I thought you were never going to get here! Any later and I would have had to go without you. Welcome then to this very special summer 2021 edition of An English Fool (Not) Aboard with his sketchbook. Yes, I say not, because this year’s trip is not actually aboard at all, although I am in a different country. Bonnie Scotland, the land of my fathers. Well, of my father’s father, at least. Yes, Grandad Clark was born and brought up in Dundee, but moved to London during the Great Depression.
Now, this is
a good enough reason in itself for me to feel fondness for Scotland. However,
the fact is that the first time I visited Scotland was rather amazing, since I
won the grand final of a TV quiz show not totally unconnected with the words-
Pass – and – I’ve started so I’ll finish – in Glasgow. The TV show itself was
shot on my 43rd birthday. You can probably imagine that I was a
little preoccupied at the time, but I still found some time to do some
sightseeing in the morning, and to ride the Glasgow Subway and visit the
Kelvingrove Art Gallery. Glasgow’s a great city, and I would urge you to visit
if you have the chance.
Having said
that, though, this wasn’t going to be a trip to Glasgow again. No. When my
birthday was about to rear its ugly head again this year, I told my daughter
Jenn that Covid regs meant that I wasn’t wanting to risk another expedition to
Europe. She came up with the brilliant idea – why not visit Edinburgh, then?
Frankly, a plan with no drawbacks! Edinburgh is a) a capital city, and b) has
trams. Which all explains why you could find me sitting in the departure lounge
of Bristol airport at stupid o’clock in the morning, waiting to board the
plane. It seemed funny to be waiting to take a holiday flight again. Last time
I flew was to Reykjavik and back in the February half term of 2020. I remember
that hardly anyone was wearing masks in Bristol airport then, but loads were a
few days later in Keflavik. I wouldn’t say that the airport this morning was
quiet – it wasn’t – but it was nowhere near as crowded as it’s been when I’ve
flown from here in July before.
AS for the
flight itself, well, the pilot was a happy soul, and seemed incredibly pleased
by the fact that we landed a whole 1 minute ahead of schedule. It was grey and
overcast, but I cared not a jot, because I knew that I would be heading into
the city on a tram. Only when I could find the way out, mind you. Back in the
bad old days I used to think that it took forever to get out of Cardiff
airport, but this was worse, and not helped by the fact that one of the arrows
to the exit pointed straight at a blank wall. Eventually, though, we ran out of
airport before the airport ran out of Edinburgh, and there were the trams. Now,
it was while purchasing an all day ticket I first became aware of a significant
fact. In Edinburgh, they don’t like cash. Oh, they have no issue with money, as
far as I can see, but they would far rather you pay by card. Later on, three
booths in succession refused to sell me a cappuccino if I could only pay by
cash. So I took my revenge by going to an expensive café that did take cash,
and not only buying a cappuccino, but also a cheese and ham toastie. I hope
they have learned the error of their ways.
Enough moaning. I liked the architecture of the centre of Glasgow very much, but Edinburgh takes it even further. Huge chunks and slices of the centre of Edinburgh seem to have been constructed by these immaculately cut honey coloured stones, so that even where Gothic rubs shoulders with classical they seem to rub along together perfectly well. Which brings me to my first sketch. After walking along Princes Street, then across the North Bridge, sadly being restored at the moment. I’m not actually sad that it’s being restored, just sad it’s undercover so I could see so little of it. Next, the Royal Mile, and then back round in a huge circle to the rather nice gardens on Princes Street which are home to the Walter Scott Memorial, where I sat and sketched the castle peeping over the top of the National Gallery – which is the first place on tomorrow’s agenda. A gripping narrative, beautiful sketches, and now sneak previews. Who says I don’t give you value for money (don’t answer that).
