Foals and Chimps - a tour of Edinburgh

I've been to Edinburgh before, in 2005, but I was in no state to enjoy it by the time I arrived.  I'd spent the week cycling there from Newcastle with Ruth, and after spending 5 hours doing laps of Edinburgh looking for our accommodation we weren't in much of a mood for being tourists.  I did go for a look at the castle after Ruth was passed out in bed but it was full of seats for the tattoo or something, so I couldn't get in.

Or even any good art?

The story of the 2005 episode can be found here

A scene of past misery

I've had this week off work, and I've planned and re-planned how I was going to spend it to within an inch of its life, then at the last minute, Ruth and I decided that the umbrella heading of 'getting away from it all' included getting away from each other for a while, and taking a break from our ongoing attempt to retain our title as undisputed 'World Bickering Champions of the World'.

The Royal Mile - Edinburgh

She went off to a cottage in Cumbria on Sunday which left me with a decision to make, and I am terrible at making decisions.  I was thinking I might go back to the West Coast of Scotland, to visit some bits I've previously missed, maybe Jura and Colonsay, but there's some big walking festival on in that area this week.  Seeing the pictures on the internet of last year's event, wizened but fit geriatrics wearing rucksacks the size of houses and walking boots and grinning from ear to ear as they pour out of boats onto the normally sparsely populated islands put me right off.  Also, when I saw the forecast it looked like I'd probably be blown home again anyway.  I took it as a warning that Alex Salmond's personal wind turbine had been blown over in high winds.  I figured the east of Scotland would be less windy, at least for the first couple of days, so I decided to go back and have another go at Edinburgh, 8 years after my first aborted attempt.

I almost booked into the same B&B as last time, miles from the centre of town but then I got an email from Travelodge advertising cheap rooms right bang in the centre of Edinburgh.  That'll do for me, I thought.

My hotel room - between Jenners and Thunderbird 3

I could have gone to Edinburgh on Monday, but I went to York instead, to have a practice run at being in a city on my own.  I did really well.  I bought some new shoes (I'd got yellow paint on my other ones taking stuff to the tip) and I also bought some Foals cds from HMV to listen to while I was away (Holy Fire and Antidote).  I did especially well with the shoes because I could have bougtht some for £50 which didn't fit as well, but for once I paid extra and got the £70 ones.  I didn't even get a sweat on, I just paid for them and left.  In fact, I kept them on, and put the ones with paint on in the Clarks carrier.  I sat down outside Fenwicks for a bit, casually texted Mr Fenwick's grand-daughter who I happen to be a close personal friend of, looked at my shoes, and thought how much better I looked in them.

This is York, not Edinburgh

It was only when I got back from York that I realised Ruth had taken the laptop away with her, the very thing I was going to use to transfer the cds to my phone to listen to while I was away.  The bloody Linux computer I was given, which is excellent in many ways, can't seem to read the phone, and it makes the music files absolutely massive so you can only get about 3 songs on, so that was a no-go.

Can you help me please?  Is this the way to the zoo?

I was so determined to listen to Foals while I was away, that on Monday evening I crawled up into the loft and reassembled an old PC from discarded bits and pieces, to enable the cds to get copied.  Luckily I'd been up in the loft for hours in the last few days throwing stuff out, so I knew where to find the monitor, keyboard, mouse and 3 cables required to effect the copying of the cds.  It was my brother who got me into Foals btw.  I'd never heard of them before then.

Edinburgh Castle - It's on top of a volcano (almost everyone knows that)

As well as her laptop Ruth had also taken the car to Cumbria, so I had to improvise.  I got a Sikh to give me a lift to the train station.  He charged me though (it was a taxi).  I booked a first class ticket from Darlington, it's not much more expensive on certain trains and they give you free coffee and sandwiches, so you effectively get your money back.

Princes Street Gardens - Spring is finally here!

I sat next to a beautiful young girl / woman on the train with dark hair, pink painted fingernails, a yellow hoodie and a massive red rucksack.  I couldn't make out the writing on the back of her hoodie, but I imagined she was part of a rowing team, or a student or something.  I thought about talking to her, but I didn't want to be the annoying guy on the train who talks to you, so I didn't bother.  Besides, she'd bought a first class ticket, so I thought she might want to be left alone with her laptop and her nine other electronic gadgets.  It was probably as well I kept my distance, otherwise I could have microwaved my own head, just being near all the chargers.

Don't look directly at the sun - you could die!

