Foals and Chimps 2 – Return of the Chimp (now with 74% extra chimpiness)

It's 11 months since I went on my first solo trip to Edinburgh, which I wrote about here. That trip was my first proper solo trip anywhere, so I tended to play it safe and spend time in multi-national conglomerates where I knew I'd get a smile and a welcome (sometimes it might have been the fake sort required by corporate training programmes, although in truth in Edinburgh it never felt like that).

And some known ones too

So this week I had a bit of time on my hands, and it's after the Spring Equinox and I thought there might be some blossom on the trees of Edinburgh again, and I thought it was just warm enough not to go slipping around on ice, so it's time to go back I thought.

Some blossom I found near the Royal Mile

I've been doing some internet dating recently. Or rather I joined a site. Judging by some of the people who use the site, it maybe should be called an Internet Avoidance of Dating Site. Some people on there, the best way to scare them off into the undergrowth / guarantee their abduction by aliens / have them relocated under the witness protection programme, is to suggest a meeting in the real world. Thankfully that's not the case with everyone, but you would think that being able to match up your interests with someone in advance would be pretty foolproof. In fact, it's made me reflect that maybe drunken disco dancing isn't such a backward way of meeting people after all. If it's true for a woman that you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince, I think it's probably also true that as a man you have to email a lot of frogs who don't reply, before you even get a shot at meeting your princess. More of that in a minute...

Here's my internet dating picture.  See how those offers just flood in!

I don't really know how to think up my own holidays, so I often borrow other people's ideas. I once spent two years on a single minded mission to cycle round the Isle of Arran, which resulted in near divorce, just from a conversation I had whilst delivering some leaflets with Carol Burr at North Tees Medical Illustration. The plans for the two weeks I spent in India in 2012 were completely turned on their head by a talk with an Indian waiter called PS who said we should go north to Rishikesh instead of south to Agra (he was right).

There's a whole other side to the Castle, which I missed before

So in the tradition of borrowing from other people good advices, I did that again this week. One of the pleasant side effects of the internet dating site, even if it hasn't delivered much in the way of dates, has been accidentally coming into contact with people who know things about things I don't know things about. One such person is Louise, who is not only Scottish, and a travel consultant by occupation, but also someone who used to live in Edinburgh. You see, talking to strangers isn't all being kidnapped and looking at puppies, there are happy accidents too.

More Blue Sky - 2014 Edition

Louise used to live near my blue sky thinking picture from my first trip and partly due to my over-reliance last time on Starbucks, McDonalds etc she was happy to recommend some different places to go instead. So once again, I set off on a trip, propelled by someone else's recommendations.

I'd booked the 07.07 from Darlington on Monday, but I could have had a lie in as it turned out, as it was 40 minutes late. I wasn't too bothered, as I was only doing this for fun. There were some people in business suits on the platform, worrying about being late for meetings etc, all with Costa coffees and smart phones.

It's not the End of the World - it's just a delayed train

When the train came it was a replacement for the one which had my seat reservation tucked into the back of the seat so there was a bit of a scramble for seats as all reservations were still in the broken down train. I thought it would make a change this year to listen to Doves rather than Foals and so I tried, but I fell asleep for a bit. When I woke up there were some white doves visible out the window (they were probably gulls or pigeons, I don't know) and also we were just passing Dove Building Supplies. It was at this point that I thought about calling the trip Doves and....something else, but I wasn't sure yet.

Dogs maybe?

I sometimes feel overwhelmed by big things, like cities and mountains, and by the time I exited the escalator onto Princes Street in Edinburgh on Monday at 10 am this week, I felt very small. There were people everywhere, and big buildings and a big blue sky. I thought about climbing the stairs of the Scott Monument, as I'd seen someone do that on Cloud Atlas, but then I remembered I'm scared of heights, so I decided not to.

Other Food options are available, but hey, this is Scotland!

I couldn't check into the Travelodge till 3 pm, but I thought there was a chance they'd mind my bag for me till then, so I thought I'd go ask. The receptionist in the Travelodge gave me such an overwhelmingly friendly welcome that I nearly couldn't get through the door. She happily took my bag, gave me a raffle ticket and asked me what my plans were. I ran Louise's recommendations past her, and in a show of Scottish solidarity, she seemed to agree with them, so off I went.

The Grassmarket - Beggars ain't what they used to be!

Last year in Edinburgh, I never really went south of the Royal Mile, into the old city. I just didn't know it was there. But Louise had recommended the Grassmarket, so I headed there. First I went and got a leaflet from the Tourist Information Centre with an incredibly non-detailed map in it (which came back to haunt me later) and for reasons unknown and possibly to do with my still disorientated state, I chose a leaflet that was written in French. Probably the fact that Edinburgh was spelt Edinbourg on the cover was a clue, but not a clue I was remotely aware of.

