My e-mail continues to refuse to function in any way. This is poo. Messages shall be sent to people when I assume they are awake and I have actual battery power.
Awoken at 6:20AM by the sounds of some nob on Radio 2. This does not fill me with joy. Mine associate has work (as any real human being would have on a Tuesday), so has to rise at such an ungodly hour to get out to it. I am left in the room to fend for myself and resolve to be up and around town by ten at the latest so to meet him for lunch.
Having reprogrammed the radio station, I find myself listening to Woman’s Hour and, knowing the Radio 4 schedules as well as I do, realise it is some time well after ten. Proceed to properly rise, relieve and ablout myself. Just as I’m about to release myself onto the town I get the call inviting me to lunch in ten minutes time. I mutter a little about my oversleeping before agreeing to join my temporary landlord for an early lunch. His workplace being barely ten minutes walk from his domicile, I arrive in plenty of time and find myself hanging around, looking shifty outside expensive banking houses for five minutes. I receive odd looks from the banking community. After a bit my pal emerges and off to lunch we trot – into a small bistro some way down the hill from The Stand. I tuck into a baked potatoe with haggis, he into some sort of haggis and dumpling confection. It is good. Scoffing over, Thomas has to head off to some sort of meeting with South African fishermen, so I am left to my own devices, which I set up and prime.
Inevitably my first stop is Forbidden Planet (it was never going to be anything else, now was it?). As ever their selection of back issues dissapoints me, but the all new section of reduced stock more than makes up for it. I depart with a considerably heavier bag, but not much of a lighter wallet (a rarity in my world of collecting I can assure you). Next I attempt to visit the Museum of Scotland, but genuinely take a wrong turning and find myself back at the Royal Mile. Next to both Fopp and Avalanche Records. Deciding that this subconcious accident is no gift horse, I decide to have a quick wander round both. This sadly dissapoints – apart from a brief temptation of the latest Schneider TM album for six quid, nothing catches my eye and I leave without outlaying a penny. Having realised my directional error, I head toward the Museum again, taking a quick detour down a level onto Cowgate, to see if anything interesting is happening at the Underbelly that night (it having always been an interesting venue during festival season). Instead I find a mass of chipboard over rooms that are presumably only opened to fresh air for a month a year. Undeterred I press on towards culture.
I had been to the Museum of Scotland (Royal?) a couple of years before hand, so over the first half hour of wandering found an increasing sense of familiarity coming over myself as I strolled around the permanant exhibitions. The temporary ones I found were so minute as to barely warrant my attention. I had just about run out of interest and was about to haul off somewhere else, when I happened upon an entire wing that I had never noticed before. This contained all of the actual Scottish based artifacts that the museum possessed and quite how I’d missed this before is beyond me. The next hour was filled with new and interesting artifacts and, more excitingly for me, some original works of art by Andy Goldsworthy (look him up, do). Just as I was reaching the end of my tour around the wing, I received the call that Thomas had finished his working and was demanding mine attencion (that is possibly the campest thing I have ever typed. I don’t know whether to be proud or not).
A couple of swift coffees in the Museum cafe later and we were prowling the streets. I demanded that we went up to the castle which, despite my many festival escapades, I hadn’t visited since I was about eleven. By this point it was pitch black out and actually going into the castle was out of the question. But the view from the esplinade of the city’s lights was worth the trek up the hill. Trekking back down again took us into the camra award winning pub of the year, whose name escapes me. First time up there I walked into a public house and noticed that it smelt only of stale booze and not at all of fags. Odd. First pint was nice, second one tasted of old bandages. We left for Monster Mash. It was monstrous, bangery, mashy and gravyy good. Also tried deep fried ice cream (wrapped in cornflakes) which was squidgy and unpleasant. Here we were joined by the lady Alexandra and proceeded onto the public house named Doctor’s (which I knew from before).
Within Doctor’s we had slightly more joy with the quiz machine than the night before, but not as much as we could have following an over zealous stab on ‘Who Want’s To Be A Millionaire’. There was drinking, chat, mirth and more besides until after far to short a time Alexandra left us to fend for ourselves once more. Liquid intake continued, someone behind the bar ended up showing an episode of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’(about which I proved to know to much) and many inappropriate things were said. After a shot of MacCallahn’s (sp?), it was time for bed. Walking back we came extremely close to The Pleasance, which like the Underbelly I was fascinated to see out of season. Unlike the heaving throng of liquored up festival goers in the courtyard I was used to seeing, I was instead greeted with the sight of a heavily underused car park and the sound of tumbleweeds. Then it was off, away, back to the flat for some much needed, slightly less fleeting kippage.