Rashers of Bacon

In my ignorance and world innocence I thought London was a cloudy and wet place, but there is a new leader and champion of places that I have been with miserable weather. It didn’t come as a shock, and it didn’t stop my enjoying Edinburgh, but it’s worth noting if you ever decide to go yourself that it feels like it could drizzle for months on end. I suspect that the sunshine on my arrival was the first to be seen in Edinburgh for quite some time and as such I feel privileged to have basked in it briefly.

If anything, the low clouds and light rain add to the atmosphere. The castle perches high above the centre of town, an imposing reminder of a war-soaked past. It pops out at the most unusual times. As you walk along a street in the new town you glance to the left as you cross the road and – bloody hell! There it is. It seems to play some kind of optical trick on the mind, being almost too big and grand to fit into a modern city. It shimmers in the distance. It sits on top of craggy black cliffs with sheer drops an all but one side. Its presence lifts Edinburgh out of the ordinary at once.

In a similar way the mountains impose themselves on you. You don’t have to go looking for them, they regally appear, crowned with clouds. I rambled up them one morning and with each step my mood lifted. I had almost forgotten what it was like to be really outside and breath fresh air. You can’t help but be impressed by the sheer steepness. I’ve been up the highest mountain in Australia but it’s just a molehill compared to these. I eventually managed to climb to the highest point. My legs were burning and sweat was dripping off my eyebrows. As I took in my achievement, basking at being among the clouds with the city barely visible beneath me, I glanced over to my left. An old woman trotted over the next mountain along accompanied by her four scotch terriers. It put my mountain climbing into perspective.

The one great pity about Edinburgh is that its shoreline has been taken over by industrial shipping as far as the eye can see. I would have liked to go exploring, but like the pyramids, this will have to wait until I’m older and wiser. For now Germany awaits and then it’s back to … no, I can’t bring myself to say it. It’s the homeward stretch, the two month sprint before the end of another job.

Dave out.

It’s funny how life turns out, sometimes. You plan and plan then all of a sudden a twist shakes you off your tracks and you end up somewhere totally unexpected. This is how I feel writing this letter in a hotel room in Edinburgh. I had already mentally composed half a letter from Cairo, but that will have to wait for another day.

For those of you who weren’t informed by my drunken email, I missed my flight to Egypt. As the brusque gentleman at the Lufthansa counter succinctly put it – “These tickets – London to Frankfurt; Frankfurt to Cairo; are now useless.” There were no other flights I could be put on and as my heart sank he gave it a little kick. “That’s what you get for buying a cheap ticket.” I responded maturely with “For fuck’s sake! I was five fucking minutes late,” before I stormed off.

I was mightily angry that morning, possibly angrier than anyone has seen me, apart from my sister when she kept stuffing dead leaves down the back of my shirt and I punched her in the stomach. I could relate to how angry the Incredible Hulk had to be for muscles to pop out of his clothes. To make it worse, I couldn’t direct my anger towards anything. My lateness had been a combination of getting up a little late, waiting for the bus, sitting in the bus while it groaned towards a tube stop, getting slightly lost at Elephant and Castle, and waiting for the underground. It all added up to five minutes past the gates closing, literally.

I felt terrible on the way back from the airport. I couldn’t believe it, shit like this happens to other people. Tears sprang to my eyes and my shoulders were so tense it felt like I had been hanging from clothes pegs all night. When I got home I threw my bags on the floor and stomped around, swearing. I wanted to break things but in the end I quelled the voices with strong alcohol. I wasn’t too fussed about losing money on the ticket. It was all the frustrations from working in London bubbling to the surface. I know a few of you on this mailing list have experienced how working in London can transform you into a snarling beast chained to the treadmill of commercialism. I had been so close to escaping but the tendrils had closed around again and I was back in my flat, drunk.

As you can surmise, I was feeling a bit down at this point, but it takes more than a minor setback to keep a Bacon down. Perseverance beyond the sane is a family trait and I was damned if I was going to hang around London moping about my lost holiday, so I jumped on the Net and booked a flight to Edinburgh. I was happy to be going anywhere that wasn’t London, and if you think about it, there are a lot of similarities between Edinburgh and Egypt. They both start with E, people have lived there for a long time and there are lots of old buildings. To be honest, now that I’m here, I feel good about it. I think it might be a better break for me – more of a rest than an adventure. And let’s face it, the pyramids aren’t exactly going anywhere, it’s just increased my determination to see them.

The day I flew to Edinburgh it was raining heavily and I didn’t hold high hopes for the weather in Scotland being any better. I got to the airport about two hours early, even after the first bus I caught was felled by a faulty door. The one good thing about flying is that it’s always sunny at 30,000 feet. From my window seat I basked in the sun and watched the sea of clouds slip by. Coming into Scotland the clouds started to clear and I could see small mountains jut out, criss-crossed by streams. As we descended through some straggly clouds it cast my mind back to the book I had brought with ‘e ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’. Robert Louis Stevenson was from Edinburgh, and although the story was written in Bournemouth and set in London I like to think that he was imagining Edinburgh’s narrow cobbled streets wreathed in fog. It was a slight disappointment that blue skies and a warm sun greeted me at the airport but these feelings subsided as I relaxed into the bus journey into the centre of town. I’m just resting now as I wait for the midnight hour when I will quit my room in a bid to exorcise my inner demons in the quiet, dark lanes.

Dave out.