It is March, perhaps near the 27th,
winter is still clinging in the air.
Flight over from Dublin, a short hop
to
Prestwick Airport (my fist time on a Jet!) then
the train rolling through to Glasgow,
wandering new place,
Queens Street to
Princes, train again and out to
Edinburgh.
The fields roll by, a few towns, Hay-market, then you pull
into a tunnel. As the train leaves the tunnel just before
entering Waverly station the castle wall towers above you,
the train scrapping by its base.
my destination , The Bruntsfiled Links Hotel.
Waverly is situated in a deep gully
between the old town(medieval)
and the new town(Edwardian). The gully used to
be a swamp and they used to drown witches in it for
selling bad sets of wooden false teeth (i kid you not).
I hoist my bag onto my back, walk up the
steep incline into the city night,
shrouded in fog, orange illuminated by sodium street lamps.
I ask for directions, get pointed, walk and walk.
The walls of the city are looming over me, nothing is clear,
it is a dream place, and it is not revealing itself to me.
I pass a cinema, they are playing Natural Born Killers,
a film that is currently banned in Ireland.
The mist shrouds around the dark buildings,
I am on a walkway through some park, the buildings
retreat and I walk and walk, the mist clinging to
the footpath makes it sparkle.
Eventually I reach my hostel, A jovial collection of people,
a jigsaw being completed, my reservation waiting.
Settle in and sleep. Await my first day in Edinburgh