Mayfield, Dalkeith Scotland

Question

Hi, i am immigrating from South Africa to Mayfield, Dalkeith, Midlothian Scotland next year July. Does anyone know anything about, any info you might have? Is it a cool place? How far to Edinburgh? Im 23 and my Fiance is 20, we're moving together, staying with family til we're on our feet. Any advice would be great, thank you!

Answer 1

dalkeith is a sort of old mining town,still has a bit of "frontier"mentality,bit boring but saving grace being its only 20 min from edinburgh by bus

Answer 2

Read this. It pretty well sums it up.

"Well, a bit of history is required first, methinks. Mayfield, just south of Dalkeith, nestles between the A68 and the A7 south. It was originally built, in the sixties, as overspill housing for the colliery workers of nearby Newtongrange, as well as to provide the workforce for a small but relatively successful industrial estate.

Sadly, the Thatch came along, and by the mid eighties - with the closure of the Lady Victoria mine - the vast majority of the population became unemployed. Set against a backdrop of Threads and Boys from the Blackstuff on TV, Mayfield was a depressing hole of a town - the shop windows sprouted steel shutters over night; the bookies was held up on a regular basis, and every pub was full of broken men living on their wives wages.

Seeing this dejection and depression, the chavs swooped. It's not clear where the came from or when exactly they arrived, but arrive they did - by the dozen. Mayfield is a relatively small place. There's a small cluster of shops nestled in the poetically named "bogwood court", a community centre, three pubs and a bookies. To the north of the shops lies a public park and all all other sides are surrounded by a council estate. On top of the hill, overlooking the seething cesspit below, lies a rather attractive private estate which provides many of the chavs with "house tax" opportunities.

The full range of chav freakishness is on display in mayfield - let's run through a few types now.

The wee chav.

This is really the junior chav - aged between twelve and fifteen years of age. This repulsive little creature is known to hang around the public park from early evening until the small hours of the morning, getting up to the usual chavly behaviour. Both genders are pretty much indistinguishable - the females dressing in the same nylon sportswear as their spotty male counterparts.

The Filthy chav

The filthy chav is a little older - usually up to around 19 years of age. They seem to be composed, the males at least, of elbows and knees - appearing awkward and ungainly - and only really able to communicate in inarticulate grunts. The filthy chavs can usually be found roaring up and down the streets in poorly maintained ford capris, like some postmodern statement on seventies tory policy. Occasionally, the filthy chav can be found preying on the female wee chavs at the park, when they feel the urge to reproduce. Strangely, there seem to be no female filthy chavs. The females seem to graduate from wee chav directly to granny chav.

The granny chav

The granny chavs are generally aged from around eighteen upwards. The granny chavs are the most overtly aggressive of the various breeds indiginous to this area. Their usual haunt, other than the post office on giro day, is around the school playground at dropping off and picking up time. Their activites at this place are generally focussed around forming small tight groups and victimising humans who portray signs of intelligence or a willingness to work. These chavs, with their considerable bulk behind them, are the quickest to launch into an unprovoked physical attack.

The thug chav, or Praetorian Chav

It's not entirely clear where these fit into the chav heirarchy. My own reasoning would suggest that they are a parallel evolution of the chav - possibly a leap from wee chav to thug chav, bypassing the filthy chav stage by being detained at her majesty's pleasure. They seem to be endowed with rudimentary powers of leadership, no doubt holding their serfs in sway with tales of "the Big Hoose". The thug chav exhibits many of the traits of the filthy chav but is possessed of a not inconsiderable degree of animal cunning. This is the chav who organises the "Tax" trips to the Belway estate, and is the type of chav most likely to be found climbing in your back window at 2 in the morning. This chav should never be confronted, due to its tendancy to "chib ye".

Habitat These creatures, from the evidence of my own eyes, live in complete squallor. The houses are filthy inside, half eaten meals lying in plates on a bare floor with several days worth of mould providing the highest IQ level in the building. Surprisingly, all of these depressing hovels are equipped with state of the art plasma TVs and Sky dishes.

Haunts

The front of my ******* house. For some peculiar reason, wee chavs and filthy chavs love to congregate at the bottom of my garden like some form of degenerate reebok wearing pixies. I'm not sure why - I'm miles from the nearest knock off designer outlet, there's no burberry in our street.

Bus stops. For some reason, places where intelligent people will gather to perform some social function attracts chavs like flies to ****, as if - like the Zombies visiting the mall in George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" - they are attracted to dimly remembered acts of normality. All breeds of chavs can be seen harranguing innocent bystanders for having the gall to use a public service.

The Golden Field chip shop. The enticing smell of vegetables cooking in lard is close enough to the pheremones emmitted by fertile granny chavs to attract wee chavs and filthy chavs by the dozen. These repugnant little pond skimmings, and the leprous harpies which occasionally accompany them, are known to lurk outside the entrance to the chipshop to regale consumers with cries of "gies a chip ya fat ****" and "heh gonnae get ees some f**s an that no?".

The public park. The woodstock of mayfield chavdom. This area seems to be the last bastion of interspecies free love. I'm not going to dwell on this point because there's not really much you can say about thirteen year old girls - even chavs - throwing their lives away in this manner.

Summary

Mayfield is a chav ridden hellhole. By other towns standards, Mayfield is like the seventh circle of Dante's h**l. The chavs currently outnumber normal decent people by a factor of three to one. It's a sobering thought, but if Mayfield is a microcosm of the future of Britain, I'm moving to Mars.

♣

Answer 3

Dalkeith is about 8 miles from Princes Street in the centre of Edinburgh. Mayfield is about 2 miles further outside Dalkeith, an estate built to house mining workers before the mine at Newtongrange closed.

If you're staying with family you should be fine.

Here's a link to a good site about Dalkeith http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/da...