by Mark Steel
From the 1500s the Grassmarket and Cowgate were built lower than the rest of the city, in a valley where cows could be led, and the poor bustled around at this level, nicely contained where those above could look down at them from the bridges and hope there was some sort of powder they could put down to stop an infestation of them creeping up to their level.
Edinburgh is a city with a prestigious university, which makes the student population a mix of those delighted to be there, and those whose parents dropped them off saying, ‘Look, we tried to get you into Oxford and Cambridge, darling, but the beasts said your results weren’t good enough. Now here’s your spray, cover yourself in it all over if any of these working types brush past you and you shouldn’t suffer a reaction.’
It’s almost unnecessarily stunningly dramatic, with a huge castle and a mountain in the middle of the town. You emerge from Waverley station and look up at the cobbles that lead to the castle, and it feels as if you’re in an adventure that won’t end until you’ve found a relative long since believed to be dead who lives in a room in an alleyway called Cribbet’s Close, making sporrans for the Edinburgh Woollen Mill Company, and you have to inform him that you’ve received a letter stating he’s the new King of Bulgaria.
Current town planners must wonder what vandal designed the place like this, when castles are so obviously supposed to be on the edge of the town, with maybe just a wall surviving as one side of the Castle Shopping Centre.
It’s not just the castle, the middle of the town is all dramatic. Every few yards off the main streets there are musty alleys rumoured to be packed with ghosts, and at various points there are flights of chunky concrete steps with no sign of where they lead, that seem likely to pass through a cloud and emerge into a world of goblins run by a talking squirrel.
Opposite the station is the Walter Scott Monument, a mesmerising structure shaped like Thunderbird 3 and the sort of building through which Harry Potter escapes from evil lengths of bindweed.
Most of the accommodation in the centre seems to be in flats in grand stone terraced buildings with old solid buzzers for each apartment outside on the wall, firm and slightly green through corrosion. You press them with the assumption that they can’t possibly work, as they’re hundreds of years old, or that they will cause a nearby bookcase to swivel round and reveal steps leading to a cavern full of treasure.
Inside the building is a flight of steps with two flats on each floor, all with kids’ bikes outside chunky doors set in thick immovable stone. There could be an earthquake in the centre of Edinburgh and these places would barely creak.
From a road by the main swimming pool you can walk up Arthur’s Seat, the dormant volcano from where you can look across the city like a Greek god. This is especially exhilarating because climbing a steep, rocky mountain releases a chemical in the brain that makes you a smug self-righteous bastard for the rest of the day. So the woman in Scotmid grocers might ask, ‘How are you today?’ and you’ll reply, ‘I’ve been up Arthur’s Seat.’ Or if instead she says, ‘Have you got anything smaller than a £10 note?’ you’ll say, ‘I haven’t had a chance to get much change. You see, I’ve been up Arthur’s Seat.’
Everything in the town is ridiculously sturdy. Buildings such as Fettes College and the Assembly Rooms are mighty, solid, permanent landmarks, made up of chunky pillars and vast black doors that will still be there long after a nuclear holocaust or if the sun collapses.
Every town has its rich and poor, but Edinburgh has the highest concentration of millionaires in any city in Britain, and in some areas the greatest levels of poverty. The United Nations judged it to be one of the ten most dangerous cities in Europe. From the centre of town this seems inconceivable, unless sometimes a team of archers emerges from the castle and fires arrows randomly into Princes Street Gardens.
If you’re not part of the level that’s dangerous, Edinburgh offers a constant cosy revelry. Whatever the time, when a bar closes, someone will call out the name of one they think is still open, and a few people wander round there. When you arrive it’s packed, with thirty people squashed over the bar waving wads of Scottish pound notes, and a guitarist playing in a corner while his drummer’s sat on the table with a conga.
I tested this theory once when I was at the festival, with results that have almost certainly guaranteed that whenever it is I expire, it will be two years earlier than if I’d stayed in that night.
