This being, for me, a writer's holiday--back at the Edinburgh Fringe for 10 days of seeing shows, writing reviews, roaming the city--I figured what the hell, morph my travel notes into blog form like everyone else with a spark of egoism. So here Rob and I are, arrived at 10 am local time, which for us felt like 5am east coast time with very little sleep and high on airline food, bad coffee and tea. Have just regained some measure of humanity from long hot shower, and feel inclined to ramble a bit, so see the Extended Entry for more. This will probably be the longest entry of the week, since I will soon descend into mad review-writing scramble, and stagger around the flat at all hours gazing with fear and trembling at my friendly little VCU Dance laptop and notes from the most recent performance...
The Richmond airport was a divine study in types, begun in glorious black and white by the sight of two goth kids out front, pale faces and black pointy clothes, looking like they had been attacked by The Cure, most preoccupied with managing their spikes. What a joy to watch the businessmen glance sideways at that, and then, moments later, the contrast of a huge chiseled man in shades passing by in the exact image of GI Joe. Or a CIA agent. Cartoon, for sure.
Inside we had a lady all in pink with red heels, roaming listlessly, and my favorite (am always particularly fascinated by that ubiquitous breed, lone businessmen in airports, perhaps because they are so foreign to me), the tall, becoming-heavy man in white polo shirt with earpiece phone so he appeared to be talking to himself, strolling largely, slowly along the center of the main walkway near our gate, spreading his tremendous, leisurely businessman self into everybody's way. Also saw several very large people with very small feet, and I was particularly observant, yesterday, of how so many people carry themselves with pain inside them that emerges in their gait or posture.
In Atlanta airport, of course we meet a dancer-woman from CA who is traveling to perform at the Fringe (her first time), so we veterans give her the low-down, especially since she's performing in a venue we worked last year. She gave us a flyer for her show, which was hilarious not even having left the US, since being at the Fringe means being deluged with flyers for shows. But usually you are actually AT the Fringe when that happens.
As the plane landed in Edinburgh, I realized I have become quite attached to this place--the city, the landscape, especially after driving through it last year to the Isle of Skye--and was warmed in the blood to be back. Something about the mixture of foreign and familiar, I think, once you become acquainted with a place not your home, but regularly visited.
Small sights from today, a pigeon feather spinning on the sidewalk outside a coffee shop (winningly named Black Medicine). Remembering how much flowers love it here, so that, as Kat pointed out, you navigate through the neighborhood by those peach colored roses, or the nasturtiums tumbling out of a low fence, or the gigantic rosemary shrub-tree, or the love-lies-bleeding flinging spent blossoms to the sidewalk in a fit of despair. Yes, am jetlagged and slightly overwrought.
Back in a flat, with the Live Arts crowd, on Spottiswoode Road in a beautiful quiet neighborhood. Perched now up in a bay window, perfect for writing, with seagulls shrieking outside, soaring down the streets making sounds like laughter, or cats, or babies crying. You can watch the shifting cloud-lit sky from here, and everybody else's bay windows too.
Have bought tea, and sharp scottish cheese, and beautiful raspberries to eat with cream, and some remarkably dense wheat bread. Also obligatory oatcakes, and I know some scottish honey is soon to follow. AND the compelling, addictive dark chocolate shortbread rings that make me glad we walk everywhere here.
Picked up my hot pink press pass, now destined to live at the bottom of my bag (certainly not around my neck--prefer to go incognito) from the Fringe Press Office, a delightfully chaotic hole in the wall, with ringing phones and conversations at cross-purposes, almost like old-school newspaper office. And, most thrilling and ridiculous of all, we both bought extremely cheap pay-as-you-go cell phones, to facilitate rendez-vous after separate wanderings. Oh dear, how in-the-now we can now appear, even in a foreign country (does Britain count?)--almost as jet-setting as the cell-phone-businessman in the airport.
Absolutely exhausted, in for the night as Rob heads out for a beer at the Speigeltent, scene of much drinking and wildly strange bands from eastern Europe, and cabaret acts featuring beefy young men (or women) in tight jeans wallowing in bathtubs or hanging from trapezes. And such. More soon.