The last man out of the Marine Ballroom turned off the lights but forgot to empty the ashtrays.
That is my abiding memory from 2003 when I was given special access to the dilapidated building in Arbroath since converted to flats and renamed Marine Court and discovered a scene frozen in time.
Lipstick-tipped Number 6’s lay where they were stubbed out in wall-mounted ashtrays between 20 recessed seats which lined the dance floor.
Some must have left the ballroom in a hurry that Sunday night in 1983 their coats still hung in the cloakroom 20 years later.
Barely a soul had stepped on to the double-lined dance floor since perhaps that accounts for its remarkable preservation. The dance floor, where generations of rival Arbroath youths paraded clockwise or anti-clockwise according to their gang, remained broadly undamaged despite two decades locked in its own twilight world.
The Marine had become a more permissive place in its swan song years. Graffiti declaring ‘God Save The King’ and a sign warning ‘No Jiving’, however, were clues to more formal times as a ballroom which opened in the Coronation year of 1937.
The hulking red sandstone building in Hill Road is now flats, but memories of nights at the Marine remain strong throughout the east of Scotland.
My visit in 2003 came after owner John Air, publican at the Skate Inn, Arbroath, agreed to open the mothballed ballroom for The Courier.
His son David remembered well the glory days of the Marine and inched through the darkened building with confidence.
We entered through the double doors where customers once queued and were met by the payment booth.25p entry stovies includedEntry on the night the ballroom closed was £1 but David recalled that in earlier years entry was 25p on Friday nights, 35p on Saturday nights and 30p on Sundays, but that included stovies.
Fluorescent orange 1970s emulsion was peeling from the walls of the foyer to reveal art deco-style wooden panelling with coloured inlays. The ground-level lounge bar, a staging post en-route to the main ballroom, was a forlorn place. Fittings were stripped but the ice buckets remained standing on the bar from closing night.
An impressive wide staircase swept to an upper landing past the doors to the well-preserved ladies toilets and the rear stage entrance.
Little imagination was required to regress to the Marine’s halcyon days. Above the main stage the DJ booth, flanked by an ageing light system, stood silent.
To the rear of the ballroom was the cafe where refreshments were served in the days when just the ground-level bar qualified for a drinks licence.
David recalled the rush between the ground-level bar and the ballroom on Friday nights in particular.
“One of the bar staff used to spend the early evening filling glasses of vodka which we would stack on trays,” he said. “When the fishers came in on a Friday just before 10 after a good week at sea they would buy them by the tray-full before going up the stairs.”
Many of these young fishermen would take the clockwise route round the dance floor when they got upstairs as part of the Fishy Fleet. Their opponents were the toon lads or Mayfield Shams as they were known, David recalled.
“The girls would dance around their handbags and the gangs would walk in opposite directions around the floor,” said David. “There was trouble, but nothing serious. Just a case of teenage high spirits. Most of the Fishy Fleet and Mayfield Shams have grown up into local business men.””I don’t think out-of-town lads got an easy time when they came here”The only time there was unity between the fishers and the toon lads was when they were faced with an out-of-town threat.
“I don’t think out-of-town lads got an easy time when they came here. The last band to play here was a punk band from Dundee called the Aerosols who played one Christmas Eve. They had fired up the locals by spray painting walls before they played and they were rewarded by being driven from the stage.”
In the years before the Airs took over the Marine in 1975, the Bay City Rollers on their ascent had played there, as had Christian and Salvation whose members included Midge Ure.
Slade, too, played at the Marine in fact they were banned. Their skinhead antics when they were Ambrose Slade did not go down well.
So many people through the building’s long history left their mark in some form.
During the second world war Polish servicemen were billeted there, and judging by the mural we saw in the well of the fire escape showing a lady in traditional dress and a Polish banner, they were homesick.
Trapped below a cash register dumped on the staircase was a cloakroom ticket. Perhaps a chance for someone to claim their coat…