This is, if nothing else, the lesson learned in travel.
Every city passed through exhibits itself as an aggregation of the talents, flaws and foibles of the flawed mass that make them up. And so, it seems, to like a place is simply to choose your preferred mix of success and failure.
Illustrative, the sunny spring walk through 'New Town' Edinburgh.
Stern grey stone buildings, city-block squared rising 4 stories from cobbled streets.
Protected behind, inside the ring of stone, laneways, stables, houses, businesses and gardens at the most comfortable of humans scales. Wandering these laneways (while remarking that Melbourne was only a few hundred years behind even the Scots in embracing something they are now intent to be defined by) it is hard to believe that the same society that spawned them remains fatally afflicted by an abusive obsession with alcholic self-assault; subsists on food that is fried, battered, salted and processed beyond all recognition; and still maintains the most beautiful of its prime garden spaces in mid-city as private rentals, innaccessable under lock and key.
A day to ponder this in rare, crisp sunshine...
scrumming slow-roast suckling pig roll breakfast, and ales and whiskies in secret alleys and lanes.
A last whiskey with old Robert, to round the last few consonants remnant of a lifetime of mariners shoreside consolation.
Packing for the train to follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment