The memory plays tricks (Day Two Part Two)

We wandered the mean streets of Edinburgh in a vague and general direction to the Pleasance. On the way we passed an old church that was the venue for various plays including a Sondheim Musical (Assassins) that skit reserved some tickets for. The play was late (possibly 10 or 11?) so we doubted that we would attend and indeed, we did not.

So, after that scintillating paragraph we hopped, skipped and jumped to a large, purple and inverted inflatable cow. As you do. This venue had plenty of free stand-up comedy gigs. We turned our noses at it though and continued on our trek, getting rather hungry as we went. To appease the borborygmi (thanks, bbc Magazine), skit and biped popped into Greggs and emerged with mysterious meat-stuffed pastries and also the world’s most inedible doughnuts.

Somehow, we made it to the Pleasance. In all subsequent trips there, it never took quite as long which was a relief. The Pleasance courtyard was packed with people and billboards with posters and flyers. All around the edges of the courtyard were the entrances to the venues and outside each entrance, the list of shows and a billboard of posters advertising them. We lingered around such a billboard and identified the posters we liked, a highly scientific way of choosing shows that resulted in us still being incredibly unsure of what we wanted to see. We lurked for a while. Biped suggested that she at least join the massive queue to the ticket desk while we mull this over some more. I wandered off a few metres to ask at the information desk whether there was a list of shows that hadn’t sold out. I could see a blackboard of shows that had sold out but that wasn’t highly useful without spending a good while cross-checking. I asked the information desk girl “is there a list of shows that haven’t sold out?” and she shook her head. A voice behind me said “This show hasn’t” and a flyer was thrust in my direction. I took it and looked at the nice and strangely yearnful face of the man that said this and then looked at the flyer. “Oh, we were looking at this poster and thought it looked good,” I said for we were. I asserted that we would see this show and then was joined by skit, slightly out of breath (don’t deny it), who explained that they had already spoken to the flyer-man as they were standing in the queue and biped was getting the tickets. Flyer-man seemed content but still a bit yearnful and he slouched off in his grey unassuming hoodie into the distance. “Who was that hoodied man?” whispered skit in hushed tones. Well, she didn’t but she did ask whether that was the man on the flyer. “I think so...” I said. I checked the flyer: Ben Moor, a man in a slightly dishevelled shirt and tie and an Indian headdress. Yep, that was him. The serious and strange man was the star of the show. I found it endearing after being hounded by so many leafleteers on the Royal Mile who were not the cast.

Biped came out from the ticket office with “the last three tickets” and I heard that this was one of the acts Mike advertised. Last three tickets... Mike’s recommendation, the star being in the right place to inspire skit and biped and then sell his show to me... It felt like fate. We had a bit of a laugh about the coincidences. It felt noteworthy in light of the act’s title: Not Everything Is Significant.

The show wasn’t until the middle of the afternoon so we wandered off to have lunch. We passed a pub and I thought that we could grab a bite in there which is when I learnt the oddity that is Scottish pubs don’t serve food. It kind of makes their very existence pointless to me but maybe Scotland has some sort of heavy drinking culture or something... maybe.

We found a wonderful little cafe in the end. Nice and modern furnishing and a great feel with plenty of newspapers littered around. We bought our lunch (soup for me with a latte) and settled at a breakfast bar style table. Each of us fell into silence and read papers (I attempted and failed at a cryptic crossword). Had we run out of conversation already? Yes, it appeared but personally I loved that we were all content to be quiet for a little while. No pressure to be anything.

Lunch ended and we had some time to kill before the show but nowhere to kill it so we had a little wander and then returned to queue. We all bought programmes that came with badges (and the money went to charity). Thanks to being there early, we were able to pick some fantastic seats inside the venue. It really was an odd place. I got the impression that it was just a storage room or something in its normal life, transformed with some cunning black cloth and rows of benches into a theatre. It was tiny and the benches were arranged in a U shape around the stage. The seating was tiered so the performer was standing below us as we took the highest tier (and the middle so facing the performing area, not to the side). But this just made our eye level match his and so it was the best, most intimate, view possible.