I like Travelodges.  They may be no frills, but they're usually right in town centres, and it's not like B&B where the owners want to know your life story and they want to interview you about the state of the NHS, and where they don't want you to bash the antiques or damage the hand carved wallpaper on your way up to the room with the fucking expensive curtains that are on strings so you don't get hand prints on them, and the bath has got a roll top which is just the most stupid idea ever because where do you put your shampoo?  Actually that was just once, but you get the idea.

Travelodges don't give a shit who you are.  You pay them up front, you turn up, they give you a keycard, they don't ask you a thing.  They give you a room with absolutely no sensory stimulation in it that could have been designed by the Soviets, and they forget about you.  And this week, that was exactly what I needed.  Edinburgh is stimulating enough, without having art in your bedroom.

This particular Travelodge was about 10 feet from the epicentre of Edinburgh.  It was down a back alley in between some bins, but I didn't care.  It was close enough to the centre I could nip back to the toilet while I was out sight seeing if I felt like it.

Princes Street Travelodge

Before I even checked in, I went to the Tourist Information Centre.  Where's the cinema and where's the zoo, I asked?  One was a 10 minute walk away, the other was a bus ride away.  Don't you care about museums? they asked, they're even nearer.  I'll have a look at them when I've been to the zoo, I said.

After I'd checked in to the least stimulating hotel room on the planet (something about it reminded me of Kafka, ie my prison cell, my fortress), I went for a walk in the wind.  The hotel had everything you need from a hotel.  A bed, a hot shower, a kettle and some cups and some tea and coffee.  It also had a TV but I never even switched it on.  I don't go on holiday to watch TV!

The excellent view from my hotel room

I stood around outside the Scottish National Gallery for a bit, trying to get a sense of the scale of the place, and then I offered to take a picture of an Argentinian.  She was trying to do it herself with the timer but her camera kept blowing away.  In exchange she took one for me.  I also took a picture of some Korean guy but he was like David Bailey, he took all the spontaneity out of it by trying to spend hours setting the shot up, and then he wasn't happy I hadn't got his legs in, so I just wandered off and left him to it.  Eventually he roped the Argentinian in to help. It was a good job I met the Korean before seeing Olympus Has Fallen, otherwise I might just have blown his head off with a bazooka.

Here's a picture of me taken by an Argentinian

I felt a bit overwhelmed at first by Edinburgh.  I always feel like that in big places, like cities and mountains.  Also, as well as the usual city noise, there were about 50 million workmen bashing the hell out of the city centre putting tramlines in.  I hadn't eaten on the train, even though free crisps had been available, so I wandered into a shopping centre and bought a Greggs meal deal for £3, followed by a Millie's cookie.  Both the young girls who served me told me to 'Have a nice day'.  Give me a chance, I've only just got here, I didn't say.

I was glad to be out of the noise and the wind and the sun (I remembered everything but sunglasses).  I sat and ate my late lunch between the Early Learning Centre and Dorothy Perkins.  There wasn't much overlap between the two sets of customers.  I guess if the young mums populating ELC ever did shop at Dorothy Perkins they had now abandoned this in favour of buying go-karts and educational drumkits for their offspring.

This could be the title of my autobiography - or anyone else's

I like people watching.  I sat there for ages, feeling relaxed and feeling sorry for some kid who was traipsing along behind his Channel 5 documentary size parents, munching his way through a family size tub of muffins.  His life's fucked already, I remember thinking, it was only later in the week I realised he was probably killing chimps as well with those muffins.

Around 5.30 pm I went back to Kafka's study for a bit, had a shower and a shave, listened to some Foals  and then went to the cinema.  I passed a lot of beggars on the streets.  Almost all of them had a black dog.  I used to have a black dog, who I loved.  I'm glad I didn't have to live outside with him.

My dog died before I got a digital camera, which I regret

I never know what to do with beggars.  Are they for real?  In Edinburgh a lot of them had signs which said things like '100% genuine beggar' and 'I really am homeless'.  These affected me a bit like signs in the supermarket which say things like 'Our beef isn't full of horses'.  It just added to my mistrust.  This may be a poor statement on my humanity, but there you go.  Also, I got pretty good at blanking beggars in India, even the ones that used to hold hands with me and rub my leg.  I did eventually give a small amount of money to one beggar in particular, and I selected him partly because he didn't even have a dog (maybe he's saving up for one)  I'm not even capable of looking after a dog properly, so it seems a bit irresponsible to have one if you haven't got a home.

