Edinburgh

My memory of Edinburgh has suddenly been revived. Here is a list of the ones that have burned themselves into me.
Climbing onto the top of Calton Hill and sitting on a stone bench. The sunshine, filtered through the crystal air, that unbelievable light, that unbelievable cold wind. The brown and grey hills looking wildly and darkly at the horizon, where the sea shone aquamarine at the Firth of Forth. Faraway, faraway. Everywhere along the hillside, stone buildings crumbling, crumbling, and winding stairs, grey, stone, winding, winding, snakelike, carrying you from the city to the sky.

Princes Street in the morning sunshine. The memorial of Sir Walter Scott, with his statuesque face looking down at passersby.

Stone turrets everywhere, guilded with golden sun, blackened in places by Time, and topped with high, proud flags, flying in the wind. The whole thing ringed with those proud browngrey hills.

Winding stone streets. Stairways snaking through covered dark alleyways. The perfect place to steal a dark kiss with an electric stranger, covered within the dark corners of this darkly luminescent city. Stone everywhere, moss dripping emerald in thick, damp veins through it. The wind singing along the narrow streets and up the narrow stairs, and high above it all, the seablue sky peppered with gulls.

Down the steps from Princes Street next to Princes Street Mall, when you turn to the left, there's a tiny sandwich place tucked into the stone. It's warm and filled with orange light, like the insides of a witches cave when the cauldron is good. Good witches. They made us a sandwich - a huge love affair of crusty bread coddled with warm butter and bacon. Gorgeous.

Bagpipes. If the light is pure because it filtered through that air, music is even purer. High notes of bagpipe song. I stopped on the bridge just outside the Scottish National Gallery and watched and watched the horizon, the bridges, the Firth, the piper, the light. And listened and listened and thought, in that moment, I found Middle Earth. Transported, transfixed, I could have stood there forever.
Later, Mark and I stood amongst a crowd who'd gathered around a piper accompanied by two men playing African drums. Scottish songs, but set to bagpipes and African drums! It worked! The sunlight made the whole world golden. I looked up at Mark and he looked like a prince. I danced. In the street. And I wasn't the only one.

The green lawns full of benches just behind Sir Walter's statue. Where I sat alone and smoked a cigarette and ate a hotdog and shut my eyes, bathing in the thrill of being in this place.

I could go on and on. I could go back again and again.