My little stateside break had straddled June and July, what I like to think of as an old month and a ‘new’ one. As an aside, in case you hadn’t wondered why September, October and November are the ninth, tenth and eleventh (not seventh, eighth and ninth) months, well, haven’t you ever seen an octopus and made the connection? Good old Emperors Julius and Augustus just had to have their names up in lights (or at least on the wall) by getting added to the previously decimalised year – ending in December. But the weather isn’t great at the end of the calendar so thanks to the Caesars the year now see-saws around the summer months of July and August, while you’d think the Roman gods must be feeling right put out. In fact, eminently practical, the Romans started the year with March, named after Mars the chocolate god in time for the Christian Easter and the pagan egg that would eventually merge into mini-mars heaven.
Then came April, when the flowers start to appear (think Spanish for ‘open’), May, after their growth goddess Maia as the spring was in full flow, and then June named after the Queen of Roman gods, Juno. After this they evidently got marginally less creative and called the remainder fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth. After December it was too cold to even think of names or numbers until someone had the bright idea of looking ahead as well as backward and calling the next month January after the two-faced god (in a positive way) called Janus. Finally when it seemed people liked to have a proper cleansing of the spirit, a festival called Februum using leather things made from goat hide, they named the month in which it took place February, giving us twelve months and a reason to have a good spring clean.
And so, as I say, it was July. Back home to my own bit of late spring cleaning (just to put Julius in his place) in my Perthshire flat. A flat that was feeling even less like home the less I stayed in it – even considering that it never felt like home at all. I was realising that home is indeed where the heart, or the bark, is. I was missing the dogs and especially my shiny black best friend, as well as my Becky. A few days tidying, two weeks on tour, and I’d have some reason at least to call where I was ‘home’, as Becky would be joining me for another fortnight in Scotland, and then both of us would fly back to the pack for the month of August(us).
I just had to (more than) survive a fortnight with fortitude.
More than survive I seem to have done. A flurry of messages before the tour gave the impression of a very needy group but, as it turned out, there was such a connection amongst the first bunch of arrivals that by the time the rest of the travellers arrived we had a mutual support network already in place.
Edinburgh attractions were busy despite being before the famous International Festival and Fringe. There was a cruise in town – Disney. As the Scots say, the boat sits there in the Forth and Disnae move for days, with shuttles shuttling passengers landward, to and fro, under the magnificent Forth bridges. The bridges that cross at Queensferry became quite a feature of the first few days, drivers ferrying us to and fro, too, over the spans of the most recent Queensferry Crossing and the decidedly middle-aged Forth Road Bridge as we visited St Andrews and the wee fishing villages of the East Neuk of Fife. Then a quick trip back to Perth, to drop off a broken suitcase and some dirty washing, meant my mobile office changed from hotel room to train, this time crossing the third (and my favourite) bridge – the Victorian Forth Rail Bridge. An impressive feat of engineering, spawning its own expression across Scotland to describe an evidently endless task – ‘like painting the Forth Bridge’. This job is said to have taken more than 120 years to complete, with painters reaching one end, only to find the end they started from beginning to flake and rust.
Edinburgh was also in a certain degree of chaos as one of the large buildings being redeveloped had gone alight on the day we arrived, closing off or diverting half the city centre traffic system. Months before, a building by Glasgow’s Central station had gone alight too, with disastrous consequences and forced demolitions, leaving the group the impression the Scots, like Robert the Bruce so long ago, had established a scorched earth policy to deter visitors. Undeterred though, the Americans advanced, shortly to be joined by a small Canadian detachment, taking the Palace, the Castle, most of the museums and much of the cider stocks of pubs and restaurants across Lothian and Fife. Cold beverages still preferred, eyebrows were raised at the number of Irish, Italian and Spanish beers and ciders on offer in a country known more for warm beer and whisky. Despite Brexit. Maybe because of Brexit, as leaving the European Union had made it significantly more difficult to travel between UK and Europe, so that having a continental beer was certainly an easier option, especially given the weather this summer.
Brexit was still a point of interest amongst visitors, as much as devolution and possible dissolution of the Union. A visit to the Palace of Holyroodhouse gave the opportunity to pop across to the Parliament and find out how devolution works in practice … and perhaps where it doesn’t. Back in 2016 Scotland had voted significantly to stay in Europe and still felt let down by those in the rest of the Dis-United Kingdom who voted ‘out’. I did too – felt let down, that is. I remember the morning the result was announced being stunned that so many voters had been taken in by the obfuscation, plain lying and false promises presented by the pro-Brexit politicians. Straight on the email to my European friends and colleagues, I felt I had to make it clear this was not me, and that my own plans for life and work had been scuppered at a stroke. It’s difficult to disentangle the web of change and challenge since the vote and the eventual exit, with wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as US political turmoil trumping that in the UK. But the world is now a very different place and, in my view, promoting far too much isolation, tension and misunderstanding, which only travel, international trade and broader horizons can truly counter. Yet paradoxically it is travel and trade that are deterred by such uncertainty.
International-Eyes.org 