Sometime towards the end of the tram works on my street, I came across a tweet, actually from a few years beforehand, sharing a short bit of footage of the sequence in Jurassic Park in which the shudder of an approaching T-Rex is seen in the vibration of a glass of water. “Living on Leith Walk," it said, "during the tramworks is like this bit in Jurassic Park, but worse.”

I laughed because, during the works, I had gone round my house trying to film something that would illustrate the way my home was shaking, and exactly this, water gently bouncing in a glass, was what I'd landed on - as well as the shudder of a vibrating radiator pipe. Neither, however, seemed to adequately convey what I was feeling in my bones, or the drumming in my ears.

I live on the narrowest section of the tram route. The dates of the digs and closures in our part of Leith are mostly vague or forgotten but it pretty much began when we moved in, six weeks after the birth of our first child. For some reason we were so oblivious and lacking in due diligence that we were unaware that the road was about to become a dig site.

For the next 15 years, we would live with the digs, the works cancellation, the threat of its revival, more works and then finally their completion and the delivery to us of a tram route, which, I must confess, I do now enjoy. Occasionally, since it stops just done the road, I call it 'my tram'.

The phases of the works blur into one another, alongside the passage of my children from baby, to toddler, primary school scooter-rider, to teen, but the memory of living in a build site throughout significant sections of their childhood is strong. In a note in a diary I kept from around the birth of my son Max, I observe that I am feeling some stress due to the noise of the tram dig.

Reports suggest that the first work to divert utility pipes and cables in Leith began in March 2007, starting on Constitution Street, though I'm not sure I noticed. The route was finally opened in June 2023.

There were highs over those 15 years; even some entertainment. At various points along the way, sections were shut to traffic, without much action in terms of works, and my........

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