Rather than catch the 23 bus, I jumped onto the back saddle of a 4-person tandem. This would, I hope, take me through Leith, up Bonnington Road, and home.
Instead the route was along the promenade at Portobello, then east into the Lammermuir Hills. The ‘driver’ had a hopeless sense of direction and kept forgetting to steer. I would never make it home by 10:45 to wave off my weekend guests.
Seven year-old KF burst into tears when I said that I was looking forward to seeing the jumper that she was knitting for me. Her mother shot me a sharp glance that read “You weren’t supposed to know about it. It was meant to be a surprise”. KF then ran down to the shore to explore the lime kiln shaped structure on the beach.
We took the long way round through the reconstruction of medieval York. Here my mother almost got stuck in a smelly drain.
This was a convent with a difference: none of the nuns dressed in habits. They were still scary, however. I was terrified when I accidentally got tangled up in the hose from their washing machine, tugged it out of the socket, and water gushed down the stairs – so much so that I vomited.
Then there was the awkward moment when I wanted to introduce BB and a couple of others to my thin, beige-clad transsexual friend. I forgot her new female name. Fortunately before she realised this she introduced herself as Katharine, and told us that we should all call her Katie.
Putting my super-sleuth skills to good use, I determined that the Schnauzer owner that I had met online was a retired teacher from Morningside, and the author of the maths textbook Let’s fix it.
Such was the success of TV talent show hopeful FG that he and his father J were invited to gig with Bob Marley.
“Boris Johnson told us that we might as well go and play a game of bingo and get a steak for our lunch. It’s going to take ages for them to sort out the photography” said my contact.
Boris had a point. Even though they had plenty of advance notice of my arrival, the suits were clearly unprepared for me. There was a dodgy moment when I couldn’t stop my iPad mini bleeping, but other than that all responsibility for the chaos was theirs.
Meanwhile TPR was making a feeble effort to help clean the flat. I was astonished at the filth that students were willing to tolerate. One didn’t even bother to get out of bed as we attempted to remove years of grime from the surfaces of his room. I was so keen to see the job done that I risked my hands on the strongest detergent that I could find buried deep in the cupboard under the sink.
It was so frustrating to find that both my meetings with the Scottish Government and Skills Development Scotland were cancelled. What made it worse was only discovering this news on arrival at the offices: first at Saughton House, and then in Corstorphine. I wasted so much time cross-crossing Edinburgh on a day when I had so much to do, not least the packing for my trip to Australia.
Back at the house I worked my way through my boot collection in my sister S’s bedroom. It was a difficult job to work out which pairs to take on the trip. I thought hard about the white plastic cut-offs, and the black pony skin. Eventually ECM popped through to give me some advice. At least we weren’t hindered by a baggage allowance: this is the biggest advantage of travelling to the other side of the world on a ship, even if it takes three weeks.
It really is possible to travel from the UK to Australia by sea, although the journey is longer than Rousse has indicated here.
Dreamaticus 