The Meadows of Edinburgh, naturally, reminded me of the Maidan in Kolkata.
It’s this giant stretch of grassy open space right in the middle of the city, part of it a golf club, part has tennis courts, while the rest of it is used by the public to read, play music or barbeque on sunny afternoons. It is a versatile and welcoming space.
I was happy that the Airbnb I chose for my two-week stay in the Scottish capital was right next to it.
When I was planning my (slow) travels through the United Kingdom, and considering places to stay at, everyone, without exception, said Edinburgh. I’m glad I paid heed to their advice.
I was there during the busiest time on the city’s calendar — August. This is when you have the best days of summer, and along with it the Fringe Festival, which is touted as the world’s biggest performing arts festival and takes place almost all through the month. At the Fringe, performers — standup comedians, magicians, singers and theatre groups, to name a few — come from across the UK and many other countries to showcase their talents in indoor, outdoor, paid and unpaid shows across the city.
The best time also means the costliest time. For my two weeks, I paid 170,000 Indian rupees for a medium-sized room with a single bed, a decent-sized (and pretty) workspace and a private kitchenette. The washroom was shared. The USP of the property was the location. It was on the third floor of a building built in the 1800s, which means no elevators. The location, Marchmont, was very central and very residential, which I loved.
I quickly created a daily routine. Because of the time difference, I started work around two-thirty in the morning and finished by half past noon. Since I didn’t work at a stretch, I slept in between my shifts and even though I didn’t sleep at a stretch, I got enough cumulative sleep every day.
Before landing here, when my old friend Marzia got to know I didn’t know anyone in Edinburgh, she introduced me to Kelly, an Australian artist who calls Edinburgh home. I texted Kelly after I reached, and she warmly invited me to the exhibition of her works at the Fringe festival, and one afternoon, after I got done with work, I went to see her. I absolutely loved her art, a lot of which focussed on buildings in Edinburgh. (Several months later, after I got back home, I even bought a couple of her paintings).
It happened to be Kelly’s birthday in a few days and she invited me to join some friends of her’s who were planning to get together to celebrate the occasion. I happily accepted.
We met at a Chinese restaurant — it was the birthday girl, and six others. We consumed a huge amount of food and drinks, and when the time came to pay the bill, it turned out we were going Dutch in the Scottish capital. I had expected it to be Kelly’s treat, but with my travels, I have come to adapt quickly and not have fixed ideas about how things should work in the places I visit.
After the late lunch, we walked down to a venue close by to see a show that involved bubbles — from tiny to gigantic — and two performers who shed layers of their clothing as the show progressed, in the end, to remain only in their underwear, performing acrobatics while blowing up lots and lots of bubbles. And all this, with loads of innuendo.
One half of a gay couple in our group was not impressed and after the show, he told me, “I apologize to you on behalf of Scotland for having to witness THAT.”
It was hilarious — both the show and his reaction to it.
On the way home later that evening, I encountered a blond Goth woman at the city center carrying a giant cutout of the Undertaker, and handing out leaflets for a show called Chokeslam.
The show was a skit based on the professional wrestling business. It had been years since I’d stopped following what the Hulk Hogans and Randy Ortons were up to, but I used to find all that quite entertaining when I did. So, I decided to go to this show.
I bought a ticket for Chokeslam online later that night and went the next evening. Turned out, the person handing out the fliers, Tegan, was the one doing the solo act. It was an autobiographical show on the performer’s obsession with wrestling entertainment, and how it had impacted her short-lived marriage, and life in general.
It was interactive, engaging, emotional, and a lot of fun at the same time. There were only six of us in the audience that particular evening, but it seemed to me the show grew in popularity over the years, and Tegan brought it back to the Fringe Festival the following year.
I chose my third show at the festival by looking up one that was happening closest to me. It was being held at a church, around a 10-minute walk from my stay. Named ‘Show and Tell’ and performed by a man and a woman from the US. This was their first time at Fringe and they had only two shows — and this was the last of them. The show I attended, again, had a very small audience and the performers were happy to have me over. It was about the “show and tell” exercise kids do at primary school when they bring a particular thing to class from home and tell the others about it. The two performers had gotten along personal diaries and objects, told us about them, and inspired the audience to do the same. We had a short talk/mingling with the performers at the show’s end.
On another evening, Kelly, the artist, walked me to a beautiful hotel called Prestonfield House. It has huge grounds which, she said, had peacocks — even though I didn’t see them. But I did see the resident highland cows.
We sat on the beautiful balcony in the evening and drank wine and chatted until it got too cold. We shifted to the extremely opulent dining room where we resumed drinking our Argentinian Malbec while Kelly plotted how to have a painting of her’s hung somewhere in this beautiful property.