The room filled up quickly and it became dark and warm. Lights brought the centre alive where Ben Moor stood, now in his scruffy suit sans jacket and wonderfully enlivened. The odd sense of wanting, needing, yearning for acknowledgement was lost, replaced with confidence and love for his play.

He said his carefully crafted lines with pride and perfect timing, perfect performance with every part of his gangly and expressive body. The character he created for his play was a biographer, blocked and scrimmaging for material for his book. His tale was commented upon by the footnoter, a slightly more arch and unemotional character essentially biographing the biographer. The play began with the biographer concerned that he was repeating himself because “the memory plays tricks” and goes on with twists and turns in an Escher styling, never taking the direct course, creating characters and bizarre scenarios, playing with words and memory, time and fate. Not everything was significant but what was significant to one person was not what was significant to another. The play defied logic and relished in it at the same time.

It was amazing.

The biographer inhabits a world where the hyphen has been hijacked by Nike as a form of punctuation sponsorship, where there is a chain of J G Ballard pubs, a rollercoaster called life that is so popular with Buddhists you can’t stop them from queueing up again for it, a musician related to Handal (he finds the name opens doors) and an ex-girlfriend who "moves like a fading continent worried about its future".

I cannot praise this show enough. You may have noticed from the way I am still praising it. The humour was pure radio 4 word play. Every sentence had at least one funny thing in it and I found it hard to keep up. The overall sense of the show was one of wonder but also one questioning fate, not just cosmic fate but the ones we carve for ourselves through our possibly flawed and certainly skewed interpretation of the world. On his website, Ben Moor says “[the story is] written in such a way that an audience member can decide one thing about the events as presented in the piece, and the next person might come to a totally different deduction” and indeed, reviews of the shows have mentioned how the experience of the play was personal and could not be dissected in print.

See it.

Incidentally, biped kept falling asleep. But not because of the play but because it was so warm and dark in there.

On leaving the theatre, I swore to stalk Ben Moor. As a joke, of course and more referring to his career than his physical being.

Outside the courtyard, we met with Gillian, skit’s friend from school. I don’t know what she thought of biped and me but we kept our distance in case she was a cannibal or the like. We walked back across the city, this time walking close by the castle. I recall griping about the number of steps we had to climb and not giving the castle enough awe. I was a little thrown by the way it was a grey stone house and not something with turrets and dragons and fairytale princesses hanging their hair out of windows. But I should at least mention now how cool it is to have a castle on a mound at the centre of a city.

After walking around the castle and through a little park with an incredibly gaudy gold fountain, we came upon a small French market. I have noticed that French markets in France contain much more in the way of skimpy underwear than French markets in Britain. Just an observation. But this market contained the very best of French food and crafts (possibly) including a stall proudly displaying quilted blankets, throws and pillow cases. This immediately caught biped’s cold eye but she dragged herself away.

We went to a cafe/canteen where we grabbed some food and drinks (I believe skit had her second cream tea in two days and declared that she was on a one-a-day diet from now on, something she never kept up to her heart’s relief). Another of skit’s school friends joined us (or rather joined skit and Gilian as biped mused on the benefits of a quilt and I replayed Ben Moor in my head). Biped and I decided to leave the giggling school girls to it without even attempting to find out if they were decent people which was very rude of us but neither of us can claim to be paragons of politeness (well, maybe the Paragon...).

The sun was low in the sky and casting the city in a wonderful golden light. I felt happy and oddly brave so I phoned Mike (phoning is a scary thing to do because I need to speak in better English than normal) to explain that we weren’t going to pop into his shop at closing time as we half-promised because we were quite far away. I came away from the brief conversation congratulating myself on not sounding too abnormal and nervous but perhaps Mike’s memory of the conversation is different.