At the cinema I saw Oblivion with Tom Cruise.  Although the Moon and most of the Earth had been destroyed in a post-apocalyptic future, they had really nice white clothes and shiny apartments in the sky and Looper it was not.

Anyway, I thought it was excellent.  Then I ignored some more beggars with dogs and went to bed, although I had a Yorkie first from the vending machine in the Travelodge lobby.

Vue Cinema Edinburgh - now with extra Giraffe

I woke up at 6 am on Wednesday feeling really hungry.  By 7 I was showered and in McDonald's eating a sausage McMuffin, which came free with a greasy hash brown (actually I think it was the other way round).  I also ordered coffee and orange juice.  The whole meal only cost about £4.  McDonalds was so close to the hotel I could have ordered it out of the window.  I'd intended to go to the zoo first thing, but I didn't want to get there before they opened so I wandered up the castle for a look around, took some panoramic photos in the rain and then I started meandering down the Royal Mile.

Edinburgh Castle Car Park in the rain

By the time I got to the Starbucks halfway down my new shoes were wet and so were my jeans.  It was 8 o'clock in the morning.  Things weren't going well.  I went in to Starbucks, ordered a massive bucket of coffee, and went upstairs to look out of the window and dry out.  And it was great.  I really started to relax.  I had a book to read, about a vicar working in a supermarket, a fantastic view out the window, and coffee.  Loads of wet cyclists with wet kids on the back in hi-vis ponchos kept bouncing past on the cobbles and I was safely indoors.  As I sat there relaxing I remembered the stress of arriving in Edinburgh by bike 8 years earlier and having my fillings loosened on those very cobbles, and being completely lost.

Starbucks in Edinburgh - they sell coffee in buckets

By 10 am it had almost stopped raining so feeling dried out and recharged I went off to get the bus to the zoo.  I stopped at a couple of museums on the way, but that didn't hold my attention for long because all I could find were pictures in gold frames of 300 year old people in wigs, who all seemed to have exactly the same face.

I caught the bus to the zoo, which cost me £3.50 for a return.  The young blonde female bus driver didn't remind me at all of bus drivers at home.  She even shouted me helpfully when it was my stop, even though there was a massive sign out the window that said 'Zoo'.

This was the toilet at the zoo

By the time I got to the zoo, it was nearly 12 and raining heavily again.  I paid my 16 quid and went in. The girls on the desk were in a bit of a flap about not being able to show me the Giant Pandas.  I'm not bothered I said, I didn't even know you had any.  For the first half an hour in the zoo all I could find was a wet dog hiding so I went for a sit down and a sandwich, in the monkey cafe or some such place.  It was pretty expensive, but a sticker on the sandwich assured me it had been made on the premises.

Lunch at the zoo - I chose a table with a plant on it

It was actually quite nice, and the young girl who served me was still brimming over with youthful enthusiasm and keenness.  As I sat and watched the rain bouncing off passing schoolkids I wondered whether I'd wasted my time and money coming here.  Then two wet women with two small wet children came in and sat at the next table.  A boy and a girl.  The little boy was called Walter.  They were so enthusiastic about what they'd seen and they couldn't wait to tell daddy, and their unbounded joy totally blasted me out of my cynicism, so I thought I'd go and have a proper look.  I saw them again later, and they were doing some more marvelling at stuff, talking about Edinburgh and all its majesty.  A fragment of a half man half biscuit lyric came to me: 'see how we yawn, at your bile and your scorn, it's a beautiful day, Peace on Earth has been played, make a noise with your toys, and ignore the killjoys, 'cos it's cliched to be cynical at Christmas.  It wasn't Christmas, but you get the idea.

Some penguins, doing what penguins do

I looked at some penguins for a bit, and then I watched some lions sleeping, until the big male lion woke up and if he was wanting a staring competition he didn't get one because the glass between us didn't look anywhere near thick enough for my liking, so I pretty much ran off.

The lion that stared at me

Most of the animals were behind glass, which made the photographs come out quite badly, but the zebras were just behind a fence, as they were considered low risk, so I got a few pictures of them which are better than the rest.

Zebras - not considered to be overly dangerous

I liked the monkeys best.  Probably because they're most like me.  98% to be exact.  It was in the chimp house that I found out that the chimp's habitat is being destroyed to make biscuits and toothpaste, and I felt bad about it, even though I'm not the one cutting the trees down but I do sometimes eat cheap biscuits.  I'd rather have the chimps.

Chimps and Veg

My enjoyment of the chimps was a little bit affected by a young girl talking into a dictaphone (or whatever the modern equivalent is).  She was actually commentating on the chimps.  'It's 2.05 pm, Eddie is urinating, Stella is eating some fennel, Archie is throwing a banana, 2.06 pm Archie is eating some broccoli, now Stella is urinating'.  That sort of thing.  Not sure if she was a zoo employee, or just a keen amateur, but I wished she'd go away.  Which reminds me of a joke (it's not really a joke).  Q. What's the difference between a chimp and a human?  A. When a chimp looks in the mirror he knows he's looking at a monkey.  The joke that isn't a joke works just as well if instead of the word human you substitute the word commentator.

Here's me playing Spot the Monkey

After the chimps I drank my orange juice from McDonalds which I'd saved for later ie now and I went back into town.  I had some Harry Ramsdens fish and chips served to me by a dour female Eastern European, who pointed out as if it was a novelty that I could have them with salt and vinegar if I wanted.  I was having them with salt and vinegar 40 years ago while your parents were still street urchins in Vilnius I totally didn't say, and then I went to the cinema again.  This time I wasn't so lucky with my film choice.  The film I went to see on Day 2 was Carry on up the Whitehouse, also known as Olympus has Fallen.  It absolutely had to be a spoof, except no-one had told the stellar cast and they were all playing it dead straight.

It was absolute carnage.  It was like the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, but for the whole film.  It was like a much bloodier version of Die Hard, or Air Force One.  People weren't just getting shot, they were getting bazooka'd in the face and having their heads cut off with helicopter blades, and having bombs put down their trousers.  It was horrible.  The two Scottish girls next to me were gasping and nearly passing out with it all, as was I.

Quick, let's blow some shit up

Amongst the most ridiculous parts were the fact that Gerard Butler had been fired from his job 18 months ago, but he still knew all the access codes for everything in the White House. and the combination for the President's private safe.  But the most stupid part was at the end.  Not since Roger Moore dressed as a clown in Octopussy have I seen such a clumsily handled defusing an atomic bomb scene.  (I wrote about that one here)

Poor old Gerard Butler (who is almost as old as me) only had a minute left to save the Earth but to do it he had to input a code that was about 77 characters long, including hashtag and back slash and all sorts of stuff, both in upper and lower cases.  You could see him thinking 'Oh, for fuck's sake, I've just killed 47,000 terrorists, now America's going to be completely destroyed because of my lack of keyboard skills'.  After the film I had another Yorkie, went to bed, and fell asleep listening to Foals.

View from Calton Hill

The next morning (Thursday) I was up at 6 am again, paid for an extra night in the Travelodge because I was liking being in Edinburgh so much, showered and was in McDonalds again for 7.  Same breakfast.  Greasy hash brown, sausage mcmuffin, coffee and orange juice for later.  I went for a walk up Calton Hill, it was still a bit windy, but sunny too, and with a bit of rainbow thrown in.  The views were amazing, I took about a million photos including some photos which I took outside the American Consulate without being shot at.

Outside the American Consulate

Rainbow! One of the advantages of getting up early

Part of the reason for staying another day was that I wanted to go to the Museum of Modern Art on a free bus to see Death to Death and Some Mothers Do Ave Em or some such exhibition about the human body.  On the whole I prefer modern art, to paintings of George the First, but not this time.

Whatever you do, don't get the free bus

The first free bus was at 11, so like Wednesday I spent another couple of hours in Starbucks on the Royal Mile and did pretty much the same as the day before.  Reading, looking out the window, relaxing and drinking coffee.  A line I came across in the book I was reading was this: Hurry takes us out of the present, and makes monsters of us all.  I thought back on my past holidays and how often I'm working to a schedule, and trying to get somewhere, and how that turns me into a monster.  A monster with a timetable.  here's an example from last year

So the question I've been asking myself this week is this:  Should I even be on holidays with a timetable?  Often with holidays the times I look back on most fondly are those where I'd completely stopped and wasn't trying to get anywhere.  Mevagissey Harbour wall reading Murakami, Charlestown harbour having a coffee with Ruth and Hudson, Craster out the back of the pub eating crab sandwiches and looking at Dunstanburgh Castle, having a big fat burger at Felixkirk on Royal Wedding Day.  There's a joy that comes from movement, and from arriving in and passing through places, especially on a bike, but there are also times when what's most required is to just to sit and do nothing.  To look out of windows and to not have an agenda and not to have anywhere to go.  And this week I needed that more than the moving around stuff.

