My weekend in Edinburgh
Sep. 19th, 2005 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annwfynAnd so I'm back from outer space...
Yes, I'm home. I spent an entire weekend (OK, more like 24 hours) in Edinburgh and I survived!
Herein lies my tale...
The journey up
It appears that on Fridayimagesandwords and darktalon were talking about me. The conversation went something like this:
Stuart: Yeah, Sally's meant to be coming up today.
Thomas: What are the odds that she's late and doesn't make it til Saturday.
I suppose it's nice to know that Thomas knows me well. I did wind up getting the train up in the early morning on Saturday, with a nervous twist in the pit of my stomach. There were engineering works on the line, so I had to go via Carlisle which didn't soothe me much either.
By the time I hit the Scots border I was really really edgy. I don't know what I was afraid of. I think it's just that Edinburgh, in my mind, had become associated with a lot of bad and miserable things. It had become associated with me being scared, with me feeling crappy about myself, with people who were essentially fairly vile to me, and I think I was convinced on some level that it was a place where I was universally hated and reviled for half forgotten scandals.
I had a knot in my belly as I sat on the train, and phoned home neurotically. The train pulled into the station and I got this wave of emotion. Grey stone walls, cobbled streets, and lilting accents. I was back in Edinburgh and I did have so many memories linked to that place.
Then the emotional reverie was completely shattered by my taxi driver.
"Marlin's Wynd?" he said. "I've never heard of that place. Are you sure it's on Blair Street? Are you sure it's in Edinburgh?"
No emotional reverie. Major actual panic. If a taxi driver couldn't find the venue, what hope did I have? We drove up and down Blair Street twice, and then (huzzah!) I saw the (at that moment) amazingly comforting figure ofqueenofsmut. I'd made it!
The wedding
The first thing to say aboutcristobel and Andrew's wedding is that it was wonderful. It was lovely. The venue was Marlin's Wynd in Edinburgh, and it was beautiful. There was a lovely atmosphere there - the place was full of people I liked, and people I'd always liked. I saw folk I hadn't seen in years - I saw Angus and Sarah, and Sarah and I chattered about conservation which she is training in at the moment. I got mocked by Thomas and Alex Dalton, which was a comfortable and familiar feeling.
Susan looked beautiful in her wedding dress, and the ceremony was really lovely and informal. It all just felt really honest and comfortable. Susan's father sang during the ceremony and had a great voice, and then there was the wedding reception.
It's a sad fact that I feel the need to comment on this at great length, but I shall. The food was wonderful. Wedding food, in my experience, has tended towards the generic and the 'easy to serve 100 people'. Susan's wedding food was delicious. I also rediscovered haggis, and I think it has actually gotten better in the two years I've been away from Scotland. It made me a very happy Sally, as did the truly stunning roast potatoes that I also consumed in vast quantities. I ate, I had red wine, and I had a fantastic evening.
After dinner there was dancing, more people showed up, I sawfire_sermon and mindwanders. I finally realised that I was fading at about 11 pm, and pathetically crawled away early to my hotel. I phoned pierot at around 11.30 pm to ramble about all the good memories of Edinburgh which were flooding back.
Sunday morning
I woke up at about 7 am. That was when I realised I had apparently drunk rather a lot more red wine last night that I had realised as I felt like throwing up. I crawled back under the duvet and tried to go to sleep. I felt more sick. I eventually got up at about 8.30 am and crawled pathetically down to breakfast.
There was more haggis at breakfast. I've mentioned that I really really missed haggis, right? I ate, I felt better, I went back to bed and I got up again at 10.30 am to check out. The hotel was on Bruntsfield Links, so I decided to wander through town en route to Leith Walk where I was meeting people.
*ponders*
It was very strange. I walked out of the hotel, and again all the memories I've got associated with Edinburgh hit me. I remembered walking across Bruntsfield Links with Iain Coussell having a massive and melodramatic row*, I remembered sitting in the Meadows waiting for Mark Elliott to wander across on his way to work. I remembered walking across the Meadows in nothing but my underwear after a Rocky Horror party (I was much smaller in those days and could pull it off far more convincingly). I remembered...I remembered far too much.