It's a shame Black Dogs are synonymous with depression, because having them around is a lot of fun, even when they get into fights with other people's dogs and try to pin them down by the neck sometimes

Partway down the Royal Mile I saw my first dog of the trip. At this point I thought about calling the trip Doves and Dogs, but I wasn't totally sold on it.

As I explained last year, I always struggle to know what to do with beggars, and I can never tell if they're genuine or not. There was a scruffy guy sat down in the Grassmarket with his legs under a blanket, presumably a beggar. Just as I was wondering if he was suffering from some genuine hardship or not, he took a mobile phone out of his pocket and started scrolling through some messages on his touchscreen. Bloody hell, I thought, beggars aren't what they used to be. To quote John Cusack in Grosse Point Blank, 'I've always felt very temporary about myself', too temporary to even enter into a phone contract, and here's a street bum with a better phone than me. What's going on?

Victoria Street - time to get some cake I think

After walking round the Grassmarket for a bit, I went to visit another of Louise's recommendations, which was the cafe at the Queens Gallery near Holyrood House. Now, without that bit of insider knowledge, I wouldn't have even known there was a cafe there, as it's behind the gallery.

There's a cafe and toilets there, which are not obvious from this picture

I went in and ordered a coffee and some bakewell tart, which cost about a million pounds and was very sickly. It sort of made me wish I'd ordered something savoury, but there was free help yourself water at the till so I got some of that to try and get the tart off my teeth. One of the really good things about last year's trip was how sitting still made me relax, and sitting in the cafe had the same effect this time. It was really cold outside, despite the sun, but inside the glass roofed conservatory where I was sat, with the sun warming me through the roof, I felt much more centred. 

This was the view from my table.  Not bad eh?

 I had a read of the French leaflet, which made very little sense because it was in French, and then I decided to go to Camera Obscura: World of Illusions. I'd wanted to go there last year, but ran out of time after going to see some chimps at the zoo. What I hadn't realised about Camera Obscura is that you can make your own chimps there. It's a bit like build a bear, but for build a chimp you use your own face.

This is the cafe from outside - Also nice, but look out for the Bakewell Tart

Before I went to Camera Obscura, and to help walk off the bakewell tart stodge, I went and found Greyfriars, and the monument to Greyfriars Bobby. The statue is black, and during my two days in Edinburgh I saw lots of black dogs. Seeing black dogs always reminds me of my own big, dumb dog Hudson who died in 2006. There aren't any statues of him anywhere, I don't even have any good photos, but I still think of him often. I had to have him put to sleep in 2006, his heart eventually would have exploded otherwise and he would have been in pain, and I didn't want that, and as has been documented elsewhere, the final injection was given to him by an Olympic Gold Medallist Kat Copeland's mum (her dad also killed my hamster), so if ever there was any doubt that all things are connected, well London 2012 and dead dogs are. 

Not all things which deserve a monument get one - There isn't enough space

Hudson would have followed me anywhere I think, in fact he did even till his dying day. I keep his ashes in my bedroom, I kept imagining I would scatter them one day in his favourite places, but I never got round to it. I don't know the veracity of the Greyfriars Bobby story, but it doesn't matter. The loyalty of dogs is self-evident, it doesn't require anecdotes. I'm glad that it's me mourning Hudson though, and not the other way round. I wouldn't want him hanging around my grave, wondering where I'd gone. At least I understand what happened to him.

It means Dark Room apparently - Don't stay in there too long though, it's sunny outside!

I got to Camera Obscura about 1.30 pm. I paid the 12 pounds or so entrance, and the incredibly cheery ticket seller told me what a great day I'd chosen to come, as the views from the roof would be spectacular. And she even stamped my hand with a smiley face in case I wanted to go out and come back in again. She also told me I was just in time for the next Camera Obscura demonstration, so to head right on up to Floor Number 5.

View!  - Now that's what I call Blue Sky Thinking!

She was right about the views. They were amazing. The first time I ever saw Edinburgh live was in 2005 from a faraway hill, through a pair of borrowed binoculars.  And now here I was right in the middle of Edinburgh, looking out in all directions in more borrowed binoculars. I love this kind of symmetry.

History - Another word for stuff that happened ages ago!

The most haunting thing about Camera Obscura was a photo on the wall from the year 1900, showing the exact same set of steps we were about to climb up into the Camera Obscura booth. I thought about all the changes in history between then and now, and two World Wars and the Moon Landing and Nelson Mandela and Italia 90, and I also thought about how every single person alive when that photo was taken is now dead, and well, it made me glad to be alive. The views certainly helped with that.

Castle with some people - Small or far away?

