The Adventures Of... Anyone who's been to Edinburgh by car with me knows that the journey is just as exciting as being there, in fact, I'm less likely to get offended by people in the car because they might throw me out and I'd have to walk home from Kendal say, or Moffat.
However, if you've ever been anywhere with me, you'll appreciate that I'm always willing to do things that are probably best advised against. Like buying really manky marshmallow beefeaters and policemen for the sole purpose of taking a photograph of them with their heads bitten off as if to say "Impose regulations about bins in my society, will you? Take this! And this! And, Oh my word that's foul. Its like eating a toad". And so it goes. I still have their sugary corpses somewhere, but I'll dispose of them soon. Before they take over the world. Or my bag. Or just the bag of sweets that they're in. The service station we picked those up at (Lancaster, I believe) was a shade disappointing, actually. If you see a bird like this, strutting around a car park, a few things go through your head, most notably that you could fool a lot of people by winding down your window and shouting "KEVIN! If you don't morph back we'll have to leave you here!". Needless to say, Kevin didn't morph back (Well, Princesses have all that trouble with frogs, and I wasn't going anywhere near this vermin) and we were on our way. To the next service station. And then the one after that, shown here obscured by a Parma Violet.
This one is a service station we have a history with and, although it disappointed us in regards to Brian Turner sandwiches this year, it didn't disappoint in the massive field and areas for the playing of a bit of foos. We never got to walk round the lake last time out, either, but this visit we made the most of the fact that we could go round, see one of the most ludicrous things I've ever seen in a service station (right) and then speak to some very Scottish people on the way through the back entrance to look for the not-there Brian Turner sarnies.Good in so many ways. Bad in a few others.
We lunched sitting on the river on the right, with a view of the hill on the left apparent throughout. If it was a higher definition photograph, you'd be able to see a tractor going forward and back and eventually appearing on the hill directly in front of us (not shown) with such rapidity that we almost fled from the field. As it happened, we had Edinburgh to get to with only one more stop-off, and that was meant to be the height of brevity. We wanted a photo of the wonderfully-named Dolphinton sign, to replace last year's, and we got one, but better than that were the football goals and playground in Dolphinton. It truly is a dream of a place to live. Great name. Football goal with nets (and a wonderful few goals for me, too - we drew, if I recall 6-6) and some weird basketball hoop/post thing to go with noughts and crosses on wheels. Friendly competition wasn't going to become a theme, but it was going to happen again later. Good fun. Not as good, however, as the most important thing going on in Edinburgh during our time there. The World's Hobos, and I truly mean the World. The USA were there, Namibia, Ukraine... everyone and everywhere was there and though it was painfully hot, they were there in good spirit although the game on-going here, Portugal-Russia was very much a case of the skillful Portuguese and their Djibril Cisse hair-a-like being booted from pillar to post by the less skillful Russians. Portugal won but were less impressive than the Chinese, apparently eliminated by the Norwegians. Good team, I presume. After sitting in the sweltering heat watching homeless people kick both a ball and each other for near enough an hour, you need a large cold drink. Luckily, Edinburgh provides.
