Leith Festival: Edinburgh's port’s people’s pageant, were you there on a float?

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Memory plays tricks and it was a long time ago, so you might have to keep me right, but I can still recall the excitement of the Leith Pageant, a cavalcade of low-bed lorries decorated with themed tableaux and peopled by precariously balanced locals drawn from Leith-based organisations, businesses, clubs and social clubs.

​Along with the accompanying Gala Day, the pageant was very much a highlight of the Port's year when I was growing up. It was a fundraiser for Leith Hospital as I've already mentioned and I have vague memories of throwing those pennies I’d be given onto my favourite floats but may well have just dropped them in a collecting bucket carried by one the many fancy-dressed characters walking alongside the floats.