I met Mark Lamarr at the Assembly Rooms in George Street at six o’ clock in the evening, and we stayed at the bar until it closed, when a stranger shouted the name of a pub in Cowgate that was staying open late for anyone willing to take part in the céilidh, a Celtic country-dancing evening. This is the sort of thing that’s normal on a night out in Edinburgh. Word spreads that there’s a bar at the aquarium on Dundas Street and they’re having an all-night tadpole and cider party, so everyone drifts up there and carries on. It seemed the most obvious response to go to the new venue, without considering that it would be part of a harrowing documentary if the narrator said sombrely, ‘At one point things became so bad, to get another drink they were willing to humiliate themselves by country dancing.’ So we country danced until the place shut, then got a cab to Leith.
Leith used to be a separate town, a mile or so down the road from the main city. People from Edinburgh would walk there with their families and suitcases for their holiday. Now it has bars that stay open when the country-dancing pub shuts.
That night, it got to four in the morning and I felt that strange sense of achievement, that while all those lazy bastards are asleep it was lucky someone put in an effort to keep drinking. The drunkenness gives way to a murky tiredness you mistake for being philosophical, and when it starts to get light you think, ‘I’ve done it. I’ve stayed up all night, I’ve done something with my life.’ But the bar shut at five and someone shouted the name of a pub back in the centre that opened early for the postmen.
There are a few pubs like this in Edinburgh, most famously the Penny Black, and for years I accepted that they did indeed open early for postmen, until I realised that this made no sense, as postmen may get up and start their round early, but that doesn’t mean they need a pub open, unless they’ve got a very strong union that’s negotiated a working day in which they all get up and immediately go to the pub.
Still, these places are famous for being neighbourly and lively at five in the morning, so when we got there I put some money in the jukebox, but instead of my choices seven consecutive Eagles tracks came on. I stood up defiantly and called out, ‘Who keeps putting on the bloody Eagles?’ Because if the Civil Rights movement taught us anything, it’s the importance of having the courage to make a stand.
‘I did,’ said a huge man, with a shirt that suggested he was a lumberjack. And by way of an explanation he added, ‘I – LIKE – the Eagles.’ He walked over, looked me in the eye with one eye while the other pointed at a variety of random points in the room, as if it was a laser on a rifle searching for its target. Then he squeezed me and insisted I sang the chorus to ‘Hotel California’ with him, although the jukebox was now playing ‘Take it to the Limit’.
We sat on the fag-burned plastic seats that were perfect for the situation, and a man on his own in the next seat fiddled in his pocket, maybe for his wallet, or some tobacco, but it clearly mattered a great deal to him, and we were intrigued. Eventually he pulled out a voice machine, a box that enabled him to speak, which he put to his throat, and in the tone enforced by his condition, that metallic 1960s robot sound, he said, ‘Wanker.’
‘What? Me?’ I asked.
‘Wan-ker,’ he said.
Now I was glad he’d found his box as quickly as he did. Imagine how awkward we’d have been feeling if we’d had to crawl round the floor, poking under seats and making sure he’d checked all his pockets, then eventually found it had fallen inside the lining in his jacket, and I’d patronisingly said, ‘There we are, I knew we couldn’t have lost it. Now, what did you want to say?�
� And he’d put it to his throat and said, ‘Wanker.’
I asked what had upset him, and whether he was a fan of the Eagles, but he just spoke drunken gibberish, through a voicebox. I realised that one of the problems of speaking through these things is that it’s such a palaver to get the box in place, with everyone watching and waiting, that what you’ve got to say has to be something dramatic and poignant to justify the tension. I don’t suppose people in need of those boxes ever put it to their throat and say, ‘Dearie me, I keep thinking it’s Tuesday.’
There is a world where this is all normal, and the portal to that world is only accessible in the all-night drinking sessions available in Edinburgh.
