Newsletter #6: A Whole Lot of Nothing, Leaving Edina, Absenting Myself, and Revolution
Well, it has been another of those weeks in which nothing much seems to have happened, and yet I’ve been unable to get anything done. Then again: I say that I’ve done little but that is perhaps because what I’ve mostly been doing is reading (currently Salman Rushdie’s new essay collection Languages of Truth, if you’re nosily inclined) and, while reading is my favourite activity, it doesn’t quite make one feel, as the week ends, as if one has ‘done’ much. Maybe there’s something wrong with our (okay, my) psychology when one feels that one has only been active if one has left the house. Long bouts of reading surely count as ‘doing something’, so why do I feel like my week has been a lazy one? Is it the shadow of the Protestant work ethic hanging over me, whispering that I must be ‘productive’? Oh well, who cares about odd psychological tics or old injunctions when you’ve had so much fun?
Today, however, I did get out of the house. Scotland has been suffering something of a heatwave lately (though as soon as it gets above 10°C here, or so it sometimes seems, the menfolk are duty-bound to remove their tops in the streets, taut and flabby alike) so today my friend and I ventured out into Holyrood Park, camping chair and hammock in hand, to sit and read and people-watch. The view was quite something: there are so few cities with craggy mountains surrounded by parkland on one’s doorstep. It’s quite easy to take this gorgeousness for granted. Still, the view from my bedroom window of Arthur’s mighty Seat never fails to thrill, even after two years.
So that was nice. Sometimes you don’t need to go to cafés and pubs and museums and shops, sometimes it is just enough to sit for a few hours under the trees in a sunny park, book in hand, as the world goes by and the shimmering heat is pleasantly offset by a gentle breeze. Am I getting old (asks the 25-year-old)? If so, it doesn’t seem so bad.
But my day in the park contained some sadness too, for my time here is drawing to an end. Next Saturday I’ll be moving out of the city—my university course is over and I’m now just another jobless graduate without the money to live here. Oh, I shall miss this place, this city of cobblestones and steep stairs and narrow alleys, of Georgian architecture and elegant, leafy, well-heeled streets, of old and new, of Scotland and England and the whole world, of science and literature, of romance and reason, of beauty and squalor, of pubs and galleries, of museums and mountains, of the Enlightenment and Tartan Noir: this Edina, Scotia’s darling seat, my Edinburgh.
Still, I’ll only be a short train or car ride away, so maybe I’m being melodramatic… But this is, as I say, Edinburgh; the scenery justifies such self-indulgence, surely?
And so let me apologise: I’ll be absent next Sunday, unpacking and the rest, and my whole lot of nothing week has left me with no time to produce a proper piece for today. The upcoming week itself will be busy, full of packing and driving to and fro, so at least I’ll have done something productive this time around. In lieu of my own piece, and in lieu of writing about recent events here, I recommend this excellent article in Areo Magazine by Armando Simon on the Cuban protests, which might just herald the end of a cruel and senile regime.
Enjoy that piece, cry ‘Viva la Revolución!’, and I shall see you in a fortnight. From Edinburgh, for the last time, have a great week.
DJS