By swivelling on the seat, I was able to make the sketch of the Walter Scott monument. How can I describe it? Well, it’s very big, for one thing, and pretty dark. It’s a bit like a Tim Burton remake of the Albert Memorial in London. It’s really pretty appropriate to have a memorial to Walter Scott here, since he was more responsible for the Hoots mon, Burns-reciting, shortbread and tartan cliché view of Scotland than anyone else, and heaven knows that Edinburgh, especially the Royal Mile, is not making much of an attempt to live down. Scott, the preeminent British novelist at the time, had to stage manage the visit of King George IV to Edinburgh in the 1820s. He did it so successfully that links with the British Royal Family were forged, and once George’s niece Victoria got in on the act the whole thing went wild.
A little way off the Royal Mile, there’s the King George IV bridge. Not that you notice that it’s a bridge until you look to your side, and in a gap between buildings you see another street quite some ways below you. It’s worth walking this way just to see this. However I wanted to see the wee statue which was my last sketch of the day. This, dearly beloved, is Greyfriars Bobby. It’s quite a well known story. In brief, the
story goes that Bobby belonged to John Gray, an Edinburgh nightwatchman. When Gray passed away in 1858 Bobby supposedly sat by his master’s grave for 14 years, until he himself passed away in 1872. The Lord Provost of Edinburgh paid for Bobby’s license and bought him a collar. He was buried close to his Master in Greyfriars Kirkyard. The wealthy philanthropist Angela Burdett- Coutts, who, amongst other things helped finance Charles Dickens’ attempts at saving fallen women (make your own jokes up, please), was touched when she heard the story about a year later, and paid to have this statue put up. There have been attempts to discredit the story since over the years, but none have really had any great effect. Greyfriars Bobby is still held up as an example of the faithfulness of Man’s best friend.
Not that all
the people looking at the statue the same time that I was drew the same
conclusion. “Greyfriar’s Bobby?”sneered a chap whose accent spoke of south east
England, “Greyfriars Thickie more like.”No, I didn’t kick him. I didn’t have to
– the lady who was with him got in first.
So to my
accommodation. Details of how to get there were Dave proof, for once, and I
arrived at about 2pm, remembering that every time I have been anywhere else,
I’ve always been able to check in by 2. Not this time. I walked into the
reception, and the two very pleasant girls informed me that there was no way
they could ever start check in before 3, because it was just too hard to keep a
track on the maelstrom of activity. Alright, they didn’t actually say
maelstrom. I looked around me at the empty lobby, and listened to the sounds of
silence throughout the place. Well, what the hell, I’d noticed a Sainsbury’s
local around the corner, so I did some shopping, which wasted a good 20 minutes
or so, and then I went back to the accommodation, sat in the lobby, and read
the paper and ate my crisps at them. I really wanted one of them to say that I couldn’t eat in the lobby, to which my
answer would have been – check me into my room, please and I won’t have to.-
They didn’t. And the bewildering thing about the whole check-in business is
that I had already checked in online yesterday!
Well, the
room is terrific. This is student accommodation, and my view of such things is
coloured by memories of my room in Aberdeen Hall at Goldsmiths, with the
radiator that produce nothing but noise. Well, I have to say, this is very
nice. It’s better than quite a few of the budget hotels I’ve stayed at, and I
like the self-catering aspects here. I have my own room and en suite, and share
a kitchen with 5 other rooms. So inspired was I that I made a carbonara for
dinner. Well, Sainsbury’s suppliers made it really, but I did stick it in the
microwave, so fair’s fair.
It didn’t
occur to me before setting off this morning that the big museums and galleries,
although they are buckshee – I like them already – would want you to book in
advance. So I’ve booked the National Gallery for the morning, and got literally
the last ticket for the National Museum of Scotland for tomorrow afternoon.
Throw in a fat guy and a red suit (as opposed to me, a fat guy in a red face –
spent too long out in the sun today) and it would be Christmas. And if that’s
not a positive note to end on, then tough, because it’s the best I can do. Tune
in tomorrow.