A young Eastern European called Irina took us into the camera obscura booth and showed us the sights of Edinburgh reflected onto a big dish. I wasn't actually all that amazed by this. It seemed a bit nuts to sit in a dark room and look at things reflected in a mirror onto a dish, when the sights were outside the dark room to see in full 360 degree panoramic full colour splendour anyway. I think the history of the building itself was more overwhelming than the camera.

Here's me - Three Quarters Chimp!

After the show, I descended the other 4 floors of the building. A lot of the displays were interactive and probably better for children or in a group but I did have some fun with the photo booths. There were various options. You could make yourself Black, Asian, Chimp, Manga or Caricature. The choice was yours. I had some fun with this. In the spirit of last year's trip, I just had to turn myself into a chimp. For some reason I came out with a score of 74.2% chimpiness. I'd always thought it was nearer to 98%.

I don't really get how this is supposed to be a caricature - it's actually a good likeness!

I also had some fun with trying to find my hot spots with the heat sensitive camera. I took what may well be called a Selfie. I'm not sure about that.

I'm so hot it hurts!

It was nearly 3 pm by now, so I went back to the Travelodge, got my bag out of the raffle and checked in. My room was bigger than last year, but equally as untroubled by natural light. After the bright sunshine and sky of Edinburgh, it felt very dark. But it was everything I expected from a Travelodge room. Cheap, anonymous and clean. In fact, if the room had been full of seafood and dancing girls, I wouldn't have wanted to go out, whereas I find the sensory deprivation of Travelodges act more like a catapult, firing me back out into the blueness of outside.

I suppose recently I've been a bit fixated on stories of loss, not just fictional ones, but also losses of my own, things I've personally suffered, and as I left the Travelodge I was reminded of a book 'Lost Worlds' by Michael Bywater, which I used to own. It was full of nostalgia for things we remember fondly but which are gone. Sometimes I feel like the Spitting Image caricatures of Lawrence Olivier and John Gielgud, 'Johnny Gonny' and all that.

Yes, it's still blue out there!

Although my fondness for Waterstone's isn't maybe as great as it once was, since they keep firing me, I went there on my way out, and I was reminded of the joys of browsing. This was because I didn't find 'Lost Worlds' but I found 'The Age of Absurdity' instead by Michael Foley. I just don't think you can replicate the experience of looking for one thing, but finding something else entirely, like you can by actually walking round picking stuff up and looking at it, like you know, with your hands.

Last year in Edinburgh, another favourite haunt had been the Vue cinemas, where I'd seen various blockbusters. This year another recommendation from Louise was the Dominion Cinema in Morningside. She had said this was either a bus or taxi ride away. I don't do short distances by bus, so I decided to find it on foot.

Sometimes it's reassuring to know that despite my advancing years, I'm just as dumb as I always was, and also that I don't learn from experience. Spending 5 hours looking round Edinburgh in 2005 without a proper map wasn't a lesson I was about not to make again. So, with my French leaflet in hand, I set off to find Morningside based on a terribly inadequate map. Another reminder of previous ineptitude was that I actually passed the B&B I'd been looking for in 2005 on my journey to find the cinema in 2014. In fact, this time I went straight to it! Better late than never!

I'd been walking for about an hour, and my feet were getting sore, so I thought I'd ask some mums coming out of an after school club if I was in the right area for Morningside. Oh it's miles away they said, you'll need to get a bus, but it's quite a walk even to the bus stop. They pointed me in the vague direction I should have been going and so I turned pretty much at 90 degrees to where I had been heading and walked some more.

About another 20 minutes later I asked another lady, and she said I was going the right way, but it was still miles away. By this time my feet were really hurting. Joggers kept passing me, and I kept passing bus stops but they were all going back into the City. No mention of Morningside anywhere. I nearly got on a bus at one point, just to have a sit down, but after about another half an hour I found myself on Morningside Avenue (or Street or whatever I kept wanting to call it Mornington Crescent). I still had no idea which way the cinema was, and Morningside whatever it was seemed to go on for miles. I turned right, which added a third side to the square I'd pretty much been walking in, and just as I thought my legs might stop working, I found the cinema!

The Dominion Cinema - I'm glad I found it before dark!

I checked out the showing times, and I was about half an hour early for Labor Day with Kate Winslet, so I bought some water and just sat in a massive chair and was glad not to be walking anymore. Before I sat down, I checked with the ticket seller that I'd be able to catch a bus back to the City, as I wasn't doing any more walking. I also had to check which side of the street to stand on to catch the bus, as I genuinely wasn't sure which way I was pointing.

