NotJustAHatStand

Nowhere else in the world do you go out for a sandwich at lunchtime and:

1. Come back with a handful of flyers for shows you'll never go and see.
2. See a dance troupe performing on a traffic island.
3. Get flyered by the star of a show.
4. See a group of people (who are presumably in a show) dressed not only as cats, but as specific kinds of cats (namely Siamese, Persian and Calico).

Edinburgh really is a mad place in August.

Labels: Edinburgh

I work in the Old Town of Edinburgh, and occasionally someone takes it into their head that North Bridge is as good as place as any to end it all. Or just to have a think about ending it all. One person took this course of action on Tuesday. North Bridge is a major thoroughfare in Edinburgh, and it's also unfortunately a popular spot for 'jumpers'. When this happens, the authorities close the roads to stop rubberneckers from gawping at what's going on. It all looked a bit chaotic from my office window - the traffic was diverted along Chambers Street, pedestrians were turfed out, and the emergency services were all over the place. Thankfully, they managed to persuade the woman down. The road was reopened after a couple of hours and everything returned to normal.

Until 4.30pm today, when a colleague rang to say she'd heard there was another jumper and that North Bridge was closed again.

I normally go home via North Bridge, but today I thought I'd nip to the shops before going home (as I knew the traffic would be chaos), so I walked down Fleshmarket Close to Market Street, intending to cut through Waverley Station.* When I emerged at the bottom of the Close, there was a police barrier, and a big crowd of people milling about and staring upwards. I looked casually up at the Bridge, and there was the man standing on the ledge of the parapet right in front of me (the bit in the very centre of the picture below), gazing down at the crowd of people below him.



Although I knew there was a jumper on the bridge somewhere, I wasn't expecting to see him so closely and I felt like a bit of an intruder. I heard people around me saying 'if he was gonna jump he'd have done it by now' and one girl on her mobile saying disgustedly to someone, 'no, he's not even jumped'. I didn't hang around. It felt a bit gruesome - the crowd, and this solitary man standing on a ledge above.

I was reminded of an incident back in April - the Boy and I had gone to the Scotsman Hotel (the building at the far right of the above picture) for a drink one Saturday afternoon and I looked out of the window and saw a man standing at the very edge of the parapet, staring straight down at the ground below. I got a bit of a shock and was in a bit of a tizz about what to do (I'm totally the kind of person you want around in a crisis), when I noticed lots of high-viz jackets on the bridge, and realised that the police were already there.

On that occasion the man stayed on the ledge for two whole days. Alan Sharp, of Random Burblings, wrote about this at the time and managed to take a picture of the jumper-who-didn't-jump. In the end the fire brigade managed to pluck him (the jumper, not Alan) to safety after he'd fallen asleep.** They apparently weren't sure if he ever intended to commit suicide, or if he was staging some kind of one-man protest.

Anyway call me mental, but this dude today looked familiar and I wondered if it was the same person. As I walked through Waverley Station I tried to imagine what was going through his mind as he perched up there on his parapet.*** I wondered if he really was some poor tortured soul who saw no other way out of his problems, or a bored anarchist with a penchant for clambering about on high ledges. Or just someone who enjoyed the feeling of power that inevitably comes from watching a major city thoroughfare closed off just for you and the ensuing disruption at the busiest time of day.

I don't know which he is, but I certainly hope he gets down safely, whatever his motives were for going up there in the first place.

*For those of you who don't know Edinburgh, North Bridge overlooks Market Street and Waverley Station

**How anyone could fall asleep on a tiny ledge 100 feet above an enormous glass roofed structure is beyond me, but I guess he must've been knackered after two full days on a ledge.

***I also wondered if he was going to come crashing through the glass roof above me and kill me outright too, but that's neither here nor there.

Labels: Edinburgh

I love Edinburgh but you have to have a strong constitution to live here. It likes to scare you, see?

There's always the odd surprise waiting round the next corner. Yesterday I was walking along Princes Street, in that Novemberish way (i.e. at a 30 degree angle against the howling wind) when all of a sudden there was an almighty explosion, just off to my left in the Gardens. I nearly flung myself to the ground for cover, but thankfully I remembered I had a cream coat on and decided to take the hit standing.

Once my breathing and heart rate had returned to normal and I realised I wasn't dead, I quickly figured out that the noise was a fireworks display, which was part of the Christmas Light-Switching-On Ceremony. Now I'm used to the big ol fireworks they like to put on to give the tourists a good sending-off at the end of the Festival, and at Hogmanay, but I wasn't expecting this one on my way home from work and I nearly wet my pants. Thankfully I wasn't the only one to get a wee start, and when 200 people stopped in their tracks to see what was going on over there, there were numerous shunting incidents to distract people from my yelp of shock.

And as if major deflagrations aren't enough, there are other things that will scare the bejeesus out of you during a typical day in Auld Reekie. Despite living here for 26 years, I still sometimes get a fright at 1 o'clock when the dirty great gun goes off (although like most Edinburgh residents I try not to show it in front of the tourists - we like them to think we're immune to it). All the ghost stories that keep the Royal Mile in business are fine in August when it stays light till 9pm and the place is crowded with Japanese tourists and their cameras, but in November when it's dark and you have to pass Greyfriars Kirkyard or take a short cut through Fleshmarket Close? Not funny. Then there's the man who paints himself white and stands in front of Jenners pretending he's a marble statue (SO freaky). And if you have the misfortune to wander into the midst of the opening of the Next sale? Well, you can incur serious injury (or death) if you don't stay on your toes.

Labels: Edinburgh