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Good evening. Did you maybe think you’d got away without having to endure a second episode of An English Fool (not) Abroad with his sketchbook? Well, sorry to disappoint you. I’m a bit sluggish getting round to putting my thoughts down about today. One of the main reasons is that I’m suffering from sunburn! Seriously – isn’t it ironic? My summer 2018 expedition was to Madrid in the middle of a heatwave, and my summer 2019 expedition was to Malta, which was one of the hottest places that I’ve ever been. I didn’t get burned then, but I come to Edinburgh and whoops apocalypse! I’ve often said that I have Scottish skin, and it’s like the Scottish sun, which again came out this afternoon, has recognised it as such and decided to take its toll.
Well, that’s enough whinging about the sun, for now. This morning there was a steady light drizzle which hung over Edinburgh, while I made my way into town. You know it never struck me, when I was walking to the accommodation yesterday, that it’s pretty much downhill all the way from the city centre. I noticed it this morning, since this was uphill all the way. Edinburgh is hilly, there’s no dount about it. One of Edinburgh’s nicknames is “The Athens of the North”. The tour guides would have you believe that this is because of the amount of neo-classical architecture in the city. I think that’s cobblers. Athens is built on several hills. I speak of personal experience, from walking up some of them. I was in my late teens and early 20s when I walked in Athens. I’m 57 now, and my legs were saying ‘you’re having a laugh’ before I reached the tramstop on York Place.
Right, the title of the show is “An English fool etc. etc.,
so you’re maybe hoping for some foolishness. Well, here it is. Yesterday I
mentioned how I found out that I needed to book free tickets to visit the
National Gallery of Scotland the National Museum of Scotland. Well, I thought I
did just that last night. My ticket for the National Gallery was booked for
10am , as soon as it opened. I had a costa coffee, and headed over to the
museum by ten to 10. Ten minutes passed, then the attendant opened the doors on
the dot, looked at the e ticket on my phone, and then said, sympathetically ,
“People are always doing this. I’m really sorry, but you’ve booked for the
National Gallery in London.” I bloody had done, too. Well, there’s no sense
crying over spilt e tickets, so I walked the short distance to Waverley Station
to book my ticket to go to Dundee tomorrow. As an old train spotter I’ve always
had this romantic notion of Edinburgh Waverley station as being one of the
great cathedrals to steam. I’ve no doubt that it might well have been, and it’s
certainly huge. But, I don’t know, it is very difficult for me to visualise it
in the way that I could visualise Kings Cross, or St. Pancras, or Cardiff
Central, because it’s well below street level. Yes, there is the Balmoral Hotel
above ground which used to be owned by the North British Railway, but even so
if you asked me, what does Waverley Station look like, I couldn’t really
answer.
Well, anyway, I booked my ticket for tomorrow. I want to go to Dundee because it’s where my Grandad came from, and I’ve wanted to go ever since I first researched my Clark family history years ago. I did ask the lady behind the counter who sold me the ticket if the train goes over the Forth Bridge. She did not, it must be said, have a Scooby. I think it does – I certainly hope so, but at least I did catch a glimpse of it on my second sightseeing tour today. I took two – one around the centre of the city, and this second, which went further out, to Leith, where I also saw the former Royal Yacht, Britannia. This is nothing to do with Britannia, but one thing I learned on the trip was that the nursery rhyme “Georgie Porgie, Puddin’ and Pie” Supposedly came about through the former Prince Regent’s visit to Edinburgh in 1822. Apparently George IV attended a meeting at the Assembly Rooms. Now remember, this is the same George IV who raised royal excess to an art form when he was the Prince Regent. Apparently he stuffed himself silly – with pudding and pie – then went around kissing all of the ladies present. I don’t believe I ever saw this presented as a ‘fact’ when I was doing research on Georgie Porgie, who was my semi final subject for Mastermind, but what the heck?
Oh, you want to hear of some more foolishness, do you? I see.
Well, the two tours I took were the city sights tour, and the Majestic tour.