I then joined biped at the quilt stall where she was annoying the man tending the stall by drooling on his wares. After she wiped the spittle away, we compared opinions on the quilts, remarkably coming to the same conclusion on which one was the best. It had one side with wild strawberries as the repeated motif against a white background. The reverse was quite agreeable too though it is the strawberry side that sticks with me. With reservation, biped asked the cost. The man, obviously eager to pack up but more eager to get some money, gave her a great deal for the quilt and two pillowcases so she could not refuse the expense. With careless abandon, biped skipped off to the cash machine to get the money for it while I stayed at the stall and growled at anyone that came near to her chosen quilt.

We moseyed to our meeting place outside the theatre for the evening’s entertainment. It was a recommendation from Mike called Pagagnini and described as a string quartet with a twist (or words to that effect). Skit and her friends were there and chatting but on seeing us arrive, they hastily made their departure. We joined the queue for entry, taking it in turns to hold the place and use the toilets. I mention the toilets not so you can monitor our bladder control or lack of but so I can moan about the evil soap that stung my eyes and throat and had an even worse effect on skit’s breathing. Fortunately, it wasn’t so bad it detracted from the enjoyment of the evening. As we sat down, a man near us said that he had seen many (maybe all?) of the shows on at the fringe and this was the best one.

It was certainly good but I found some bits a little tedious. The show was formed by a string quartet playing recognisable classical pieces but then rebelling and playing other styles and using their instruments in other ways (for example, as percussive instruments or guitars). The musicians were frenzied as they leapt about the stage, playing expertly. I really enjoyed the music particularly when one musician got an electric violin and recorded himself play. And then played the recording as he played with it, recording the result and then played that as he played again and so on until he was a one-man orchestra. It was phenomenal and had he messed up once, it would have ruined the whole thing as it would have been repeated again and again but he did not; he was perfect. Finally, their encore of the techno version of the Four Seasons really cheered me as it is one of my favourite pieces and seeing it performed with such enthusiasm (not to mention smoke and lights) was the real highlight of the show. Oh, there was also some stuff with a love story between one musician and a member of the audience and other things with one musician being too full of himself... all that was the tedium I mentioned. I observed to skit that physical comedy really wasn’t my sort of thing.

We left the show buoyed and thinking that the entire festival was like Pagagini and Ben Moor. It was cold so I hugged biped’s quilt as we traipsed across to rescue the skitmobile from the priciest car park in the world. The multi-storey was pretty empty when we got there and we discovered the wonderful echoes we could produce. To the castle, we went where the meal was pasta and the entertainment was discovering “Taking over the asylum” on the telly. Mike texted skit as we ate our meal to tell us it was on. He knows us so well but by that point we had decided that as great as David Tennant was, the show was not gripping us. We were just too exhausted and had to go to bed... thinking about fate, choice and significance.

Day Two Part One (or the Mystery of the Right Arm)

Saturday. I entered a light doze around 7:45 and was quite content to lie there happy in the knowledge that we were on holiday and could take things easy. Then skit got up. Now, granted she didn’t jump on me shouting in jubilance, but she did make me get up just as readily by playing the “anything you can do I can do better^H^H^H^H^H^H as well” card. Could I really let her be up and about without me? No chance. I was her equal in rising and being active before the postman loses the taste of toothpaste.

And so I found myself (leaping from life to life?) dressed and outside before 8:15am. I grabbed some flapjack fuel and my camera and greeted the morning.

It was glorious. Skit’s eagerness to rush outside was well justified. The light was golden (as were the fields of wheat) and it was fresh outside with hints of warmth. We took the first footpath we saw, heading in the direction of Wallyford (great name) and with grand unimpeded views of Edinburgh.

This footpath had two faults. The first was obvious quite early on: it was a stream. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be a stream and it was just the solid month of rain they had had in that area (except for maybe one afternoon) making its presence known but the erosion on the path really did make it look more like a stream bed. So, that was fun. Wet but fun. The second fault should have been obvious from the start but it was only after half an hour of walking that it twigged: we were going downhill quite fast. Which of course meant quite a nasty amount of uphill climbing.

