It’s Sunday and I’m bored and, mindful of any propensity this state
induces for a return to bad ways I decide to just take a walk around Edinburgh.
Walking up through Mountcastle toward Duddingston and the impressively looming
Arthur’s Seat one realises one is in ‘Bungalow World’. I feel eminently
comfortable in Bungalow World it reminds me of my Granny and Granpa’s bungalow
in Ayr and the concomitant aromas of apples and roses. Bungalow world is beige
in every way – there is no skulduggery going on here, just well-to-do
families or well-to-done elderly folk trimming hedges and washing cars. No for
sale signs here, these people, like their abodely investments, are solid as
oak.
These are places
where bowling clubs thrive, for Christ’s sake!
I will never aspire
to Bungalow World mores the pity. In so many ways, we all end up where we’re
supposed to be which in my case is a rented flat on the top floor of a tenement
– higher in fact, but lower on the social scale.
Scanning the impressive,
lyrical expanse of Duddingson Loch (where it was that the Reverend Walker was
depicted as skating with such alacrity and style) I decide on a theme for my
walk. Let this be a Victor Meldrew/Larry David tribute walk. Let’s see
what truly annoys me on this walk today.
Anyone that even
vaguely knows me knows that I am very easily annoyed, and increasingly
intolerant of my fellow human. The heat magnifies this to a degree where I will
be forced, for my own safety, indoors. Only a few weekends ago I narrowly
escaped being punched by a well-built youth half my age when I demonstrated
annoyance at the music from his parked car when I was trying to read. You may
think this brave of me, but you didn’t see me almost cringingly back down when
he got out of his car.
Straight away my
first pet hate speeds past me as I resume walking towards town - cyclists on
the pavement. These people should be punished by the state, or pedestrians
should be allowed to remove them from their bikes in some manner that doesn’t
put others at risk (maybe throw them into a handy hedge or down an embankment).
This is a growing
phenomenon which needs to be nipped in the bud. Too often I’ve maybe taken a
wee step sideways on the pavement, maybe to avoid a dog or a child, only to
risk being shunted up the arse by a speeding cyclist from behind. Apart from
the toll on one’s blood pressure it could potentially be most embarrassing
attending A&E with a set of bike handles inserted in ones anal cavity.
Walking through The
Meadows, a pleasantly umbrageous area of Edinburgh, I spy a couple under the
shade of a burly oak kissing and canoodling. This sort of behaviour annoys me
immensely, largely I suspect because I am not one of the participants (well,
the male one at any rate), but also because I am of the opinion that such
activities should be conducted in private (Is this not a Protestant country?
What would John Knox think?). There’s something quite arrogant about displaying
ones ardour and passion in such a public place. I believe a three-strike
approach to this is appropriate. Third offence results in chemical castration
for the male and a year spent with no make- up and messy hair for the female.
I’ll leave gay relationships alone as they’ve been persecuted to the extent
that they deserve to rub our faces in it.
I notice that the
Edinburgh Buddhist HQ is located in leafy, middle-class, arty-farty Marchmont
and not in the far less salubrious Pilton. This is further evidence to me that
Buddhism and the middle-classes have utterly embraced each other. Spiritual
enlightenment and Nirvana now seem, in the west at any rate, the domain of
those positioned to afford it. This is much the same with other such
‘alternative’ therapies and the like. The Meadowlark ‘space for wellness’ is
also located there. I, being a mere weegie pleb, would be far too intimidated
to even enter its portals. They’d think I was there to fix the photocopier or
to empty the bins. Believe me, I know of which I speak, having naively tried to
‘join in’ with such things in the past.
I’m more at home on
buses, though I hate them also, sometimes to the point of screaming out loud.
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