Postcards from Foggy Edinburgh

Wandering through rain. Light-splashed pavements. Hot coffee in crowded cafes. Spiked silhouettes underneath the jagged skyline. A day that felt neither Saturday nor Sunday, just some unspecified date close to Christmas in gloomy, fog-bound Edinburgh.

Whenever one plans a day out in Scotland you must bear in mind that the weather will conspire against you. A festive trip to the Christmas Market, replete with a crisp layer of frost, is a foolish scene to set your mind’s eye upon. Picture instead, the blurred outline of a Ferris wheel, the sky damper than sheep’s wool, your nose red and runny and the continual, irritating presence of people apparently enjoying themselves despite the weather.

You find refuge, inevitably, in a bookshop. The kind with floor to ceiling shelves and ladders to reach lofty tomes. The kind of bookshop that serves tea by cosy window nooks. The only thing missing is a cat, you think. Or cake. Your mind is meant to be on Christmas presents, but your eyes beetle greedily over cloth-bound editions of Poe and nature books for an eye-watering sum. Greenvoe calls you - a tale set on a blustery isle where the motto, “opposition to blind progress, not blind opposition to progress” was never more apt.

Cobbles slick with mist, spires slick with rain. Out of the bustle your soul calms, hackles flatten. You can smile at strangers again. Folk don’t seem to mind the rain, and so you don’t either, putting up with damp, prickly hair the way a sheep might. It’s only rain, quite bonnie really. And it makes everything look better. The streets empty.

Fingers thaw around mugs of coffee. A delectable marriage of stovies, pastry and beer scents the market air. Garish lights spin by Gothic spires. Strings of light quiver, pearled with mist. Dark-winged crows glide in and out of sight. So the weather conspired; let it. You found something better than frost, unexpected moments that don’t fit on a postcard. In the end it was a good day out, the best.