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weeks, the second one lasted about four weeks and then he left for a permanent job and the third about eight weeks before a rather acrimonious divorce forced him back to Newcastle.’ ‘The membership were not very happy with us at this time. They didn’t like our move to the Old Town Jail. A lot of them thought we should be in Edinburgh and the reality of our becoming a Limited Company and the changes this had brought to the old regime of the STGA, meant the Board had to frantically deal with two Extraordinary General Meetings that Autumn as well. September that year, while travelling up Glenogle, my coach full of elderly American tourists was hit head-on by an out of control police-training vehicle from Tullieallan College and I exited the coach rather spectacularly through the windscreen. You can imagine how relieved I was when BBG Doreen Boyle who had been a director since 1996 stepped into the frame and after interview took over the starring role of Administrator in late 1998.
With a Swiss mother, Dutch father and born in England, Doreen came to Edinburgh shortly after she married a Scot from Glasgow. She had never lived anywhere in the UK more than five years at a time, but then stayed thirty-seven years in the same Edinburgh flat.
‘When my two sons were small I was conscious that I knew very little about Scotland and with my European background and languages, becoming a guide presented an interesting challenge,’ Doreen said. ‘I qualified as an STGA guide in 1995. After a short time teaching French and Economics at Gracemount Comprehensive, I was involved in setting up the UK sales office for an American company producing nuclear pipework and precision forgings in Livingston. Subsequently I helped set up Edinburgh offices for two stock-broking firms. Alongside these very demanding jobs, I gained a degree at Edinburgh while my children were small and later was funded by my employers to complete an MBA, again at Edinburgh University. After this I thought the guide training would be easy – it wasn’t, but I loved it!’ Sally continued: ‘Doreen was still guiding at that time and I do remember coming back to Gleneagles one afternoon when we were working for a major corporate event, to find Doreen ensconced in a King size bed in a suite with a potential broken arm. We can laugh about all this now, but it wasn’t very funny at the time!! She had fallen down the stairs in Argyll’s Lodging and was taken off to Perth Royal Infirmary by Rosemary Thomson, where the broken arm was plastered, leaving me alone to work that evening at Blair Castle. Doreen missed a £600 dinner, complete with the Black Watch Beating Retreat and a day at the Open at Carnoustie with champagne the next day.
Doreen said Stirling Jail provided ‘a super address’.
‘It was good for marketing – but what was it like to live there? I say ‘live’ as it did sometimes seem as though I was living there as we spent many evenings and weekends there with a stock of M&S biscuits and coffee just trying to keep up with the work involved in setting up a new company and running it single-handed with the amazing help of our Board and one or two willing helpers. It was a hard time for the Board as the membership were largely against all that we were trying to do, and we had to go through two Extraordinary General Meetings in the first year! Each of the Branch Organisations had had a booking secretary and it was decided to centralise this function and have it done externally by one booking secretary, Kate Anderson, operating out of her own home in Wester Hailes.
‘This did not go down well, and it took a long time for Kate to win over the membership,’ said Doreen.
Kate became known to the travel trade whilst running the café at Holyrood and also later when helping Bob Motion a previous STGA booking secretary.
She was an obvious choice to take over this position and carried on until the STGA decided to consolidate all services in Stirling. Sadly she died aged 61 in 2002.
Sally Spaven said the early years for STGA were fraught with financial shortages and lack of manpower to deal with the million and one things to be done.
That included the complete overhaul of the guides training programme (not least the 700 or so letters which had accumulated from would-be guides, which had to be dealt with) and the new board’s desire for STGA to be given the recognition it deserved within the tourism industry in Scotland.
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