Nice building, shame about the art

I spent so long looking out of windows I missed the 11 am free bus to the Modern Art, and with an extra hour to spare I went to the National Portrait Gallery instead.  Inside there was the House of Annie Lennox, which was like the Seventh Circle of Hell, and then I saw the best Art I saw all week, although it was photography, so I'm not sure if that counts as art.  It was lots of black and white photos from the thirties by Edith Tudor Hart.  Even if she was a Russian spy, I definitely recommend it.  Nobody's perfect.  Seeing all the grim thirties portraits brought home to me how lucky I am.  In terms of times and places to be born, I pretty much hit the jackpot.

Here's me being a kid in the 80s

I was born at the end of the 60s in England, just before the moon landing.  I grew up in the 70s when there wasn't much else to do but run around playing football, go to the library a lot and watch westerns and Harold Lloyd, so I never got massively overweight as a kid.  I learned to develop an attention span for boring things, by not having a lot of different things going on at once.  Although we've had a few small wars, I've never had to go and fight the Nazis or any other fascist dictators.  I've always had enough to eat, and technology only really took off when I was getting on a bit, so it never dominated my childhood.  Rather helpfully, I grew up at a time when you didn't need a laptop and an i-Phone to get through a two hour train journey.  Just being on a train was exciting enough.  Whatever is outside a train window it's got to be better than watching re-runs of Bonanza, Skippy and Champion the Wonder Horse.

One of Annie Lennox's suits - Welcome to a World of Pain

Anyway, back to Edinburgh and my desire to see Modern Art.  I did manage to catch the second free bus of the day, but I wished I hadn't.  The inside of the bus was only big enough for action men and barbie dolls.  Not only were my legs crushed as soon as I tried to sit but the bus was hot and full of other crushed people.  Also, Jeremy Vine was on the radio.  If Annie Lennox was hell, this was a close second.  The outside of the Modern Art museum was pretty cool, but the art inside was absolute crap.  It was all drawings of penises and old lilos and sculptures made out of piss and breasts made out of wood hanging from the ceiling and I wished I hadn't bothered.

Here's me glad to not be on a bus anymore

Instead of waiting for the free crush-a-bus, I walked back into the city and went to see yet another movie, this time Trance by Danny Boyle.  No bloody idea what was going on in that one, but I got to see Rosario Dawson naked, including her front bottom, so it wasn't all bad.

Walking back into town - better than the bus

My cinema visits had been getting earlier, in fact my whole week of Groundhog Days were starting earlier and earlier.  Tuesday I was at the 8 o'clock cinema showing, Wednesday it was 6, by Thursday I was getting in at 4.  I had kept forgetting to have lunch so before Trance I went and had a three course meal at Ben and Jerry's (or it could have been Frankie and Benny's) before the film.

I was so knackered from the early mornings and all the walking that I went to bed at 8 pm on Thursday.   I walked so much every day the actual soles of my feet were sore every night.  But it was a good kind of sore.

What? - No caption?

Since I'd arrived on Tuesday, when I'd felt a bit overawed by the size and the noise of Edinburgh, I felt by Thursday that I'd really started to relax into it and feel at home.  I'm no good at following maps and guide books on paper, I prefer to wander round first and build a mental map and then compare it to the paper one.  The more I started to understand the layout of the city, the more I started to like it.  Being able to mentally place the Castle and the Royal Mile and Calton Hill and the cinema and the museums and all the other places I'd been in relation to my base at Princes Street, and to each other, I started to feel like I belonged.  I've had similar experiences in other cities, Bath, Wells, London, Leeds, Duisburg, Hannover, Essen for example.  Rather than finding a place on the map and deciding to go there, I like to do the going part first.

Friday morning I was up even earlier.  I had trouble sleeping past 5 am.  Again I went to McDonalds and had the same easy breakfast, although I was enjoying it less each day.  Also, the old guy sitting near me who I'd seen two days before with his mass of grey hair held together with some sort of mesh was freaking me out.  He might have even been a woman, I wasn't sure.  I don't think he'd bought any food, but he'd stocked up on the free miniature milk cartons and he was drinking them like jelly shots.

