The Danger of Edinburgh

CityBreakers Vol. 3

Edinburgh is addicting.

But when I was a child, I found Edinburgh, and specifically its castle, to be disappointing. Unlike the ruins of castles I came across on the regular countryside walks we took while visiting my dad’s side of the family in Glasgow, I couldn’t run wild playing make believe in Edinburgh castle which, if you asked 6-year-old me, was a waste of a good castle.

My mind changed when I was 11, on a day trip to see the tail end of the Edinburgh Fringe. Coming from a blazingly hot, sticky Chicago summer, Edinburgh in August was drab, dreich, and cold, making for a welcome change. In Scotland, you can’t let a bit of rain stop you — otherwise you would never leave the hoos — which is why my dad decided that a wee jaunt would be a good way to get my cousin, Norah, and me out of grandad’s house. So, we got ourselves to Glasgow Central Station and in an hour we were pulling into Edinburgh Waverley.

As the train pulls into Edinburgh Waverley, the city welcomes you with one of the most exquisite views one can get from a train window, bar none. I travel regularly by train for work and pleasure and this is my favourite train window offering. If coming into the station from the south, sit on the right side of the train in the direction of travel; as you’re pulled into Waverley Station, look out the window, slightly upward. When the train emerges from the tunnel, you will be rewarded with an enchanting view of Edinburgh Castle, looming above you atop its fortressed hill.

The castle itself is strength and beauty embodied in architecture; it’s a reminder of the scope and genius of human creativity and dedication, making onlookers feel meek, small, and insignificant; it is magical. It looks glorious on a bright sunny day, but on rainy days, it’s even more striking — which is lucky, I suppose, seeing as it’s always fucking raining. The irony is that Edinburgh boasts being one of the driest cities in Scotland, receiving only 130 days of rain per annum. It’s Scotland’s Benidorm. Who doesn’t love a bikini and wellies combo? That look is sexy as fuck. I expect it to be on the catwalk at Edinburgh Fashion Week next season.

Our day trip to the Fringe was my first active memory of this view, and it started to give me a new, begrudging respect for both the castle and the city. I wasn’t completely on board yet, as I was still sore about not being able to play knights and princesses in the castle compound, but I was willing to give the place time to change my mind. However, as the day went on, I found my 11-year-old self being bewitched by each new thing that the city offered, and, like for countless other visitors, it started with The Fringe.

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the world’s largest performing arts festival. Initially started by eight theatre groups who, when unable to perform in the first Edinburgh International Festival in 1947, simply set up their own performances on the edge of the main event. A theatrical ‘fuck you’, to the powers that be that sums up the Scottish people superbly. Since then, it has launched the careers of members of the Cambridge Footlights (think Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, and Stephen Fry), comedian Suzy Eddie Izzard, Oscar-winning actors Rachel Weisz and Cillian Murphy, talk show host extraordinaire Graham Norton, Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, and comedian Hannah Gadsby. It has siren-songed millions of international tourists, enticing them to travel thousands of kilometres and depriving them of huge sums of hard-earned cash to stand in the pissing rain to watch comedians, improv groups, jugglers, street performers, fire-breathers, illusionists, musicians, poets, and artists no one is entirely sure how to label.

Despite the star-studded casts and bright young stars of the future taking over every flat surface that could conceivably work as a stage, the real magic of the festival is found in the street performers that dot themselves on every cobbled corner. Even if you don’t get tickets to any of the indoor, organised shows, the streets of Edinburgh in August do not disappoint. They may baffle, confuse, and cause concern for the mental well-being of strangers, but disappoint? Never. For the full month of August, the streets are alive with pure, unhinged weirdness and wonderment. Is it any wonder it inspired the creation of the best-selling story about wizards and witches? Magic and sorcery is in the air; it’s palpable and seeps into the fibre of your being as you traipse and trip your way through the winding streets and closes.

Edinburgh balances out this beauty and bewildering appeal, generously giving other cities a chance to compete for the title of World’s Most Stunning Metropolis, by selling an absurd amount of tacky shite of the most debasing and shameful kind. See-You-Jimmy caps, Highland coos on any inanimate object — keychains, teapots, tattoos for your child’s face, not temporary tattoos, mind you, Gordon here will actually tattoo your child’s face — Harry Potter everything, and the classic Complete List of Clans tea-towel-and-map combo, sold almost exclusively to deluded and factually inaccurate American tourists. ‘My great-great-great-great-granddaddy was Scots, he was part of the McTavish clan.’ Was he, aye? Which is the traditional, Scottish way of saying, ‘no he wasn’t, now shut up’.

