Songs from a castle

This week I took a minimum-wage temp job in a part of Edinburgh best known for its inhabitants on heroin. The recruitment agent said, ‘Wear jeans and no jewellery,’ and ‘Don’t worry, it’s not like Jo’ burg’! I rode there on a pleasant cycle track at least, but to brighten a day of data capture and paper shredding, I walked in the late afternoon towards the Old Town, with its cobbles and its castle, to find thousands of others doing the same. They were on their way, and so it seemed was I, to hear Leonard Cohen live in an open-air concert at Edinburgh Castle. The singer-songwriting poet is now 74 and, after a 15-year absence from the stage, tickets for his world tour concerts are like gold. Those on the minimum wage, or who hadn’t secured a £150 (R2 500) ticket, stood near North Castle Wynd looking up at the turrets and hearing ‘Suzanne’ and ‘Halleluja’ coming down on the wind. When I walked home through the streets of the Old Town I could still hear his voice drifting along South Castle Wynd, through Grassmarket and into Cowheadgate before fading into Candlemaker Row to the tune of ‘So Long Marianne’.

Hang on for the Outer Hebrides

The Outer Hebrides must wait, not to be visited, but to appear on the blog. Since returning from those lonely western isles I’ve been consumed by Edinburgh and the practicalities of normal life and finding work. It’s not all been shock and reality. I’ve escaped for a surf at Pease Bay, seen thousands of seabird chicks on the Isle of May, been swimming in Victorian baths and steaming in Portobello’s Turkish hammam, been mountain-biking in Musselburgh and I’ve spent an evening at a ceilidh dance being swung and spun into really quite blissfull dizziness. I’ll get to the Outer Hebrides: ‘From the Butt to Barra’ I think I’ll call it.