Castle

The good thing about the breakfast was that it kept my hunger at bay, and kept me fuelled up for more exploring.  I went back up to the Castle and in contrast to Wednesday it was an absolutely beautiful sunny morning up there.  I had another go at taking the panoramic pictures and these ones looked a lot better because you could see the distant hills a lot better.

Now that's why I call a Panorama

This time I walked the whole of the Royal Mile, and ended up at the Scottish Parliament building at the bottom of the hill, where I saw a duck and sat down and listened to some more Foals.

The Scottish Parliament

Here's a duck I found

As I sat in the sun feeling relaxed, I remembered being here 8 years earlier, tired and lost at the foot of Arthur's Seat in dire need of a map, without a clue how to find my B&B.  It felt better, being back again, knowing where I was this time, and with no particular place to go.

My second home in Edinburgh

I walked halfway back up the Mile, and for the third morning in a row ordered a big bucket of coffee from my favourite Baristas at Starbucks.  It was later in the day than my other two visits and some people in suits were in there having business meetings, either in person or on the phone, talking about emails and spreadsheets and network cables, and saying things like 'to all intents and purposes' and 'taking the process forward' and 'blue sky thinking'.  The only blue sky thinking I was doing was thinking I'd like to go outside and see some more blue sky.

Here it is

Being alone in a city for a few days, I did feel lonely at times and I noticed a lot of other people spending time alone.  I wondered if any of them were lonely too.  But it's so hard to tell, because these days a lot of people who are spending time alone are so absolutely laden down with gadgets that it's impossible to tell if they even feel alone, never mind lonely.  If you're getting constantly battered with status updates from everybody you've ever known, are you ever technically even on your own?

My phone is so old I could only do one half of the social networking thing on it.  I could send messages out, and sometimes I did that just to keep me from bursting with sensory overload, but my feedback loop was missing in that I couldn't see what responses I was getting, if any.

I went to the Tourist Information Centre a couple of times to use their internet, but this was only to find stuff out and to book another First Class ticket home, I didn't really have enough time to talk to anyone. I wonder if it's a sign of the times that an internet shop by the escalator in Waverley station has shut down.  With everyone and their dog now using smartphones, they probably went out of business.

Princes Street Gardens in the sun

It's like a park, but it's right by the shops

Like York, Edinburgh still has a HMV, and as it's a big one, so I thought I might be able to pick up a third Foals album to listen to after I got home, and I managed this successfully.  The third one is called Total Life Forever and I'm listening to it now.  Later I'm going to climb into the loft to transfer it onto my phone.

Although Edinburgh had really grown on me, by Friday lunchtime I was glad to be leaving.  It was filling up massively with weekend tourists and I'd enjoyed it so much during the week, when it was relatively quiet, I didn't want to have my memories ruined in the crush.  I'd already been crushed once this week.

Goodbye Thunderbird 3

The train home was the best First Class I've ever been in.  I had a seat which was both an aisle and a window seat and as well as free coffee, I also took some free crisps this time.  I sat opposite a young geeky looking man who was studying an AAT textbook.  He looked at me when he sat down with a look which seemed to say 'I've seen you but I don't really want to talk to you'.  I felt pretty much the same, so I wasn't offended.

Darlington is only 2 hours away from Edinburgh on the train, but arriving back there, it seemed so much smaller, duller and less exciting than Edinburgh, and although I felt like I got out at just the right time, I still miss it.

I got the train back to Thornaby, where I had to mix with the second class masses again (less laptops) and then I got another taxi home.  Not a Sikh this time though.

I got home and in my absence a team of cleaners had been in and cleaned my house from top to bottom (this wasn't entirely unexpected as it had been pre-arranged), and there was a £20 voucher waiting for me, for winning Team of the Month at work.  It's a Cineworld voucher.  Both these are exactly the kind of surprises you want when you get home from holiday.  So much better than a mouldy fridge.

It probably sounds as though it should have been, but this holiday was not in any way sponsored or endorsed by Starbucks, McDonalds, Travelodge, Millie's Cookies, Greggs, Vue Cinemas, Cross Country Trains, Frankie and Benny's, Edinburgh Zoo, HMV or any other big multinational companies.  Maybe it was just because I was in an unfamiliar place, that I chose to fall back on things where I knew exactly what I was getting.  I'm not sure.  What I did find though is what I already knew really, which is that all those places are only as good as the people who serve you when you go in, and everywhere I went I got service with a smile and people wished for me to have a nice day.  And I did.  I had a nice day every day, and I came away thinking of Edinburgh not so much as a holiday destination, but more of a home from home.