My problem with Edinburgh’s souvenir scene, like so many cities, has nothing to do with the purchase of souvenirs. As I wandered around, I could see the hoards of tourists who had worked hard to get to Edinburgh; the ones who spent those ungodly amounts of money, got through an international airport with friends or loved ones which is not always a walk in the park — some of them stop walking when their feet hit travellator, a travel faux pas I believe should have a mandatory sentence of death by firing squad — battled through cultural and linguistic differences, been brutally confronted with Scottish cuisine, and nearly had their ‘heids’ kicked in by a local to whom they gave an unsolicited lesson about whisky rather than just fucking drinking it. They’ve earned the right to take back a memento that reminds them of their holiday.

No, my problem with Edinburgh’s souvenirs, is that it’s a city rich in creativity, craftsmanship, and artistry. There are independent shops galore filled with trinkets, jewellery, hand-knit and locally sourced textiles, patterns, and clothing, small batch distillery gins and whiskies, shortbread and tablet in tins adorned with illustrations by local artists, and secondhand bookstores filled with the works of writers who have called Edinburgh home, including Robert Louis Stevenson, JK Rowling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Muriel Spark, Irvine Welsh, and Ian Rankin. Is it any wonder that it was named the world’s first-ever UNESCO City of Literature? It’s a city whose artists and shopkeepers deserve the custom of tourists that swarm their city and make it uninhabitable every August but who don’t receive it in the quantities that they should. It’s becoming too sexy for its own good, and like many other European capital cities, that is having a detrimental impact on the city’s independent businesses, housing, and local life. It’s an addictive place, but the desires of our addiction are only fun until they aren’t. Just ask Irvine Welsh.

As ominous as this sounds, it’s the norm for Edinburgh, and it isn’t anything new. The city has always had a darkness to it. This is probably why it’s consistently provided the backdrop and inspiration for so many of history’s and literature’s darkest characters. Every time I wind my way through the centuries-old, uneven streets, I can see the characters from all the books set here come to life. I can smell the petrichor-scented stone, feel the damp sink into my hair and skin, and hear the clamour and echoes of shoes hitting cobbles in cloistered closes, just as the characters I’ve read about have. It really is a writer’s dream. The descriptions craft and layer themselves, you just have to make the time to write them down. But that, in itself, presents a dilemma: there’s too much to see to stop and write.

These are the streets where Burke and Hare, the infamous Victorian body snatchers, stole, bought, and killed to obtain corpses to sell to doctors for medical research. These are the cold, blustery winds that are described in the likes of Treasure Island and Kidnapped. These are the cobbles that Ewan McGregor’s character, Renton, sped down, while telling us to choose life while off his tits on heroin in the dismal but honest portrayal of addiction in Trainspotting. And these are the streets that influenced a pair of twin brothers with guitars to mark out that the limit of their love is precisely 500 walking miles, each way.

And just like the Proclaimers, walk you will. Edinburgh is a highly, and enjoyably, walkable city. Granted, a few of the hills may try to take you huffing, puffing, and sweating into the next realm in the most undignified manner, but ultimately the things you see along the way make the death-inducing inclines worth it. Wear sturdy, waterproof shoes is my advice. A word of warning, any Scottish person who tells you that it only takes 20 minutes to get to the top of Arthur’s Seat, the hill situated just behind Holyrood, the Scottish Houses of Parliament, is a liar. You will slip, slide, and cry your way up that tiny mountain only to be met with a wind so blustery it threatens to blow you (not in a fun way) directly into the Firth of Forth below. And yet, even after reading this warning, I guarantee you will see that enticing hill in the distance, and have the strongest urge to climb it. I do it. Every time; I’m addicted. Once again, the objects of our addictions are fun until you’re sat on a wet patch of grass halfway up a hill in the pissing rain realising this is an actual hike rather than a pleasant stroll to a pretty viewpoint, your warm tears mixing with cold rain. One thing is for certain, by the time you get back down to the winding streets of the Old Town, you’ll be fucking ravenous. Luckily, Edinburgh is a place with exquisite dining options, and I think everyone should try Scottish food when there. No, that is not a joke.