(note the second storey window behind it). It was after this sighting we started to hunt down food. Fish and chips were the order of the day, although after literally an hour of hunting for a chippy and Del P asking many people and getting many different directions, all but one wrong, and that with only a closed venue, we finally wound up at the Jekyll and Hyde. From here on in on Thursday there are no photographs, because it would be stupid to take them once the drinking portion of the day set in. The Jekyll and Hyde is a wonderful pub with the most confusing toilets and they serve a delightful vegetarian chilli, I discovered. They also serve pints of Miller which, for me, is always a good thing. So we started there. Then we went off again, looking for somewhere else. We found countless other pubs, some great (Captain's Bap, the one that served Adnam's) some less great (the one where I selected people) and wound up sitting somewhere above the railway station at about half past two having been soundly ejected from the last pub we were in due to our tardy entry. This was the only real unfriendliness we came across, to be honest. There was the impeccably hot-panted girl and her friends from who we managed to steal a sarong and a photo album - OK, they were giving them away, but still, why would two guys need a sarong? - there was the guy who gave me a high five, there was the guitarist that we gave a (in retrospect) rather lame clap to on the way out. I remember finding only one pint of McEwan's, too. It was, when we found our way back to the hostel, a good night. We got to go down Jacob's Ladder back to the hostel, up past the car park we were using (Where, for no discernable reason I was shouting "P-e-e-e-e-edroooooooo" into some wasteland and building sites) spotted some hobo-related signs, of which more later, and generally staggered back into the hostel thinking it would be nice to have a cup of coffee. It would have been nice, I maintain, but I spilled my coffee all over the chessboard and had to wipe it all off with my t-shirt. Del P spilled his cup of tea all over the floor and left it. I got another coffee, and beat him at chess. Booyah! We woke up the next morning feeling not too hungover, quite good. OK, not good, but determined.
. While I think of it, I was in the top bunk here, you know, the tidy one. I kept everything on the bed with me at all times for fear of losing anything in the guy below's stuff. I think I got away scott-free although I did drop my keys early doors. Disappointingly, we'd miss the hobo event on Sunday.
I was quite excited by the prospect of vagrants, too. Ah, well, you can't win 'emall. Of course, if you were looking for hobo related things in Edinburgh last week, you could and would win them all. Couldn't move for them, which was very encouraging unless you were the Portuguese homeless team, in which case it was because Russians had been hacking at you for some time now, which obviously, is a less good thing. Less good things had been rare features of our visits to Edinburgh, the main disappointment being that we never found Jackson's Entry last year, having to settle for Boyd's (and Hammermen's) along with countless Closes and Mowbray's Slap (which was genius, and we didn't find this year. :-() We bagged Boyd's Entry early on Friday, and we HAD to find Jackson's because the meeting we were therefore was on Jackson's. We did find it, and I spent a while sat there during the afternoon, too, watching the BBC News come in at BBC Scotland.
Score two, to us. Oh, yes.
After I'd dropped Del P off for his meeting (we'd spent a little while in the park, roughly here) I became something of a selffulfilling prophesy. You know what I did. I wandered around a bit, found a paper to read, bought a bit of music - was well chuffed to find Once Upon A Time In The West's soundtrack and Academy Fight Song. So, I bought those and went next door for a pint. They were showing, I'd noticed, the first test (of which less later) was showing, so I went in for a pint, well a bottle of MGD and a pint of soda and black, and to watch the cricket. As soon as I'd payed and set up on the jukebox Hoggy took a wicket. That was the only wicket I saw. It was that kind of day, really. After I'd left there, I went for another drink, accompanied by my paper, which was already drastically out of date, especially the cricket reports, which were all I read whilst sat in the chair at the back right of this table.
Its a Cruzcampo table, for the uninformed, and not very comfortable it was too. Although I did save 18p on my drink for showing up before they were ready and forcing people who didn't understand me to get me a drink. That drink allowed me to wander back to Jackson's Entry, get lost below the castle, ask the police for directions and then find where I needed to be in the nick of time. Of course, he was late, so I watched the news before we headed off to the beach at Portobello. I wrote Christopher Bairstow's Ass in the sand, as I have to do now, but the photographs were full of shadow because neither of us had the cunning, as I think back, to go round the words to take them with the shadow behind us. I feel a little stupid. We'll see how Del P's come out, eh? One thing he will have, mind, is a great photo of Lamancha. I just have the road sign but he insisted on taking a photo of himself riding me like a horse. It put paid to my back, believe me, but it was great fun. A lot more fun than the hideous 'macaroni pie' I ate shortly afterwards. Don't do it kids. The journey down was full of merriment, singalongs - the ubiquitous 'The Adventures of Cristiano Ranaldo' of course - and general trying to stay awake before we got back in at about midnight. It was, as ever, a fun-packed, though tiring road trip, but well, well worth it. Photos may improve when I see Del P's. We shall see.