We moved from a lower villa flat in Sighthill to Baberton Mains Drive in 1978 with our two children aged 4 and 2. The main reason for moving was to be in a more rural environment away from busy streets and traffic.

I remember the day we moved in as if it was yesterday, the kids running up and down the stairs squealing with the novelty of it all and Bill and I wondering how we were going to find the money to buy curtain rails and light fittings. Every ceiling light had been cut off with only the flex left, every curtain rail had been removed and, believe it or not, they even took the fireplace and left a hole in the wall! We phoned our lawyer who said that it was a civil matter not a criminal one and it would cost us more money to pursue them than to buy replacements.

We spent five happy years there before we moved up to a detached house in Baberton Mains Bank where we still live over thirty years later. Our back garden backed on to the first fairway of Baberton Golf Club and we thought that this would be our outlook forever as no Club ever sells off land so close to the clubhouse, how wrong we were! What we never took into consideration was the Club selling off the clubhouse and building a new one at the bottom of our garden. However, after the noisy building phase was over, we have become used to the clubhouse being so close and there are still some trees which shield us a bit.

The Bank is a short cul-de-sac and the children can play in the street in relative safety. Houses in the Bank don't change hands very often and nearly half the people in the street have been here even longer than us. Not a lot has changed in the thirty odd years we have been here, I remember the furore when we first had a bus come round the estate but as the parents of by then young teenage children we were happy that they wouldn't have the walk down from Juniper Green if they were out. The promised childrens' playpark in the middle of the estate never materialised and the "new" primary school as we referred to it has been replaced by the "even newer" primary school but that's about it.