Tommy Carson was brought up in the Grassmarket in the 1920s and he paints a very colourful picture of life at that time. It was a time of great poverty poor housing and living conditions no work or apprenticeships .He had an unemployed Father who spent his time in the pub and a hardworking Mother who had four or five cleaning jobs to keep the family together leaving Tommy and his sister to fend for themselves. In this episode we hear of Tommy's school days attending St Ignatius school and the games he and the other children played in the street. We also get to meet some of the characters he knew such as Monkey Mary and her barrel organ, Tony Dimambro and his ice cream van and a Frenchman with a bear who came into the Grassmarket from Corstorphine