Travelling to Orkney

 

The Caledonian Sleeper was cancelled. We had slogged ourselves to Euston with a full rucksack, folded up pink dog crate, and a dog. Once we arrived the big black departure boards looming over the station hall were blank, so I thought, ‘typical everything’s broken’. Then I learnt there had been flash floods and a small fire had broken out on a track and that all trains were cancelled. Dejected we trailed back home on the Northern Line and the DLR and I booked the earliest train to Aberdeen the next morning. (The ferry to Orkney leaves once every two days so, if I didn’t make this connection then my holiday would be cut short and Granny would be sad.) 

 

I took at taxi at 5:30am the following day with a sleepy puppy. I was worrying about travel, timings and toilet breaks. The first leg of the journey was King’s Cross to Edinburgh. Outside King’s Cross station I walked around the severe green squares hemmed in by tall business blocks and austere coffee shops, waiting for ROLO to relieve herself. It’s mainly construction workers in orange glow and hard hats at this time of day. The humidity of London had brought out many snails, leaving irksome trails of slime along the immaculate buffed concrete. 

 

I managed to stop off for two hours in one my favourite cities in the world: Edinburgh. It was a hot day with clear skies and bright sunshine. Even with a bag strapped to my back and both hands full, I enjoyed walking along Princes Street gardens and gazing up at the hill with a giant castle on top. Edinburgh Fringe memories came flooding back; the excitement of live shows, the familiarity of long walks flyering poor passers-by, being fun drunk, feeling insatiable, stupid youth. 

 

Hopped back on the train at Edinburgh Waverley to Aberdeen, which is a two and a half hour ride. On board, a Dundee granny surrounded by her six or seven granddaughters fed ROLO some boiled sweets. ‘Nan! You can’t do that! Ask first.’ She looked over at me with wide eyes and a gummy grin and I couldn’t tell her off – I’m not that brave. She said, ‘These lot are all my grandchildren.’ I said, ‘wow’. ‘We bin t’Edinburgh to do sm’shoppin.’ With that the rest of the ride was filled with squabbles, shouting, mock tears, laughter, the nan trying to find her mask while being berated by a gaggle of girls who were sweet and screechy and all too much.

 

I made it to the ferry in Aberdeen one hour before departure time! I met a Shetlander along the way who was going home for one day to ‘sort out some business’, very vague and I couldn’t understand every third word he said to me. On board – this was the stage I was most worried about – ROLO had to be put in kennels. I didn’t want to part with her immediately, but dogs aren’t allowed in the interior parts of the ferry, so I sat outside with her on deck. 

 

The sun was out and the crossing was smooth. I found a sheltered spot where it wasn’t too windy and made friends with a man who was born in Stromness and left the islands when he was seventeen. He was returning for a holiday after having sailed the Atlantic in his catamaran with his partner. He had deep characteristic wrinkles and bright eyes, reminding me of a Richard Branson type. Sometimes, I wished I could be an old man with tall tales, rather than drifting into middle-aged womanhood worrying about her wrinkles. 

 

An hour into the journey I had to put ROLO into kennels. I was guided below deck by a uniformed crew member. He unlocked many doors and finally swung open a heavy door into a room of metal cages. One husky was sat upright looking harrowed. The sound of the ship’s engines whirred aggressively in the background. ‘Christ, I didn’t want to leave her in here.’ I put a water bowl in the cage for her, but she scrabbled to get out. I bolted the door and then I was led out. The crew switched off the lights, so it was pitch black in there and the heavy door was locked shut. I wasn’t allowed to see her again until 9pm.

 

Upstairs in the dining room I felt awful while I ate a good macaroni and cheese. Usually, the ferry is bustling with big oil tanker lads drinking beers, parents with prams and kids running around reckless. This time everything was sombre, the bar was only going to be open between the hours of 7-9pm. You could only sit on every other table because of social distancing. No wandering about the boat with drinks. Announcements being made about having to wear masks at all times because we are in Scotland – alluding to Sturgeon’s independent and safer concerns on how to curb Covid-19.

 

We arrived at Kirkwall at 11pm. Dad picked me up wearing yellow trousers, looking happy. ROLO had made it! She was scruffy and wet from her spilled water bowl, but still with a wagging tail and bright eyes. I collected my bag off the trolley and Dad drove us home. ROLO passed out on my trouser leg. I looked through the windows at the islands swathed in mist, or low clouds, parting for us like ghosts.  

The old man in the second-hand bookshop

The man in the bookshop waits for me. I assume he does, a little bit in his heart every day.

When you come up from London to Edinburgh you notice how nice life could be. When it’s sunny it’s even more striking. Better dogs, more frequent snatches of conversation and shared nods and alrights. And here in Edinburgh you get called ‘pal’ in tempered tones of aggression always, and it feels nice. Manageable. Friendly without overdoing it. Not wanky.

I passed Greyfriar’s Bobby with his metallic snub nose, all naked and shiny from being over-rubbed. I got crisps with my sandwich instead of salad, because eating out means not having to be healthy and enjoying life. I pass a charity shop every five hundred meters filled with cardigans and desks (and one cat in the window) and it makes me happy. Edinburgh has to be one of the most pleasant cities to live in. But likely if I said that to someone in passing they’d condescend the comment like a Londoner with ‘If you can afford it’ but then again maybe they’re all just capitalising and hitching up the prices threefold whilst the Festival’s on. I would. Because the southerners coming up here with their selfie-sticks and lack of self-awareness think coffee is worth £4.50 so serve it to them for that.

