STOCKBRIDGE

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SUNDAY STROLLS

Sunday is a special day for me. It is the day when, despite having a long to-do list, I ignore all those nagging chores and instead spend the whole day doing small nothings - those things that would make me happiest. A bath, for instance. Sunday afternoon, when the rain pours, that is the perfect time for a bath. One of those baths where you end up reading three chapters of your book as the water becomes tepid, and the pages get all crinkled where you turn them. 

Or perhaps a walk, Sunday is a great day for walking. One of the most enjoyable combinations I have experienced in life is this: Sunday, walking, in Stockbridge. Stockbridge is that small area of Edinburgh that was once a village, outside of the city walls, and is now a village, inside the city walls. It has a distinctly bohemian feeling, having long been the abode of painters and poets, boutique and brothel owners. I love to walk through Stockbridge, beside the waters of the Leith, to the market to buy myself a warm pie. I eat it while still walking, this time towards the botanic gardens where I can watch the squirrels and smell the variously coloured roses... 

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When I walk, I like to sing to all the birds and the small critters, and to the river or the trees. 

GREYFRIARS KIRKYARD

I spend a lot of my time in cemeteries. They are such beautiful places - peaceful to some degree, what with the silence, and the grasses and the pathways. The cemeteries back home looked a lot like the kirkyards in Scotland: all jumbled. As if they were a rumpled bed-sheet, scattered with the crumbs of tombstones. Here and there, some flowers peek out of a glass jar, but most of the graves are too old to be visited - and they lay bare like bones worn smooth. There is always a knarled tree that grows from the broken mausoleum, and that one area, below a small dip, where no-one can see you, and you begin to feel that you are too isolated. I like to be a little scared sometimes; it is invigorating to walk farther and farther back into an old cemetery, till you lose sight of the gates, and the path becomes a muddy slip in-between tall trees. 

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This being so, I was instantly drawn to the Greyfriar's kirkyard, in Edinburgh, and I spent a lot of my free time wandering between the headstones.

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THE LEGEND OF GREYFRIARS

Most of the people that come to visit Greyfriars will have heard of Greyfriars Bobby - a small dog, whose tombstone they come to visit.

But then there are those of us who have heard of another legend, the one concerning the poltergeist.

Greyfriars has long been plagued with stories of a poltergeist, an unusually active one. The ghost, often thought to be George Mackenzie - an administrator for King Charles II, is so active that he has been called the best evidence for supernatural activity. He (if it is a he) has a long track record:

Strangling young boys who taunted his grave. 

Haunting his own house.

Coming back to the cemetery when his grave was desecrated, and scaring the crap out of people.

Clawing and scratching under clothes, often with no pain involved. 

Creating bite marks.

Creating cold spots, measured at under minus 20 degrees celsius. 

Knocking people out cold. 

Naturally, being a weirdo and all, I wanted to investigate.

MY OWN LEGEND

My own story does not involve any horrible occurrences of scratching or biting. Actually, it is a pretty tame tale, and I still feel a little doubtful about the whole thing.

I had joined a tour of the cemetery, partly for the fun if it, but also because I wished to see the Covenanter's Prison, which is closed to the public due to the many occurrences of people fainting in that area. 

The tour guide was prancing about, and rambling a little, and we were stood about fifty meters from the locked gates of the Covenanter's Prison. I began to feel like someone was watching me, out of the corner of my eye I could spy them: a tall man, about six foot, was standing very close and staring right at me. 
 

I thought to myself: this is odd. Who would do such a creepy thing. I turned to look at him, and saw just for a moment, a figure. No, not a figure, more like a head and shoulders standing six feet tall or more, and towering over me now. Then it evaporated into the night. I was freaked, but chalked it down to my eyeballs not working. 

Then I returned, same tour, different guide. Nothing happened this time, thank goodness. But I told the guide my little story anyway, and he asked me to come write it down in the log-book, a book of people's experiences. After flicking through that book for a while, I noticed something strange: about the time that I saw my figure, he began cropping up in other people's stories too... Before this, the only accounts were of physical feelings. But now people were actually seeing something, a thing they described as: 'a black shadow of a person, about six foot tall.'

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SWEET EDINBURGH

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POETICAL

adj. /pō-ĕt′ĭ-kəl/

1. fancifully depicted
2. idealised

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Every so often, I feel overwhelmed by the sheer wonder of the world. Not by some extraordinary event, mind you, but perhaps when I am driving in my car, I see the sun and reflect on the miraculous nourishing energy it feeds the earth with, and then I cannot stop grinning. 

A lot of people who know me would tell you that I am a nostalgic idealist. And they are one-hundred percent correct. But, I am also a realist, because no person who realised that the amazing fact that we can breath, see, experience, love and even suffer, no person who realised this in the core of their being could tell you that life is generally crap. It is a miracle that we are alive, that any of this exists. Each tiny cell, each atom is a marvel. So why should I not grin like an idiot with happiness over something as trivial as a windy day, an old book, or a ripe pumpkin???

Combine my innate idealism with the everlastingly poetical city of Edinburgh, and you have the recipe for a perfect storm of positive energy.

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THE ELEMENTS OF A PERFECT STORM
OF POSITIVE ENERGY

Puffy cumulus clouds reflected in church windows.

Dead autumn leaves on the sidewalk, perfect for crunching underfoot.

The ever-changing weather, always a surprise. I love when it really pours.

A proper cup of tea, at LoveCrumbs, my most favouritest tea-shop in all the world. The small sachets of tea are pierced with a stick, hung on the mismatched china, and served alongside a huge thermos of extra water, to make sure you have enough tea while you finish a chapter in your book. Also, they have cake.

Window boxes brimming with jewel-coloured petunias.

Crowing ravens in the kirkyard.

A bounty of small pink tinged apples on a tree by the road. Of course I waded through the thistles to go pick one; it was very tart, but refreshing!

The turning of the wheel, as the days get more brisk, and the leaves seem to become golden overnight.

A beautifully ripe pumpkin, all gloriously dashed and mottled. Also, pumpkin soup!

Those rare antique bookshops that provide seating, allowing you to sit and peruse the wisdom of the ancients for indeterminate amounts of time.

The smoking chimneys near my university, and the way the smoke seemed to meld with the fogs that hung about.

Sunday walks along the riverbanks.

The view of the roofs from the top floor of the library, at dusk.