Both tours use semi open topped buses – where the front few rowas of seats on
the upstairs are covered, and the rest are open. Well, when I had finished the
City tour, and hopped onto the Majestic tour bus, I climbed the stairs, and saw
there was just one pair of seats which were unoccupied, which was in the open
section. There were a lot of kids there, and it seemed that every one of them
was looking at me, expectantly. I sat down and soon discovered why. The seat
was wet. I looked at the empty seat beside me and this one too had a small
puddle waiting. What could I do? Brazen it out and assume an air of nonchalance
as if nothing had happened was the best I could come up with. I have to say, I
was disappointed with the parents who joined in with the kids’ laughter.
I was booked into the National Museum at 2:30 this afternoon. I did double check that I had actually booked the right museum this time. After this morning, I wouldn’t have necessarily been that surprised if the attendant had told me “I’m sorry sir, but this ticket is for the Port Talbot Baked Bean Museum of Excellence”. But this time I had it right, at least. I like the National Museum of Scotland. That’s no surprise, after all, I love museums in general. But I do like this one. I had the feeling that this one was going to be an interesting mixture of the ancient and modern. Like the building complex that houses it. The entrance is very modern, yet when you get into the main exhibition spaces they are in gorgeous wrought iron vaults, reminiscent of what I imagine the interior of the Crystal Palace might be like. Likewise, as I made my way through the exhibits on the development of technology, I kept thinking ‘ sooner or later I’m going to come to a hall with stuffed animals and skeletons’. I was right, too. You see, the collections of a lot of museums in the UK had their beginnings in Victorian private collections, and if there was one thing that a certain type of Victorian loved doing, it was shooting things and having them stuffed – usually in that order. In my last couple of expeditions I’ve sketched skeletons, and so I did a stegosaurus. I was tempted to sketch a statue of James Watt, the steam pioneer, but he looked nothing like he did when he won the world lightweight boxing championship in 1979, so I didn’t bother.
I did sketch a statue which was right outside the museum, though. This is a statue of William Henry Playfair. He was an architect who planned and built a significant part of Edinburgh New Town ( the Georgian bits). Well, I say built it – personally I doubt he was manning the cement mixer himself, but you know what I mean. It’s a tribute to the pride that Edinburgh has in its buildings that were he to be brought to the present time in a time machine, he’d probably still recognise quite a bit of what he built.
So, back to the accommodation, and tonight’s dish of the day was Chilli con Carne de Sainsbury’s. Before I started putting these ramblings together, I did book for the Scottish National Gallery for Friday. Now, I’ve checked several times, and every time that I have, it clearly says that this ticket is for the Scottish one. So if it turns out on Friday that I’ve booked in for the National Gallery of England, or Wales, or even Lithuania for that matter, then questions will be asked. That’s all for tonight – see you tomorrow.
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Hello, good morning, and welcome to yesterday’s installment
of An English Fool in Edinburgh with his Sketchbook. Or rather, for at least
part of the day, An English Fool not in Edinburgh with his Sketchbook, because
yesterday was Dundee Day. Just to recap, I’ve wanted to visit Dundee for a long
time, not least because my Clark grandfather came from Dundee, and generations
of the family before him.
Now, you may be hoping for some foolishness before I actually got to Dundee, and I’m afraid that I’m going to have to disappoint you on this score. Everything went pretty much according to plan. This was a relief, because after Wednesday’s Scottish National Gallery disappointment I wouldn’t have been entirely surprised if the ticket inspector had said “I’m sorry, sir, but what you have here is a ticket to Dundee, New York State/ Oregon/ New South Wales/Kwazulu Natal /Antarctica – yes, it took me a few minutes of googling to find out that these are all real places. No, my ticket would take me to the real McCoy, and what’s more, it would enable to achieve a long held ambition doing so. For yes, the route did take us over the Forth Bridge. Taking a train across the Forth Bridge is something I’ve wanted to do ever since I saw John Noakes helping paint it on Blue Peter when I was a kid (Okay, this was so long ago I can’t be sure it was actually John Noakes who did it – but he was the show’s danger monkey at the time, and I can’t imagine Peter Purves or Val Singleton having involved themselves with this dangerous activity). Right, I don’t want to moan, but, the thing about riding across the Forth Bridge, is that because you’re on it, you don’t really get a great view of it, only of the huge red girders zipping past your windows quickly. You did get a view of the two road bridges, though. For some reason I had gained the impression that the new bridge was going to replace the old one – which says a lot considering that the original road bridge is as old as me – we both made our appearance in 1964. The Rail bridge opened in 1890, by way of comparison.
