Quite early on in our time in the UK, we spent a week in Edinburgh, staying at Heriot-Watt University on the outskirts of the city. I made full and frequent use of the bus service, and spent a lot of time wandering around the old parts of the city. When the conference was over, we hit the tourist bits together. The mix of old and new is quite beautiful. We were still fairly new to things like castles and cobbled streets, and Edinburgh pleased us greatly.
What do I remember? And what would I like to pillage for this haibun?
- Edinburgh Castle, alone on its rock
- the narrow little streets
- beautiful Georgian Crescents
- driving through the football crowd, after a match (quite scary)
- the Van Gogh paintings in the art gallery
- Holyrood House, and the bloodstain of Mary’s Italian scribe/lover
- the ruin s of Holyrood Abbey
- the Poetry Library!
- The site of the new Scottish National Parliament buildings, running way over budget (as in ‘add an extra zero’), but still seemingly a source of pride, rather than embarrassment …
I’ve already managed to create a poem from this trip – one of my Venery sequence; A Murder of Crows. I came back to the room one morning after breakfast, and noticed these
huge black birds on the balcony opposite. (We were on the second floor.) As I watched, a couple landed on my balcony, strutting and wiping their beaks on the railing. More kept arriving, taking up position on gutters and powerlines and balconies until it felt like something from Daphne du Maurier. Very weird. I was told that they were most likely to be crows, rather than ravens.
But I think a haibun is in order. Walking around those glorious old buildings, soaking it in. The history, the mad little alleys, the whole feeling of purpose and … joy, almost. In a somewhat dour, appropriately Protestant way, the city seemed happy with where it was going, with its place in the world. Devolution has played a big part in that, I’m sure. I loved it.
Now I just have to start writing it …
Tags: Edinburgh, haibun, preliminary notes, work in progress