It's odd just how many intense emotions I seem to have associated to grey stone and cobbled streets. I spent two hours wandering around Edinburgh in the end. Good memories, bad memories, memories of another person....it was a very odd time. I felt nostalgic, tearful...a lot of things. I also realised the extent to which Edinburgh differs from anywhere else in my mind. I think it's mostly that I haven't lived anywhere else for as long as I lived in Edinburgh since I left school. I think there's an element of it being my university town, the town where I did a lot of growing up, the town where a lot of stuff happened. I think...well...I think a lot of things, and I think that the walk around Edinburgh was worth doing, even if it did make me positively weepy at times.
I stopped at Black Lion Games and saw Liam and Shevvy which was nice, and pottered around Forbidden Planet. I finally hit Vittorias at five minutes to one. I was early! No one was expecting that!
Sunday lunch
My Sunday lunch consisted of good quality Vittorias food withpixiecors, headinclouds, red_phil, darktalon, cairmen, and unifex. It was fantastic seeing them, and there was a great deal of gossip and goodness. I even managed to briefly see ulaidhan by running over to his flat.
Good people. Lovely people. I just need to drag jez up to parade before Tina and Corinne at some point soon!
My journey home
However, lunch was ended far too soon, and I scrambled off trainwards. This is when it all really did go wrong. I shall cut this short and simply say that there was a security alert at Milton Keynes** and all the trains stopped running. I finally got into Euston at about 12.30 am. Just after the tube stopped running.
I walked to Waterloo and then got a taxi from there, with a nice driver who told me all about the fact that he gets a commission from a special kind of 'gentleman's club' where one can meet women and 'any arrangement you might make independently of the club with those women is, of course, none of the clubs business'. Apparently this taxi driver gets £50 for each guy he takes there - they pay a hefty entrance fee to be introduced to these women and then usually end up hiring one of them. Basically, up market brothels as far as I can tell.
I got home after 1 am with very sore feet and collapsed in bed. I was home.
And now I'm home, how do I feel about Edinburgh?
I did put a lot of ghosts to rest. I did remember that I had had a lot of good times there, I do have some wonderful friends there that have known me for a long time and I really do love to pieces. I remembered that it was a beautiful city. I think I realised that I do have a lot of strong emotions associated with that place, and those won't go away. It wasn't as anticlimactic as I had feared it might be, and it was a positive experience.
I think 24 hours was a good amount of time to spend there. I think keeping it all to safe places, to people I feel comfortable with, was also the right way to go.
I also think that I really do need to takepierot up there at some point. That town is a part of me, is something that I think he needs to see in order to make sense of me, and I think he does need to meet Tina and Corinne who are both wonderful people.
It was a wonderful weekend. Hey, I might even try it again.
*Me and Iain being melodramatic? I hear the surprise in your voices. We were, however, both about nineteen at the time and as such prone to such things.
** I am presuming that someone realised they lived in Milton Keynes and lost the will to live. I'd turn into a suicide bombed if I lived in Milton Keynes.
Yes, I'm home. I spent an entire weekend (OK, more like 24 hours) in Edinburgh and I survived!
Herein lies my tale...
The journey up
It appears that on Friday
imagesandwords and darktalon were talking about me. The conversation went something like this:Stuart: Yeah, Sally's meant to be coming up today.
Thomas: What are the odds that she's late and doesn't make it til Saturday.
I suppose it's nice to know that Thomas knows me well. I did wind up getting the train up in the early morning on Saturday, with a nervous twist in the pit of my stomach. There were engineering works on the line, so I had to go via Carlisle which didn't soothe me much either.
By the time I hit the Scots border I was really really edgy. I don't know what I was afraid of. I think it's just that Edinburgh, in my mind, had become associated with a lot of bad and miserable things. It had become associated with me being scared, with me feeling crappy about myself, with people who were essentially fairly vile to me, and I think I was convinced on some level that it was a place where I was universally hated and reviled for half forgotten scandals.
