Your memories: William, 71, recalls his trams treat

"WE'D rush to try to get to the front," recalls William Cordiner. "It was a real treat to get to go on a tram car."

William, 71, a concierge at the Macdonald Holyrood Hotel, moved to Edinburgh from St Andrews when he was seven years old.

Growing up in Greenside -most of which is now dominated by the Omni Centre - he and his siblings would frequently walk into town with their mother to go to the shops, or to visit the wash house on the High Street, next to what is now the Museum of Childhood.

There were rare occasions when he was allowed to take the tram though the city, often with school friends as they made their way to the Royal Botanic Garden to make use of the nearby sports grounds.

"You can imagine it," he recalls. "All of us trying to get to the front of the top deck. We were most upset if we weren't able to sit there.

"The trams were great. I can remember the oily smell of them to this day, and I can remember the seats as the back rests moved, so regardless of which way the tram was going, you could always face forward."

Occasionally William's mother would take him on the tram to the wash house where he would sit alongside men and women all clutching their tin baths, queuing with them beforehand on North Bridge to get a ride home towards Leith Walk.

He sas: "In those days, a tram ride cost one old penny,

"Around that time I think my father was earning 3, ten shillings a week, so the fare probably wasn't that bad. It cost us three pence to go to the cinema though - that was to get in the first three rows."

William's greatest childhood adventure was not the trams though - it was long summer days spent in Cramond.

"We used to go by bus and we thought it took all day to get there," he says.

"It was such a big adventure to go to Cramond, getting the bus from Waverley Bridge, it seemed to take forever.

"I suppose the area was very different back then though - not so built up."