Speaking of Rail bridges, at the other end of the journey just before arriving at Dundee station we crossed the Tay Bridge. This impressive structure was opened in 1887. The previous bridge collapsed in 1879, only a year after being built, one of the most serious rail disasters in British history, and commemorated in verse by William McGonagall, the world’s best worst poet.
Dundee, then. When you emerge from the station, it’s a little
off-putting because the wide roads and modern buildings around you could be any
city in Britain. However if you turn right and look towards the Tay things
immediately improve, because you’ll be looking straight at Captain Scott’s RSS
Discovery, and the elegant Discovery Visitor Centre. The not so elegant V and A
Dundee building is just to the left as well. Striking and monumental in scale
it is, but pretty it is not. Coming back to the Discovery, though, I did pay a
visit to the Discovery Centre. I have read both Roland Huntsford’s biography of
Scott, and Sir Ranulph Fiennes biography of the same. Huntsford’s book pretty
much sets out to debunk the traditional view of Scott as the Boy’s Own Paper
hero of the Empire, and portrays him as something of an incompetent bungler.
Sir Ranulph’s book presents a much more measured view, and as a result is far
more believable. The most interesting part of the visit, apart from being able
to take a look around the ship itself, was learning that there was much more to
the achievements of the Discovery than just the 1902 expedition. Sadly I didn’t
really find a good enough vantage point to sit and sketch the ship.
I took a short walk into the centre of the city, and pretty much walked straight into the statues of Desperate Dan, his dog, and Minnie the Minx. An old trivia question asks what are the 3 J’s that Dundee is famous for. Jam is one, and to the best of my knowledge my family were not involved in the preserves industry. The other two are Jute and Journalism… Well, I definitely have jute weaving ancestors, but also I have cousins who have worked for DC Thomson. Over the years DC Thomson have produced a number of papers. However, their best known productions throughout the UK myst be the Dandy and Beano comics. The Dandy came first, and the Beano followed a few months later. At about the same time in the USA Action comics launched Superman, and Detective Comics launched Batman soon after. I think this probably tells you a lot about the difference between our two nations.
Personally, I was always more of a Beano man than a Dandy man, but that’s just a matter of personal preference. I like the fact that Dundee has prominent statues of these two characters, especially since I’ve spent the last few days in Edinburgh, in the centre of which you can hardly move for statues of prominent Georgians and Victorians, each of whom looks so serious and sombre that you want to tell the buggers that it wouldn’t hurt them to smile once in a while.
When I was researching my family’s roots back in the noughties, I looked at a lot of Francis Frith photographs of the city from around the turn of the century. I was amazed yesterday that the centre of the city is still recognisably the same as the city in the photographs. It’s different from Edinburgh, the buildings seem darker, and the windows seem closer together, but nonetheless it’s still pretty impressive. I came across one building which I sat down to sketch, and when I completed the sketch I went closer, and discovered that this was built by none other than Sir George Gilbert Scott in his high Victorian Gothic mode, and is in fact the McManus, the Museum and Art Gallery of Dundee. And, it was free. And I didn’t have to book in advance to enter. Well, I’m very sorry, but to a dedicated cheapskate like myself you’ll appreciate that even if the museum had been rubbish I would still have been in credit. It wasn’t rubbish, though. If you remember my point about stuffed animals in Museum collections I made in the last episode, you won’t be surprised if I tell you that these were all present and correct. The Art Gallery probably isn’t ranked all that highly in world terms, but I was delighted to see that it houses a couple of Frank Brangwyn pictures – I like Brangwyn’s work very much, and have even had the temerity to paint a couple of copies of them in the last few years. I liked the McManus. I left it a few hours after I entered, and felt happy that I knew quite a bit more about the history of Dundee than I did before I entered.
