Wednesday 30 August 2023
I can’t quite believe this is the 200th post since we moved from London to Scottish Borders in November or that tomorrow is the last day of August and of meteorological/three months of summer. This morning, 07:35, it is currently 8°C but sunny. In fact, it feels like the first fully blue-sky morning for quite a while.
I set off shortly before nine yesterday morning, returning home shortly after half-ten at night, my longest day out from this house. The main motivator for a day in Edinburgh was to meet my friend Ciaran for dinner, both of us fortunately assuming we’d be going to Tuk Tuk Indian street food restaurant, which we did. As usual, the food was great and it was good to share dishes, particularly as we each ordered things the other wouldn’t have ordered, and everything was delicious. On my way in to Edinburgh, I got off at the stop before Waverley, Brunstane, as I had decided to visit Portobello for the first time. I then realised that meant I’d see the sea (estuary), which then became my focus. I ended up sitting and lying on the sand in on/off sunshine for over an hour. I drank a takeaway coffee, ate a gooey chocolate and peanut cookie and massively enjoyed the sun and sea.
I caught a bus to central Edinburgh, did my shopping errands, and actually enjoyed them, though I say that because I did actually manage to find something I’ve been struggling to buy, waterproof walking boots (well, I’m assuming they’re waterproof, they’re Caterpillar and look like they should be waterproof, ho hum). For an hour or so, I looked around the portrait gallery, including the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition. I loved it; not busy and some beautiful paintings and photographs. I then sat in one of the hallway areas – a good place to spend time if it’s raining and you want to sit somewhere nice and quiet and dry – and tried to get my new Bluetooth earplugs set up (didn’t succeed until I was on the train home and read the instruction booklet).
I met Ciaran at Edinburgh Waverley, which as usual confused me – actually, it was the arrivals board that confused matters. We had a walk before dinner and a speed walk back to Waverley for me to catch a train. It was a few minutes over two hours from Tuk Tuk on Drummond Street in Edinburgh to home. I had been kind of apprehensive about driving home in the dark, my biggest fear being animals in the road and my dread of hitting one of them. I ended up having a genuinely enjoyable drive home between about 21:45 and 22:30. There was a bright, low, almost-full moon so it was never dark, though I did twice think I saw headlights ahead when it was just the moon reflecting off the river. I passed a Tesco delivery van and three cars, everyone slowing and moving over appropriately. I saw two owls, including a tawny owl who watched the car as I drove past it, and a young fox. Something someone said recently in an unrelated conversation made me realise that most of the larger-than-a-squirrel animal deaths on the roads occur before dawn rather than early in the evening. That helped with my animal-jumping-in-front-of-the-car worry.
I was just thinking how the night driving thing is pretty much all I’ve written that vaguely relates to the differences between London and remote, rural Scotland, but actually there are probably more night time road worries in London than Scotland, including wildlife, particularly urban foxes. I suppose a difference is that in London, most places seem to take about an hour door to door and there is public transport so I wouldn’t have had to drive and could have had a beer or two with my dinner. It is also a huge novelty these days to be out in a city, with shops, cafes, frequent public transport and a huge choice of restaurants, galleries – yeah, all obvious, I know. I suppose in London, were I meeting a friend for dinner, I wouldn’t have been away from home from anywhere near as long as twelve hours. But I had a great day and I feel I kind of got over my reluctance to drive in darkness. When we first moved here, admittedly with the issues of overnight freezes and more rain than is even usual in this area, we managed to pretty much avoid driving much past dusk. Although the weather issues will be ongoing, now we know the roads significantly better, I will be less apprehensive about returning home in darkness. That is not something I ever really think about when going home from/within London.