Good Craic & Boogie Night #CultureCrawl

A version of this article appeared in The Herald newspaper today.

ONCE upon a time my best friend Ruth and I spent our Friday nights careering around the streets of Old Aberdeen in search of cheap beer and good craic, not to mention a spot of disco dancing.
Today these Boogie Nights of Old Aberdeen may be a blip in our shared history, but I'm proud to declare we can still get our Friday night kicks from tearing it up in the dance floor.
The unexpected boogieing came mid-way through the inaugural Maggie's Culture Crawl Edinburgh, a ten-mile nocturnal sponsored walk around Edinburgh to raise funds for Maggie’s, the charity which provides free practical, emotional and social support for people with cancer and their family and friends.
We were at vet school-turned-arts-hub, Summerhall; venue number six in our circular nine-stop walk. It had started earlier in the evening at Tony Blair’s old school, Fettes College, with a warm-up to the Black Eyes Peas and a rousing send off by bestselling author and famous Edinburgh resident, Alexander McColl Smith.
At Summerhall, giddy after throwing back two neat shots of Pickerings Gin, which is distilled on the premises, we were guided by a succession of ever-smiling stewards in neon tabards towards a room pulsating to a disco beat.
Against the backdrop of an exhibition called A Lady’s Not a Gent’s about Marcel Duchamp being an alleged con artist who didn't actually make his famous urinal artwork, Fountain, (it was made by a woman: long story), three men in big shades wearing white rhinestone jumpsuits and massive Afro wigs strutted their stuff.
So far, so surreal. Conceptual even.
Our feet might have been sore by that stage, but who can resist the lure of Dancing on the Ceiling? Thankfully our five children, aged 10-16, weren't around to witness this spectacle.
It was all so different from two stops earlier when we stood in the grandiose surroundings of Parliament Hall listening to the National Youth Choir of Scotland Edinburgh Choir sing Auld Lang Syne. You could have heard a pin drop as their voices travelled around the hall’s ancient vaulted ceiling. Even the bewigged gentlemen on the walls looked impressed.
Our route for the night had been curated by Alexander McCall Smith. a long-time supporter of Maggie's, which was co-founded by garden designer and writer, Maggie Keswick-Jencks, and her husband, landscape architect Charles Jencks.
In May 1993, at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, Maggie Jencks was told her breast cancer had returned. She was given two to three months to live.
In the end, she died in June 1995, sitting in her garden, face to the sun. Her last words were, ‘aren’t we lucky?’
By the time she died, she and her husband had set the wheels in motion to set up Maggie’s Edinburgh in the grounds of the Western General. To live with cancer, Maggie and Charles believed you needed information which would allow people to be informed participants in their medical treatment. They also felt there was a need for stress-reducing strategies, psychological support and the opportunity to meet other people in similar circumstances in a relaxed domestic atmosphere.
In November 1996, the first Maggie’s Centre opened in Edinburgh and what Maggie planned in her dying months became a reality. Since then almost £50 million to build and run eight centres covering every major NHS hospital in the country, with the eighth Centre opening in 2016. This ground-breaking model of cancer care now has a network of 18 Centres across the UK, online and abroad, with more planned for the future.
All 300+ Culture Crawlers on Friday night had a minimum fundraising commitment of £100. All the money raised will go towards helping the work of Maggie’s.
Our ten-mile route included the Scotch Malt Whisky Association, The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Dovecot Studios and Gallery of Modern Art 1. Outside Modern 1, for one night only, Charles Jencks undulating landforms were lit up in a spectacular light show.
McCall Smith had even written a new short story especially for the occasion. Maggie’s Line takes the reader on an imagined Edinburgh underground journey and features characters from his series of 44 Scotland Street books. All the walkers received a copy as a memento.
The first event of its type to take place in Scotland, Culture Crawl Edinburgh is a nod to the important role art and design play in Maggie’s Centres.
For Ruth and I – and for many of the walkers on the route – it gave a welcome opportunity to catch up with old friends while drinking in a succession of cultural sights and sounds. The weather gods looked down benevolently on Edinburgh on Friday night as it wasn’t just balmy; it was dry. Perfect walking weather. People were even sitting outside pubs in t-shirts, for heaven’s sake....

As I wheezed up Calton Hill, I fell into conversation with a young man who had got involved in the Crawl because his dad's partner was one of the organisers.
He told me he’d just spoken to a woman who said she'd recently been diagnosed with a brain tumour and was walking alone because she felt it was such a positive thing to do in the face of her diagnosis.
These stories and others like them are what makes the support work done by Maggie's Cancer Care Centres so important.
At our journey's end – around 1am – we walked through the grounds of the Western General Hospital towards the Maggie's Centre. The smell of freshly baked pizza and the prospect of a glass of Prosecco added a a spring to our step.
Walking past the building where Maggie Keswick Jencks, first received the devastating news that her cancer had returned, it brings it all home. This remarkable woman with a vision of how people could live with cancer died in 1996, but she didn't half start something special.

For more information about Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres visit www.maggiescentres.org

If you'd like to donate to Maggie's Cancer Care Centres, Jan has a Just Giving page.