I had a knot in my belly as I sat on the train, and phoned home neurotically. The train pulled into the station and I got this wave of emotion. Grey stone walls, cobbled streets, and lilting accents. I was back in Edinburgh and I did have so many memories linked to that place.
Then the emotional reverie was completely shattered by my taxi driver.
"Marlin's Wynd?" he said. "I've never heard of that place. Are you sure it's on Blair Street? Are you sure it's in Edinburgh?"
No emotional reverie. Major actual panic. If a taxi driver couldn't find the venue, what hope did I have? We drove up and down Blair Street twice, and then (huzzah!) I saw the (at that moment) amazingly comforting figure of
queenofsmut. I'd made it!The wedding
The first thing to say about
cristobel and Andrew's wedding is that it was wonderful. It was lovely. The venue was Marlin's Wynd in Edinburgh, and it was beautiful. There was a lovely atmosphere there - the place was full of people I liked, and people I'd always liked. I saw folk I hadn't seen in years - I saw Angus and Sarah, and Sarah and I chattered about conservation which she is training in at the moment. I got mocked by Thomas and Alex Dalton, which was a comfortable and familiar feeling.Susan looked beautiful in her wedding dress, and the ceremony was really lovely and informal. It all just felt really honest and comfortable. Susan's father sang during the ceremony and had a great voice, and then there was the wedding reception.
It's a sad fact that I feel the need to comment on this at great length, but I shall. The food was wonderful. Wedding food, in my experience, has tended towards the generic and the 'easy to serve 100 people'. Susan's wedding food was delicious. I also rediscovered haggis, and I think it has actually gotten better in the two years I've been away from Scotland. It made me a very happy Sally, as did the truly stunning roast potatoes that I also consumed in vast quantities. I ate, I had red wine, and I had a fantastic evening.
After dinner there was dancing, more people showed up, I saw
fire_sermon and mindwanders. I finally realised that I was fading at about 11 pm, and pathetically crawled away early to my hotel. I phoned pierot at around 11.30 pm to ramble about all the good memories of Edinburgh which were flooding back.Sunday morning
I woke up at about 7 am. That was when I realised I had apparently drunk rather a lot more red wine last night that I had realised as I felt like throwing up. I crawled back under the duvet and tried to go to sleep. I felt more sick. I eventually got up at about 8.30 am and crawled pathetically down to breakfast.
There was more haggis at breakfast. I've mentioned that I really really missed haggis, right? I ate, I felt better, I went back to bed and I got up again at 10.30 am to check out. The hotel was on Bruntsfield Links, so I decided to wander through town en route to Leith Walk where I was meeting people.
*ponders*
It was very strange. I walked out of the hotel, and again all the memories I've got associated with Edinburgh hit me. I remembered walking across Bruntsfield Links with Iain Coussell having a massive and melodramatic row*, I remembered sitting in the Meadows waiting for Mark Elliott to wander across on his way to work. I remembered walking across the Meadows in nothing but my underwear after a Rocky Horror party (I was much smaller in those days and could pull it off far more convincingly). I remembered...I remembered far too much.
It's odd just how many intense emotions I seem to have associated to grey stone and cobbled streets. I spent two hours wandering around Edinburgh in the end. Good memories, bad memories, memories of another person....it was a very odd time. I felt nostalgic, tearful...a lot of things. I also realised the extent to which Edinburgh differs from anywhere else in my mind. I think it's mostly that I haven't lived anywhere else for as long as I lived in Edinburgh since I left school. I think there's an element of it being my university town, the town where I did a lot of growing up, the town where a lot of stuff happened. I think...well...I think a lot of things, and I think that the walk around Edinburgh was worth doing, even if it did make me positively weepy at times.
I stopped at Black Lion Games and saw Liam and Shevvy which was nice, and pottered around Forbidden Planet. I finally hit Vittorias at five minutes to one. I was early! No one was expecting that!