Still, we enjoyed our way down the hill, taking photos of dew-decorated cobwebs and snacking on blackberries. We turned from the footpath-stream and took a lane that led to the road for our journey uphill. We could certainly tell why the skitmobile struggled the night before but we were invigorated enough by the day that it was an enjoyable slope and not as far as I feared. It even provided us with some entertainment as we came across a frog squished such that its innards were displayed like a drawing from an anatomy book. Odd things entertain me.

The view of the castle from the road during daylight was much more impressive than the view at dusk when we were tired and hungry. It sat like a tooth on the skyline (a tooth with turrets). How wonderfully lucky that we should find such a perfect place for us? Luck aided of course by skit’s superior googling skillz.

Biped was out admiring the view and the day so we had a quick mutual glee session, marvelling at the morning sun, the view of the city and the castle looming at our backs. But we were soon inside and making breakfast, the best part of any Hobbling holiday.

This breakfast was eggy bread with strawberries and bacon with a breakfast smoothie and tea and coffee for myself and biped respectively. Our large and delicious breakfasts will go down in legend.

Our plan for the day was to go into Edinburgh, horrify Mike and drive his customers away and perhaps catch a few shows. We were going to go by train into Edinburgh but somehow skit found the strength to drive into the city. We parked in a multi-story car park and then walked to the heart of Edinburgh.

It was my first time in the city though both skit and biped had been there before. I don’t think that stopped them from joining me in looking around in delight at Royal Mile. The Fringe performers were out in full strength, thrusting leaflets declaring “5 stars!” at us (as given by a random blogger or a performer’s mum, one suspects). There was also some street theatre. We didn’t spend long looking at the man with the skin-tight lycra suit riding a unicycle (actually, he may have just spray painted his skin, there was so little left to the imagination) but we hung around and watched some dancers who were flipping and somersaulting right on the pavement. There was also a rather sad but beautiful puppet show where a puppet with a potato-like head contemplated a feather.

We moved on and up, weighed down with flyers, to a certain shop called Transreal Fiction, passing many shops selling kitsch souvenirs, tartan, armour and roast hog.

I hid behind skit and biped as we entered the shop. I couldn’t pretend to be a random customer (as I once did when I spied on Kate in the Cambridge Waterstones) as Mike knew them (and he probably could have recognised me, to be fair. Curse flickr.). I was kind of taken aback at Mike’s appearance as skit once described him to me as a typical Edinburgh gentleman which led me to imagine a wizened old man, an idea reinforced by his “you young wipper snappers” Board posts. But instead there was a cheery face with all the aged wisdom of a five-year old who had just discovered the thrills and spills of the whoopee cushion. (An idea reinforced by his bad puns in Board posts.) He and skit quietly chatted while I browsed the shelves with biped.

The bookshop wasn’t how I imagined either. Dusty stacks seemingly propping up the ceiling, creaking staircases to platforms at varying heights and a maze-like layout of shelving with books unorganised by any recognisable human system was not the reality. The reality was a bright small room with shelves in a regular fashion well-stocked with new books. Above the shelves were framed works of art- Madeleine’s exhibition and behind and on the counter were soft toys. I observed to biped, in too low a voice for Mike to overhear, that the book selection was fantastic. I had grown tired of browsing bookshops, once a great hobby, because I only ever saw the same authors. I swear, the stock in Waterstones and Borders has not changed for the past decade unless you count the proliferation of Doctor Who and Torchwood tie-in books. But the choice in Transreal books was different. And the mere presence of a Neil Stephenson non-fiction book (“In the beginning was the command line” I believe) was enough to confirm that different = good.

I rejoined the others. The conversation had got to what shows we should watch and Mike berated us for not being organised. After all, he had sent the programme to us. I had read through the programme (at least the comedy and drama sections) but it was impossible to tell the difference between any of the shows from the vague and non representative descriptions. Mike suggested a few things and I recall proclaiming that I liked the “weird stuff” (skit, biped and I dissolved into giggles. Mike did not. It’s a Dr Horrible thing...). For some reason though the excitement of the soft toys in front of me (or something) meant that all suggestions went in one ear and out the other. I think they found something to root in inside skit or biped but my memories of this were... vague. Were there stilt walkers mentioned or am I just dreaming?