From there we clocked up all the ingredients of the all-night drink. We chatted to a woman who burst into tears, then a student threatened us with a fork. By now the people of the town were at work, having a whole new day, whereas for us it was still yesterday, creating the philosophical dilemma of whether we were in tomorrow.
We moved to an Italian bar that served breakfast, and then on to the filthiest, most squalid bar we could find, on the Lothian Road, where no one else was in, there wasn’t and never had been any light, and which was possibly part of Edinburgh’s contribution to science as the place where someone invented TB.
And the landlord came over and told us off for swearing. It was the nearest I’ve ever got to the feeling I expect you have if you get to the top of Mount Everest. I’d gone as far as I could go. I was in one of the most uncouth places in the universe, and had been told off for being uncouth.
Later on, at around four in the afternoon, everything went fuzzy and my head collapsed on the table. I was probably like that for two minutes, until the landlord grabbed my hair and pulled me up, and said, ‘We don’t have many fucken rules in here, son, but the one we do have is if you canna stay awake you have to fucken leave.’ So we decided to be sensible and call it a day, as it’s always healthy to have an early night.
While I take a small amount of responsibility for this debauchery, the main culprit was Edinburgh. It does it to you. There’s an undercurrent of bohemian ribaldry that’s always trying to lure you, as if it’s saying, ‘You can’t go to bed yet, not when I’ve gone to all the trouble of getting a mountain and a castle in the middle of the town.’
And there are the festivals, for theatre, television and books, and sometimes you discover one you’ve never noticed before, like the International Sword-Swallowing Festival. They last through all of August and dominate everything, so every bus and taxi and wall is covered in adverts for shows, the main streets are clogged with enthusiastic performers trying not to look desperate as they offer leaflets for their show, and every back room is turned into a theatre. I went to a show once in the basement of someone’s house, in which there was a set of cricket stumps and an actor in cricket whites delivering a monologue that started, ‘The Ashes – a cricketing prize, and yet they remind me of the ashes of my poor departed father.’ Then he played a shot and ran to the end of the room and back for two runs, and then did a bit more. Throughout it all he must have been terrified his wife might come in and say, ‘Sorry love, I’m looking for the weedkiller.’
Thousands of people in the city rent out their homes in August, to performers and tourists. It must feel as if the soul of the place is let to the festivals. For some people it must be like being parents who have let their teenage son have a party in the house, as they hover about trying not to get in the way, but can’t help peering round the door occasionally to check that no one’s tipped up the Scott Monument.
And there’s another level of Edinburgh in August, that exists alongside but in a different dimension from any of those others, which is the international tourists, thrilled by the Tattoo and the bagpipe players who play all day at the station, as ridiculous as if all London rail terminals employed someone to play ‘My Ol’ Man Said Follow the Van’ on a broken piano, and tell everyone who got off a train that Reggie Kray was a diamond.
These visitors filter down the Royal Mile that leads from the castle, and presumably buy the dolls in kilts and tartan jumpers that pack every shop in the road. A friend who lives in the city told me she’d actually heard an American say, ‘You’d think they’d have built the castle nearer to the shops.’
Edinburgh pulsates again with all these layers for New Year. From the day before New Year’s Eve the centre of the town is redesigned, with barriers and cones placed along the edge of every road, signs telling everyone where they can’t go springing up in all directions, and official-looking trucks drifting by and stopping every few yards for twelve men in uniform to get out and do something important with a red and white plastic portable wall and some tape. If anyone wanted to stage a coup in Scotland they should do it on New Year’s Eve, as you could demolish the Parliament and everyone would assume the tanks were part of the preparation for Hogmanay.
These rules were introduced in 2005, when the event ceased to be free and you needed a ticket to get into Princes Street, and a special ticket to get into the gardens. Early in the evening stewards clear the whole city centre, unless you’re in the sort of uniform that entitles you to place cones in the road, and no one’s allowed back in without the appropriate ticket. Edinburgh becomes like a giant rock gig, with everyone entitled to move about only as far as the colour of their wristband allows. One year my family considered hiding, as firework-display stowaways, by locking ourselves in the toilet in Starbucks overnight, or knocking a truckload of cone operatives unconscious and stealing their uniforms, because otherwise when the festivities start, if you haven’t paid to stand in the street you have to leave.