There is one second-hand bookshop with its shelves immaculately ordered in to categories: modern drama, crime, classical drama, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, American literature, history, ancient history and gardening. Everything really. I asked the white-haired man in the light-blue short-sleeved shirt, ‘Do you have any books by Jonathan Coe?’ because I had finished one of his stranger novels on the train ride up and I was totally intrigued.

The bookshop owner had in fact approached me whilst I was in the fiction section looking up authors’ surnames, I was in section C already and he had just caught me in the nick of time to lend me a helping hand right when I needed it. Good intervention. He seemed glad I knew what I was looking for; so he could actually be helpful I predict because you must get nonsensical requests working in a book store, as we all remember from Notting Hill and Dylan Moran’s acting part.

‘You're in the right place,’ he said with a smile that said I’m proud of you for knowing your alphabet and index systems ‘let me have a look for you.’ He bends down and searches the spines with his index finger.

‘Anything will do’ I say trying to be helpful, but of course I do want that specific author so not anything.

‘Nothing on the shelf.’ He says with not a slump in mood but a wistfulness.

‘Sorry. Coe comes in a lot but we don’t seem to have him in stock.’ He seems amused by it, like he should know where the author was hiding in the book store but has lost all recollection of where he saw him last.

‘That’s absolutely fine.’ I say.

I’m more pleased to have met the old man than to have found this book. I won’t tell him that because that’s too much feeling from a customer I presume. It’s sunny outside and I will keep welling up with feeling whilst my romance with this city lasts (two more days at the most).

The next day and the next day, and the next few days after that, I pass his second-hand bookshop and I see it every time but daren’t go in.

Not out of fear or awkwardness as such, I am not sure why, maybe because I like the illusion of the story I am playing in my head every time I walk past and see in the shop window display not one but two Jonathan Coe books staring at me from behind the glass. I don’t even pause infront of the window incase he sees me and waves at me to come in, or points at the two books with his friendly face and warm heart.

I should just go in.

It would probably make his day.

But what if I did.

And he didn’t remember who I was.

What if he went to all that trouble.

To find those books and put them out.

But what if they’d been out in the window all along.

And he had forgot.

What if they are meaningless.

And the books don’t mean a thing.

That's why I’ll leave it.

Yes much nicer to leave it.

Because I like the story better.

Than ever finding out the truth.

  

 

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Shove the bacon buttie in my face and absorb it instantly.

Things I will not miss about the Fringe are: the wet drips which fall from the grim underside of that bridge in Cowgate, the stairs (that are everywhere), and flyers.

Hungover days and the restless nights that come with drinking too much, and then the Scottish fried goods and the endless walking over from New to Old parts of town. It never stopped not even in the downpours or in the early morning, stuff just kept going on.

Lurching down steep steps, which I’d only just clambered up half an hour ago to collect some pants I’d left in the print storage room (spare pants - because I’m always prepared - or because I forgot that I’d left my pants in a back room of a venue and thought before catching the train “outta here” that I should probably collect them).

Sweating. Ski jacket. Prepared for all-weather but not for all this weather meaning the sunshine we’ve been getting. In Scotland? I know right.

But the upside of all this traipsing by a banister is, or, were the shows. I managed to see a heck of a lot of good shows. So here’s some I remember the most jotted down for you:

Le Gateau Chcocolat who is a big black beautiful opera singer told an achingly honest tale of a young man who grapples with depression, being gay and being black. The lighting design was the lighting design to beat all others. His voice is ridiculously amazing.

The show which dedicated it’s heart and soul to the artist and wife of Beatle, Yoko Ono, titled appropriately Oh No! by Jamie Wood was brimming with creative nurture. The most enticing bit was when Jamie curated some Bagism on stage and invited a member of the audience to get in a bag with him and get completely naked. The minutes of silence that ensued after this innocent plea was met with awkwardness until a fly lad of 23 got up, crossed the stage and entered the bag/blanket with him; they both followed to get completely butt-naked beneath the sheet and then continued to talk about whether said young lad had ever fallen in love before, and what it means to love a person. Performance art + comedy = happy fun.

LetLuce in Sea Men (A Naval Tale) was a hilarious and sometimes trippy ride in to the world of two clown-character comics who’s unfurling narrative about a fish who wants to go clubbing on River Island and a pirate captain who wants to drink the Potion of the Ocean (said in an elongated Brummie accent) was just the bomb. The nuts. Mighty Boosh would have taken their hats off to the pair.

The stand-up that I enjoyed the most was Liam Williams with his second stand-up hour: Bonfire Night. A pretty neat and of course, damnably clever hour to follow up his last show (Capitalism). Lots of self-hating and millennial naval-gazing, you just have to laugh or else you’d cry.


They’re my picks and in hindsight, I did have a good time and managed to tone my arse from all the stairs and got a surprising tan out of the outdoor flyering ordeal so, all’s well that ends well.