We left the shop. To be fair, since we entered two browsers had followed so we weren’t exactly driving customers away (which we are experts on in cocktail bars) but we couldn’t have been helping either. So off we went with some vague direction in mind. It may have been the Pleasance for that is where we ended up but honestly, my brain was not being housed in my head that day.

Our walk, whatever the destination, took us to Greyfriar’s Kirkyard. Skit told us the tale of the Greyfriar’s Bobby, to which I listened attentively, honest, not at all dismissing it as ridiculous just because it was about a dog. Anyway, I shouldn’t be allowed near cemeteries normally but I restrained myself here and was interested more in the view than the gravestones and (often open) crypts. The city’s most attractive feature for me is its relief. The multiple levels of the buildings due to the hills produces some astonishing views that put me in mind of fantasy cities: narrow structures, higgledy piggledy with alleys and bridges and twists and turns verging on the Escher. Later I commented on this to Mike and skit saying I could imagine Locke Lamora running for his life in this city.

Skit and I sat on a tree stump prodding each other as we waited for biped to reappear from her wander behind the kirk. We discovered an oddity: we each had sore arms. The exact same spot on our right arms was causing us pain (not aided by the prodding). How did we share the same injury? Had biped attacked us during the night? Was it the seat belts? No, then they would not be the right arm on each of us. Then what was it?!

Without finding the answer, just a new way to inflict pain on each other and eventually biped, we continued on our journey across Edinburgh.

Day 1 - Boldly going North

“Holiday!” I shouted as I leapt from my mattress onto skit’s slumbering form. The alarm had just gone off at 8am and I had been awake for the past five minutes just waiting for its permission to act. Skit woke somewhere between the “hol” and the “day” as I landed on top of her.

I think I woke her more suddenly than she was used to.

I hopped, skipped and jumped downstairs, knocking on biped’s door as I went. “Go away!” she grouched or something equally rude and unnecessary. I sweetly enquired whether she wanted any coffee (yes) and then proceeded to probably make her the worst coffee she has ever had (but I never drink instant coffee so have no idea how to make it).

I made myself tea and then spent the next hour fussing with the wireless and attempting to send ezmail (or rather yuku mail… I still haven’t adjusted) to the Hobblings we were to meet in Edinburgh. Skit’s adapter for the phone socket was bust and the wireless only lasted a few minutes at a time, just enough to not be successful in my task. I did manage to send a quick missive to Mike though just to pass on mobile telephone numbers and also the responsibility of organising something.

Meanwhile, skit made us delicious bacon sandwiches. There is always bacon, chez skit.

Biped made one quick trip to the Post Office for an Amazon delivery of Gossip Girl dvds and a stop at the local shop for car supplies. And then we were off, not too late in the morning indeed.

However, we did not get very far very fast because a quick stop at Halfords was required.

But then we were off.

We were off to the sounds of skit’s mix CDs, my ISIHAC CDs and Whedonesque musicals (sung along to well by skit, poorly by me). The car journeys took up much of the holiday (thanks, skit, for driving) but I will skip over them with that description.

Except for a brief stop at a service station to grab lunch, our first real port of call was the Lake District. Skit was aiming for Keswick where she and biped and Narrisch had been. Indeed, much of the journey into the Lake District was accompanied by my two companions talking about where they had been or where they had (foolishly) cycled. The other parts were spent playing I-Spy.

Skit received a text message as she entered one of the villages in the Lake District. It was from Em, apparently drunk and wanting to phone. I let biped attempt to compose the reply but unsuccessfully so, so I took over and let Em know that there was a Hobbling Holiday in progress. Em phoned and we three talked to her (skit dangerously so as she was driving but she was going rather slow at the time and the only risk was that that increased her chances of being seen). I think Em thought me a wee bit crazy but I am just not used to talking on the phone so was struggling for things to say.

