Development Plan and their own recent refusal to support the Victoria Hall Trust report which concluded that Linlithgow in its efforts over the last two years to did not require additional supermarket have something done with the High capacity but also ignores Scottish Street eyesore and wasted opportunity “Excuse me! Government planning advice clearly that is now the Victoria Hall. Sitting in favouring town centre focused Is this the way the centre of Linlithgow’s Outstanding www.linlithgowcommunitymagazine.co.uk development. Conservation Area, this structure, always Objections to the siting of the a bit of a misfit on the High Street but to the new development on Edinburgh Road originally funded by the community for supermarket were lodged by the Community community use, has been wholly Council, Civic Trust, Linlithgow neglected for many years when efforts on Edinburgh Business Association and the to invest to maintain and improve it failed to win approval. Linlithgow Town Centre BID as Road?” well as a clutch of town residents. Having regularly canvassed opinion Objectors were worried about the on the High Street and online effect that the new supermarket questionnaires, and with over 420 might have on High Street members, the Trust firmly believes it businesses, with the closure enjoys the overwhelming support of “Even as a one-off decision this of the more centrally placed Tesco the community for action to be taken to regenerate the site and bring a much- would be hugely perplexing another possible consequence. needed “hub” for community activities, but it isn’t a one-off. It follows All objections were swept aside in the including a community theatre/cinema. a refusal by the Council to rush to develop a gap site which, as The present owner having publicly well as being designated for housing, declared a refusal to negotiate, the participate in a “charrette” could well be the last feasible site to add Trust must now consider a Compulsory to give the people of the town car parking capacity near the railway Purchase Order (CPO).