You can understand how the corporate world must be infuriated by Edinburgh, as so many of its main attractions are natural and free. You can enjoy a wholesome Edinburgh experience by admiring the castle, the Georgian architecture, the cobbled crescents and eerie alleyways, and no one makes a penny. There must be all manner of think tanks and committees dedicated to correcting this injustice. They’ve probably considered electric fences and a tollgate on Arthur’s Seat, a ‘vista charge’ by which cameras spot anyone looking up while in Princes Street and send them a bill (although as a gesture of goodwill anyone being carried into an ambulance on a stretcher will be considered exempt), and an atmosphere supplement, involving seven bands of charges payable as you leave the centre, which depend on how genial the atmosphere is in any given two-hour period, ranging from £4.50 when there are three or more bagpipe players out, down to 30 pence if there’s an incident with a student and a fork.
The clone-town process that dominates most cities has found ways of seeping into Edinburgh. The Waverley Shopping Centre is a classic gloomy and generally disliked huddle of depression attached to the station, which drones to the beat of Magic FM oozing past the Vodafone store and between the paninis, so it always seems like late on a Sunday afternoon in there, and when you emerge into the street in front of the station it will be the only time in your life that you mouth the words, ‘Aah that’s better – bagpipes.’
Similarly, the new cinema complex in Leith Walk looks as if it was put together in a factory on an industrial estate by the branch of MFI that builds cinemas. Then it was slotted into the street by a couple of blokes who delivered it in a van, after which the local manager had to put together the giant Bugs Bunny, using an unclear diagram and a packet of bolts, and build the counter where you buy a bucket of lemonade.
Or there’s the issue of the trams. If anyone in the city speaks to you about trams you become aware that the full phrase is ‘tram fiasco’. To say, ‘Edinburgh tram’ without the ‘fiasco’ is a grammatical error, like referring to the world’s most famous painting as the Mona.
By the start of 2011 the scheme had used up 78 per cent of its budget in completing 26 per cent of the system. The main route appeared to be from the airport to Leith; the adverts would presumably say: ‘From the airport a few miles outside the city centre, the new super-efficient tram system will take only 40 m
inutes to transport you deep into the heart of somewhere else only a few miles from the city centre.’
£600 million was paid to contractors to little effect, while the whole town was dug up and left with holes all over it. A typical letter in the Scotsman said: ‘If they go ahead and finish this project we should have the trams painted white and named after different elephants, such as Nellie and Dumbo.’
It would be hard to imagine a more universally hated local policy. If a town council insisted on tigers roaming loose in children’s playgrounds, or contracting out car-parking enforcement to the North Korean army, it would be more popular than the upheaval of the half-built wreckage of the tram project.
It could be argued that this is fitting, as it was Edinburgh that laid out much of the ideology of the modern world of business. In the eighteenth century Adam Smith began lecturing in the city about economic theories to explain the workings of profit. David Hume wrote his philosophical outlines for this new world of business there. Then Edinburgh figures such as James Watt and Alexander Graham Bell made their crucial breakthroughs, that can appear as classic capitalist success stories, so making a few bob with little regard to how it affects the poor might seem central to the city’s spirit.
But the scientists, physicians and theorists of this time were known as the Edinburgh Enlightenment, a part of the European movement to explain each aspect of society in rational terms, rather than relying on the view that anything could be reduced to God’s will, or that power was due to whoever was born into a higher rank of nobility. The city flowed with their notions of this grand new world. Adam Smith wrote that part of the working man’s wage must give him access to adequate leisure, and they held a vision of a society in which everyone would admire and participate in the ingenuity and artistry that underpinned modern humanity.