The ticket seemed expensive at £10.95 and the cinema seemed to operate largely on special offers and coupons, but I was just glad to be there. The doors opened at 7, and on the way in the usher offered me some free Pringles (not technically free given the ticket price, but nice all the same). Once inside, I knew why Louise had recommended it. No broken knee or numb bum syndrome to be had here. All the seats were properly massive and soft double sofas. And not only with side tables for your drinks and Pringles, but with footstools, so you could put your feet up. Sometimes things are made for each other, and my sore feet and the footstools were one such match up. I kept my shoes on though.

I like Kate Winslet. Well, I like her acting and she's nice to look at, I'm not sure whether we'd get on in real life, and she doesn't go to many of the places I do, so I may never find out.  I also like that she's aging at about the same rate as me, so I can often tell how old I am by watching her. Although in films like The Reader, and now Labor Day, she does keep getting made up to look even older, which can be confusing.

Labor Day was set in 1987 (why are there always so many reminders to me recently of 1986/87?), and Kate was hiding a fugitive in her house. It was actually a proper love story, and there weren't any explosions at all, although there was some quite detailed stuff about baking and making pies in it.

Somebody got pushed at one point, but Olympus Has Fallen it most certainly was not. No vice presidents getting kicked down stairs, no bazookas in the face, no hand grenades down the trousers. And thank goodness for that. I'm on holiday, I don't need Gerard Butler blowing people away, I'm trying to relax here.

After the film finished, I got the bus back into the City. After the hours of walking it had taken me to find the cinema, I was really hoping as I sat down on the bus that it was more than 200 yards back into the city. I hate short bus journeys anyway, but suffice to say, the bus journey went on for quite a long time, and the longer I was on it, the better I felt about all the walking. It did appear that I had done 3 sides of a square to get to Morningside and the bus completed the square. Not so much squaring the circle, but squaring the square.

I got back to the hotel room at 10 pm, with very achey feet, and I got a sandwich from Sainsbury's Local before retiring. Once again, there was a black dog in the doorway. They're everywhere!

Unlike last year, when I was always up before 6, I slept in till 7.30 the next morning. I really fancied a bath, since my flat doesn't have one, but the water was lukewarm, so it was a bit pointless, as what I really wanted was to have a good hot soak, especially my feet.

My train was booked for 2.30 pm, so I went off and did some more wandering in the morning. I had porridge at Starbucks (it was so 2013 in there, lots of people in grey suits on Apple devices etc, Spanish and Eastern Europeans chatting), and I read some of 'The Age of Absurdity'. All the window seats were taken by people on tablets so I had to sit in the middle of the room, where the lighting was poor, so I didn't read for long. I think I prefer it when I get there earlier, before all the suits arrive. Next time maybe!

Black Dogs - Look out, they're always behind you!

I walked round some more, getting my bearings even more re: the layout of the city, and then I went and bought a present from my brother from 'Unknown Pleasures' a vinyl record emporium on the Royal Mile. It's directly opposite the 'I Love Edinburgh' shop. I nearly had a Turkish breakfast for lunch at Cafe Truvas, but in the end I decided to go and get some watery pea and ham soup from the Queen's Gallery Cafe instead. I'd wanted savoury food from there yesterday but didn't get it, so time to put that right.

Quick - there's a sale on!

It wasn't as sunny as the day before, and I sat in the main building this time, instead of in the conservatory. Starbucks it most certainly was not! 9 of the other tables in the room I found myself in were occupied by pairs of people. Not just couples, lots of pairs of people chatting. Everyone else in the room had a full head of grey hair, and unlike half a mile up the road in Starbucks, there wasn't an electronic device in sight. A few leaflets and other things printed on paper, but no tablets, laptops, smart phones etc. And all the tables except mine (I was the only one dining alone) were full of the buzz of animated conversation and laughter. People meeting in the real world, comparing notes on things they'd done, and what they'd seen. There was genuine enthusiasm all around, and an absence of loneliness, except for maybe a little bit in me.

A different view - No dogs allowed

I left Edinburgh soon after, and I was left to reflect on what it was like to come back there 11 months after my first solo visit, and about the changes I've made to my life since then.  There have been some gains and also some losses but it's always good to know that whatever is going on in my life, Edinburgh is always still there, feeling more like home each time I go.  Like a giant comfort blanket filled with museums and parks and other historic buildings and places just to wander round in the sun.

I've heard the expression before, that it's impossible to jump into the same river twice, well I reflected while I was in Edinburgh, that it's impossible to visit the same city twice too. Even if a lot of the buildings are the same, there are always new things to see, which may have been missed before, and even the me that sees these things is different one time than it was the time before.

And now I've had a good run at Edinburgh, I'm all ready for the trip to London I'm going on this coming weekend. Two capitals in a week, what an adventure! Although for that one, I may need to get a proper map!