Right, here’s a question. What do you think it was that I found which made a connection with my 2017 expedition to Prague? No? Well, in Prague there’s a café made from two old trams in Wenceslas Square. In Dundee, I found the Auld Tram Coffee shop. I hadn’t been planning to stop to make another sketch at this point, but this was special. It seemed to be shut as well, which was a bit of a shame, but you can’t have everything. All too soon, then, rush hour was over and it was time to make my way back to the station. Now, I don’t have a lot to say about the journey back to Edinburgh, other than the fact that I fell asleep on the train. I know I was asleep, because I was woken up by a mum bellowing, “JIMMY! WILL YOU STOP DOING THAT! THAT MAN IS SLEEPING!” That man was me apparently. What the hell Jimmy had been doing I have no idea.
That was about it for the day. I don’t know if all of the walking around in the sunshine has done for me, but when I got back to the accommodation yesterday evening I was just far too tired to write everything up. So that was my last full day in Auld Reekie (which, incidentally was a fair description of one of the guys sitting on the bench in Dundee station). Today I fly home, but not until this evening. Top of the agenda today is the visit to the National Gallery, take two. Watch this space.
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Apologies. It’s been a few days since I returned from Edinburgh. I did mean to post on Saturday, but fatigue and indolence got the better of me. Then I was busy yesterday, and well, what with one thing and another I did think about not bothering to post at all. But in all honesty, who am I to deny the world a simple pleasure? So, Friday, then. It was certainly a day of two halves, dearly beloved. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the Edinburgh bit was great. It was the bit in the airport which was the problem. Still, let me come to that in the fullness of time.
I checked out of the accommodation by 9 on Friday. Theoretically I could have hung around for another hour, but I really didn’t want to keep hanging around any longer. Incidentally, I took my usual route into the centre of the city, but this was the first time that I noticed that a fish and chip shop I passed was actually advertising deep fried Mars Bar – which I had believed to have been one of those urban myths. It seemed quite proud of the fact too – it even had a poster advertising it in the window.
All things being equal I was booked into the National Gallery at 11:15, so this gave me time to start tying up a couple of loose ends. In the past few days I’ve several times passed St. Giles’ Cathedral on the Royal Mile. I’ve sketched it. I’ve also walked all the way round it but couldn’t find the Heart of Midlothian mosaic. Well, all I can say is that Heaven knows how I managed to miss it, since it is right there, in front of the cathedral, as I found. The mosaic marks the location of the Old Edinburgh Tollbooth which was finally demolished in 1817 after standing there for more than 400 years. One of its functions had been to house Edinburgh jail, where torture was apparently routine, and public executions were carried out. Also at one stage it housed Scotland’s Parliament, which is supposedly why the locals sometimes spit o the heart as they pass by. Fair enough.
As well as the football team, the Heart of Midlothian also
leant its name to one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels. I have to be honest, I
normally love 19th century novelists, but there’s just something
about Scott’s style that puts me off. In the past I’ve made attempts to read
“Kenilworth”, “Ivanhoe” and this one “Heart of Midlothian” and to this date
I’ve never finished one of them. Mind you, I’m pretty sure that he never
finished any of mine either, so fair’s fair.
Moving onwards, then, I moved onwards. I continued walking along the Royal Mile to Holyrood House. Very nice, if you like this sort of thing, which I’m sure that her Majesty the Queen does, since it’s her official residence in Scotland – as opposed to Balmoral which is her private residence. One of the things I’ve read is that the Royal Mile linking the Castle with Holyrood is actually slightly more than a mile. It certainly felt like it. This turns out to be because it is in fact an old Scottish mile. Old Scottish miles were 1975 yards as opposed to 1760. There you go.