Scottish cuisine is delicious. I know it gets an awful reputation but we love our food and are proud of it, or at least as proud as Scottish people will outwardly allow themselves to show. It is full of hearty, comforting dishes. We have some of the best beef and wild game in the world, our seafood and fish are fresh, and we grow and produce wild strawberries and raspberries, honey, and tasty root veggies. It is perfect for the climate that produces it, and well worth a go.

What we convince tourists to eat, most Scottish people don’t eat on the regular. We’ll, of course, eat a Pizza Crunch with chips once in a while when we’re drunk or depressed. And, yes, cheeky readers, that’s most of the time. Shut up. But mostly, it’s for our own entertainment, that we will look an unsuspecting tourist dead in the eye as we walk them to the local chippy, watch with glee as they struggle to comprehend both the accent of Big Alistair, the proprietor of The Codfather, and the concept of deep-fried Mars bars, and proceed to stare in pure, sick joy as the diabetes and heart disease sinks into the arteries of the poor tourist in question.

Scots are like little mythical creatures akin to Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream — our national pastime is taking the piss. We’re shite at football so we had to think of another activity. We have collectively chosen to never take anything seriously, opting instead to skip around, dressed ridiculously, playing the world’s most nasal and least sexy instrument, making the unicorn our official national animal, and wrecking mild havoc at all times. We do take one thing seriously, however, and that’s our drinking habits. If you want to instantly endear Scottish people to you, this is the formula:

1) Tell us our tap water is the freshest, most crisp, and best in the world. Because it is. This is simply a statement of fact. This will result in a Scottish person kissing you. It may also result in pregnancy.

2) Under no circumstances lecture or ‘educate’ a Scottish person on the colour, nose, or distilling process of whisky, particularly when they are drinking it. If your talking about whisky stops us from drinking our whisky, you will be stabbed.

3) When the whisky kicks in, do not do the fucking accent. Especially don’t yell the word ‘freedom’ in the accent. You will be kissed, Glasgow-style. Google it.

It is perfectly normal, as you wander around Edinburgh, taking in the sites, sounds (is that a dying cat being kicked down a fight of stairs? Oh no, just the bagpipes), and people and think to yourself that you have walked into a simulation, or perhaps a very wet David Lynch film because Edinburgh attracts bizarre humans.

I’m not sure what it is about the place that speaks to — or perhaps produces — the weirdos of the world, but it does. Swathes of them. Often the best sites the city gives you, are not the Castle, the Scott Monument, Arthur’s Seat, or the Necropolis, but the people, both locals and tourists alike. I’ve seen locals carrying everything from ferrets and owls to prosthetic legs to last night’s regrets, just cutting about living their lives. I’ve also seen German tourists, dressed entirely in beige Jack Wolfskin, unfazed by the wind and rain, living up to both their colloquialism ‘there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing’ and their national stereotype of being organised, standing in symmetrical squares staring at Edinburgh castle silently weighing up whether or not it’s on par with Neuschwanstein. Edinburgh gives you a bit of everything but it’s most endearing quality is that it gives you eccentrics who want to create art, joy, achieve fame, make people smile, and ruin people’s day through audience participation — the street performances in Edinburgh seem to never end, as if they’re always rehearsing for the next Fringe. It’s a city of rare beauty balanced out by junkies shouting at you; it’s a place that is accepting of anyone but will relentlessly take the piss if you look too much like a tourist (fair enough), but all in a warmth of spirit that contrasts the freezing, near-perpetual drizzle. It’s filled with a magic but one that has a darker undercurrent than people realise at first. Once you do realise, it’s usually too late.

As you leave the chippy, local Indian restaurant, Italian bistro, or any one of the 782 eateries in the city, you will no doubt contentedly waddle your way down the streets, and, as a result, through the darker history that they contain. In the West Port and Grassmarket areas, you’ll be walking where 16 people were murdered by Burke and Hare in 1828; doing so to sell the bodies to Dr. Robert Knox to be used as specimens in his anatomy school behind the Royal Mile. In Leith, today a trendy and expensive area, you’ll walk past the doorways and alleyways that served as prime heroine injecting places in the 80s and 90s that would lead to the overdose deaths of countless people and to Edinburgh becoming the AIDS capital of Europe. In the City Centre, you’ll walk through streets that today experience one of the highest rates of crime (268 incidents per 1,000) in the city; it also happens to be where all the tourists go. The earlier jokey comments about being stabbed and head-butted weren’t entirely jokes; they were a use of humour to diminish a genuine problem.