The phone call came to an end and we continued in the skitmobile in an attempt to find somewhere nice for an afternoon tea. We passed a posh hotel as there was no free parking and came to a tiny village (or hamlet?) called Grange. To get into it, we had to pass over two single-lane bridges. Once there, we went straight to a quaint tea shop by the river. We took a table outside and glared at people until we could move to a table closer to the river bank. Biped and skit ordered cream teas and I got cake with my tea. It was all terribly civilised… Until skit got an utterly incomprehensible voicemail from Q which was followed by a call from her. Again, my side of the conversation was pure nonsense (breaking out of the flow of conversation to cheerfully proclaim that the sun had just come out followed by a lengthy explanation of why that was rare and worth mentioning for the UK in August) and it was probably highly disruptive to the other patrons. But anyway.

After the tea, we used the toilets and skimmed stones on the river for a while. At least, skit skimmed them. Biped and I kind of just plopped them. After a while of tutelage, skit managed to get us both making the stones skip a little but we were nowhere near the level of five or six jump proficiency of the dawg.

Back in the car and on the road again. A text message from Mike said that he expected we were in Scotland by then. Alas, no.

The journey was as described above but to the soundtrack of Scottish music and with the observations as we crossed the border that 1) there was no welcome to Scotland (or indeed congratulations you have left England as I half expected the Scots to put up) sign and 2) biped was fast asleep in the back. I had some fun taking photos of her (as did skit, driving be damned) and then took a feather I had collected from outside skit’s house and tickled biped with it. She leapt to attention to my great amusement later explaining that she thought she was being licked by a snake. Later, skit was to wake the kraken by “accidentally” turning the sound up on her music stereo instead of down when a loud track came up.

It amused.

Another observation when we were in Scotland was that people were not expected to know which side of the road to drive on. Signs instructed motorists to drive on the left despite us not being at a port.

It was dusk by the time we got to the castle. The skitmobile struggled up the steep lane covered in gravel as skit feared for the paintwork. The view as we arrived at the castle was fantastic. We could see out over the Firth of Forth and the city of Edinburgh. Delighted, we went inside the castle’s reception room. The castle itself was unique in my castle experience. I am used to the Norman castles that litter the south-east. This Scottish castle was more of a fort. Indeed, apart from being painted white, it put me in mind of bobfort (plus, unlike bobfort, it isn’t the home to a waterslide fun park or pit of doom). The reception room was kind of bare of the softer side of life but the cold stones were covered with thick material, rugs and tapestries. The owners appeared and greeted us (we used our real names which sounds most bizarre with biped) and skit slipped into a slight Scottish accent and idiom.

The lord of the castle was quite a talker, regaling us with tales of battles and bloodshed (the history of the castle was made slightly amusing by being central to the Battle of Pinkie- narf!) but we managed to extricate ourselves. We jumped back into the (rather ripe) skitmobile and headed to Asda where we put shame to Supermarket Sweep contestants with the speed of our shop.

Back in the castle, or more accurately the renovated barn next to the castle but that sounds less grand so I will call it the castle, truth be damned, biped and I set to making bangers and mash while skit took a well deserved rest on the sofa. Having failed to find HIGNFY, I believe I forced Run Lola Run on the poor dawg but at 10 this was changed to QI. In all Hobbling holidays, I believe I have somewhat dictated what goes on the box but I think I am only permitted to do so because of my Massively Good Taste.

Then, there was sleep to be had. Biped got the grown-up’s bed (as per usual- you know, I am beginning to think that the sound of sawing wood we heard in Harlem was actually biped sawing wood (the evil futon possibly) because I have not heard her snore since. It was all a big con to ensure she got proper beds in the future) while skit and I got the kiddies’ beds. They were short and narrow but then again, so are we. I am of course used to a double bed so there were a couple of dubious moments during the night when I woke to find myself just about to go over the edge, but we all need a bit of danger in our lives…