Sunday lunch
My Sunday lunch consisted of good quality Vittorias food with
pixiecors, headinclouds, red_phil, darktalon, cairmen, and unifex. It was fantastic seeing them, and there was a great deal of gossip and goodness. I even managed to briefly see ulaidhan by running over to his flat. Good people. Lovely people. I just need to drag jez up to parade before Tina and Corinne at some point soon!
My journey home
However, lunch was ended far too soon, and I scrambled off trainwards. This is when it all really did go wrong. I shall cut this short and simply say that there was a security alert at Milton Keynes** and all the trains stopped running. I finally got into Euston at about 12.30 am. Just after the tube stopped running.
I walked to Waterloo and then got a taxi from there, with a nice driver who told me all about the fact that he gets a commission from a special kind of 'gentleman's club' where one can meet women and 'any arrangement you might make independently of the club with those women is, of course, none of the clubs business'. Apparently this taxi driver gets £50 for each guy he takes there - they pay a hefty entrance fee to be introduced to these women and then usually end up hiring one of them. Basically, up market brothels as far as I can tell.
I got home after 1 am with very sore feet and collapsed in bed. I was home.
And now I'm home, how do I feel about Edinburgh?
I did put a lot of ghosts to rest. I did remember that I had had a lot of good times there, I do have some wonderful friends there that have known me for a long time and I really do love to pieces. I remembered that it was a beautiful city. I think I realised that I do have a lot of strong emotions associated with that place, and those won't go away. It wasn't as anticlimactic as I had feared it might be, and it was a positive experience.
I think 24 hours was a good amount of time to spend there. I think keeping it all to safe places, to people I feel comfortable with, was also the right way to go.
I also think that I really do need to take
pierot up there at some point. That town is a part of me, is something that I think he needs to see in order to make sense of me, and I think he does need to meet Tina and Corinne who are both wonderful people. It was a wonderful weekend. Hey, I might even try it again.
*Me and Iain being melodramatic? I hear the surprise in your voices. We were, however, both about nineteen at the time and as such prone to such things.
** I am presuming that someone realised they lived in Milton Keynes and lost the will to live. I'd turn into a suicide bombed if I lived in Milton Keynes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-09-19 05:41 pm (UTC)So, do you think you might not leave it so long next time?
*looks hopeful*
You could come up and we could play on things that go vrrrooom. :)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-19 07:54 pm (UTC)I need to show you jez, and I do very much want to see the things that go vroom! I also want to show you my much more important shiney mini which is coolness incarnate!
no subject
Date: 2005-09-19 09:13 pm (UTC)As for other things that go vroom, NewBike looks mostly like a bike again and hopefully should be up and running soon, which will make me muchly happy.
(And I should be able to take passengers on this one *grin*)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-19 05:42 pm (UTC)*ducks*
no subject
Date: 2005-09-19 05:51 pm (UTC)We're hoping to go to India on thursday!
no subject
Date: 2005-09-19 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-20 01:40 am (UTC)I'm sorry to hear that! Sounds like you had a lovely day though, so congrats to you both :)
Authentic Scottish Weddng?
Date: 2005-09-19 05:56 pm (UTC)I'm glad you're doing well. Almost thought about calling you this weekend, in the theory that you might be bored on a train.
Re: Authentic Scottish Weddng?
Date: 2005-09-19 07:12 pm (UTC)That was the most inauthentic part of the scottish wedding you took me too. ID'ing everyone who might be under 21? What the hell kind of craziness is that?
Re: Authentic Scottish Weddng?
Date: 2005-09-19 07:17 pm (UTC)Re: Authentic Scottish Weddng?
Date: 2005-09-19 07:53 pm (UTC)Re: Authentic Scottish Weddng?
Date: 2005-09-19 09:29 pm (UTC)Haggis doesn't count.
Re: Authentic Scottish Weddng?
Date: 2005-09-20 01:41 am (UTC)Particularly deep fried in batter with HP sauce and chips :)
Re: Authentic Scottish Weddng?
Date: 2005-09-20 02:54 am (UTC)Re: Authentic Scottish Weddng?
Date: 2005-09-20 03:40 am (UTC)Made with real muggles, it is :)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-20 01:41 am (UTC)