I say none of this to put people off visiting. Edinburgh is an enthralling place and worthy of more than one visit, as you can’t see a fraction of what it offers in one trip. Though, I suppose that’s the reality for many cities. I mention the darker underbelly of Edinburgh’s history and current state because tourists need to possess a full picture in order to travel safely. Travel is never without risk but the more information you have about a place, positive or negative, the stronger the chance you have of staying safe while travelling. It’s not pessimistic, its realistic. In Edinburgh, even the most mundane occurrences can be an open door to poor decisions.

Take the rain, and it will rain, as an example. It offers an invitation, but often a dangerous one. It pushes people into the warm, dry havens of the local providers of hospitality. Whether this hospitality is in solid or liquid form, is where the danger lies. There is no way to calculate how many poor souls have wandered innocently into a public house in Grassmarket, the Royal Mile, or Leith, seeking respite from a sudden downpour, ordered an alcoholic soother, and lost the rest of their day, a huge chunk of their memory, and almost all of their dignity. Scottish pubs are black holes of drunkenness. The good news for tourists who might feel a bit self-conscious about getting ‘off their tits’, as Scottish people say, is that you will never be the drunkest person there. In the rare case that you are the drunkest person in a Scottish pub, you are swiftly given a Scottish spouse, elected mayor of wherever you’re drinking, and awarded citizenship. Welcome home.

Edinburgh has, and always has had, a dark mystery to it; it’s a dangerously alluring, addictive city. It mixes an artistic spirit, carefree attitude, and darkness that, in the right dose, has the power to create the finest art known to humankind but, in the wrong one, can destroy and eviscerate lives. It’s far too easy to get lost in a city where imagination and fantasy is celebrated and applauded as highly as it is in Edinburgh, and the real danger is that those who get lost can always find company. It’s been a problem for many in the past, and, I’m sure, will continue to be a problem for others in the future.

On my most recent trip to Edinburgh, I wandered into a café off the Royal Mile and found myself reflecting on that vividly remembered trip that 11-year-old me took. As I sat, I stared out of a rain-streaked window, notebook open in front of me, pen in hand, mouth agape, dangerous bit of dribble forming in the corner of my mouth. A fun aside, in Scotland, there’s a word for gormless staring that’s accompanied by a vacant look and saliva waterfall and that word is ‘glaiket’ (glay-kit). It is my favourite Scottish word. Please use it. Anyway, as I sat comparing the Edinburgh of today with the Edinburgh of the early 2000s, I reflected on the parts of the city that hadn’t changed at all and the parts that were unrecognisable. The tacky shops full of tat were still there, the Castle still loomed over the town, and Arthur’s Seat was still luring tourists to its deceptively difficult summit before trying to violently blow them off (still not in a fun way). But the wee jewelry shop where I bought my favourite pair of earrings, a bronze pair of Dali’s melting clocks one of which would later be mislaid during a drunken snogging session with a stranger in a Glasgow nightclub, had gone out of business; the local art gallery at which my uni flatmate, Lottie, had shown some of her earliest work had run out of funding and could no longer afford the rent; and the quirky speakeasy-style bar where my friends helped me drink away my first big heartbreak wasn’t to be found, most likely pushed out by the chain businesses that were now prevalent along the street I was sure the bar had stood.

I was suddenly filled with sadness. Although, Edinburgh has never been my home, it is a place that I’ve been visiting since I was a little girl. I’ve had friends and family live here. I was encouraged to be a writer here and thought, for the first time, that it might genuinely be a viable career. Certain locations give you more than others, and Edinburgh has given me a lot. I know it has taken a lot from many, but for me I’ll always be addicted to its particular magic and sorcery.

Please enjoy a photo of my cousin Norah (left) and me (middle) in front of the Scott Monument, 2000. Her sister Maeve (right) later photoshopped herself.