So to the National Gallery. Yes, dearly beloved, I did have the right ticket this time. As with many museums and galleries covid restrictions meant that the full collection isn’t all on show at the moment. Nonetheless, what I did get to see was enough to get the idea that in many ways this is a world class collection. I particularly liked the post-impressionists room. (Their impressions of posts were amazing). Cezanne has never done that much for me - mind you, I’ve never done much for him either - but if Van Gogh and Gauguin are on offer, then I’m your man. Also I noticed that they’d sneaked in a Monet, one of his not so giant haystacks, and I have to be honest, this one bowled me over. Absolutely gorgeous.
Every gallery has its ‘star’ paintings, and the Scottish National Gallery’s pick of the pops is Edwin Landseer’s “Monarch of the Glen”. Let’s be honest, the image has been used so much in advertising it’s difficult to look at it and not have images of whiskey and shortbread come unbidden into your head. One thing about going to look at the original paintings is that sometimes you find that you had the wrong idea about it. For some reason I thought that the painting showed the whole of the stag, legs and all, yet it doesn’t. It cuts it off at the knees.
I would have stayed for longer, but, in the nicest possible way, the good people of the gallery make it pretty clear that they don’t want you hanging around for more than an hour. So the next thing on the agenda was carrying on the cultural theme by taking a walk to the house in Heriot Row where Robert Louis Stevenson grew up. My guidebook said that it was number 17, and that there is an inscription on the house bearing witness to this fact. Well, there may well be, but I couldn’t see it. Stevenson is really interesting. He came from Scotland’s foremost family of lighthouse builders – the finest lighthouses around the whole coast of Scotland were built by his grandfather Robert, his father and his uncles. I have to be honest, I loved “Treasure Island”, and I still think it’s a really great adventure novel.
When I arrived on Tuesday, one of the first things I did was to walk to the top of Calton Hill. I’ve sketched the view from the top, including the Dugald Monument and also painted it in the past based on photographs. On Tuesday I didn’t make any sketches, but I did yesterday. Now, when I’m making sketches en plein air I’m always interested to see whether I get any reaction to it or not from passers-by. Up to now nobody has seemed the least bit bothered – not even the kids. Finally, though, I broke through the indifference , and my efforts were hailed with – and apologies for my attempt at rendering an Edinburgh accent – “Hey, tha’s greet, Big Man!” – Big man is apparently a term of respect in these parts. Sadly, the fact that the guy was meandering round in the state which I believe is commonly known as ‘dressage drunk’ suggested that his critical faculties were maybe not as sharply focused as they might have been.
I spent a fair bit of time up the hill. It’s not just about the views. There’s a really interesting set of buildings. There’s the Nelson Monument, which has been deliberately designed to resemble an upended telescope. Fair enough. Then there’s Scotland’s Disgrace. No, I’m not referring to the guy who liked my sketch. This is the nickname of the National Monument of Scotland. It was intended to stand as a memorial to the Scottish soldiers who gave their lives in the Napoleonic Wars, and was modelled on the Parthenon in Athens. Only . . . the money to build it ran out, and so you have the one striking row of columns . . . and very little else.
Well, all good things must come to an end. As the evening shadows lengthened, I made my way to the tram stop to take me to the airport. Where I was greeted by the disheartening news that my flight was delayed for over an hour. Okay, fair enough. EasyJet are a budget airline, and when you go for a budget airline, then delays and hold ups are often part of the package. According to the EasyJet website there were staff issues through covid. That’s all fair enough, and I accept it. What I had more difficulty accepting was the way that we were made to traverse the length of the airport to wait at gate 26, only to then be told to come back all the way to gate 15. Then, when they did let us through the gate, they stopped us in a blank metal corridor. For more than half an hour. No explanation, no apology, and as far as I see it, absolutely no need. Hence my angry post, which was actually made from said corridor.
Well, it was what it was. Thankfully EasyJet eventually
relented and deigned to let us aboard the airplane for the flight we’d paid
for. And that’s it. So I hoped that you’ve enjoyed this reboot of An English
Fool with his sketchbook – hopefully it won’t be another 18 months before the
next.
