As my friend Clare says, come August I turn into a lemming and instinctively migrate back to Edinburgh for festival time.
People are always curious what the experience is like. So I thought I’d keep a diary this year, and share excepts with you. This is Part 1.
Thursday. London.
6am. Land Heathrow Terminal 5 on British Airways. Didn’t sleep even five minutes. I’ve finally given up the hope Air Canada will resurrect the direct day flight from Toronto to London. In October, I’ll test out BA’s JFK-LHR flight. A stopover in New York to visit friends feels like a good option.
But still buzzed by the horizontal strip of pink that had teased at the cloud line, sandwiched by golden hues. Is there anything more beautiful than dawn at 40,000 feet over the Irish Sea?
Our Scottish pilot could have been rehearsing for a one-man Fringe show.
We are soon to depart to London Heathrow and if that is a surprise to you, now would be a good time to say it. We have a nice juicy tailwind but Heathrow doesn’t open to 6am so that is when we will be landing.
Vegetarian pre-ordered meal complete rubbish (why can’t all airlines be like Air France?). But new TM teacher David was right – meditating on take-off and landing makes you feel calmer about being locked in a tin can with no escape. And, unlike a G&T, there’s no yuck afterward.
7am. Heathrow Express to Paddington, black cab to the Haymarket Hotel. Room not ready for check-in. Eggs and avocado toast, then a long walk through Trafalgar Square, St Martin’s-in-the-Field, Piccadilly, Leicester Square, SoHo, St James. So tired my peripheral vision is gone.
8:30am. In a bathrobe and slippers, dragging out my departure from a treatment room where the hotel has kindly allowed me to shower. The bastard guests aren’t checking out of their rooms very quickly, so I finally dress and set myself up with papers on the couches. (Note to self: bring swim suit next time.)
11am. Nudged awake by a concierge. I seem to have toppled sideways and fallen asleep. Check cheek for signs of possible snoring as I follow him upstairs. Luggage already in my room, personalized welcome note, water and aromatic candle waiting. Tuck myself up into the amazing bed and I’m gone.
3pm: Slept, dressed and on the prowl again. First stop, rooms 41-46 at the National Gallery (Impressionists and Post-Impressionists). The crowds almost as large and disengaged beyond their Instagram-able moment as in The Louvre. But I’m able to visit my old friends on the wall, then head down to the café for tea, followed by a quick nip through Hatchard’s Bookstore.
7pm: Silva Restaurant, Mayfair. A members dinner of the Trouble Club. I joined this speakers group in 2020 started by a young woman named Ellie Newton. Membership dues are very modest, and I admire her commitment to dialogue across ages, topics, backgrounds and political ideologies.
Tonight’s conversation focus is ‘beginnings and endings.’
I’m seated with Sharon, Calcutta-born and raised, long-time Londoner, originally a singer then trained as a lawyer in her thirties (to the chagrin of her artistic family). Christine, born in Brazil, raised as a teenager in the US, been in London for decades; senior financial compliance executive. And Kiran, who divorced her husband, moved to London and launched a podcast for women reinventing themselves after fifty.
A fascinating conversation and new friends; we’ve already got an email group going.
Nothing I love more than walking in London at night. Head back to the hotel via Regent Street, Picadilly and down Haymarket. A stream of humanity (truly global in nature) strolling and eating cream at 10pm.
FRIDAY. London + Sleeper Train.
9:30am. Breakfast (eggs and avocado toast again) at 45 Jermyn, after an early morning walk through St James and Green Parks saying hello to the water fowl.
Now, I’m listening to black swans of another sort. I come here to eavesdrop on the finance bros, British style. (Modulated voices, higher level of analysis.) Asked the waiter to sit me right next to my targets; they are sufficiently self-possessed to not notice anyone else, so I lean in.
One is culturally Chinese, the other Caucasian. Same posh accent and vernacular. The first seems to be the boss, owner of a hedge fund. He feels the City is on its knees post-Brexit, that Covid lockdowns decimated personal initiative, and that an inheritance tax to alleviate the housing crunch and financial inequity isn’t such a bad idea, provided a) it’s under 35% and b) the Duke of Westminster is first in line to pay.
Oh, and China’s got a massive liquidity problem no-one’s talking about which may bring down the global economy.
12:30pm. Now she’s checked out and with ten hours to kill until her train, the concierge has set up Ms Walsh in the conservatory with some tea.
5pm. More tea, this time at Picturehouse Central with Evan Placey, a playwright and screenwriter who I met originally through DD. Great to catch up and debrief about the TV industry. Evan is as funny and supportive as always. He’s off back to Ontario for a family cottage visit as I head north to Edinburgh.
9:50pm. Why won’t this interminable play [Til The Stars Come Down] end? Five stars by all the major outlets. Certainly insightful about family dynamics and very funny, but I can’t bear women screaming at each other on stage. At least I only paid £25 for a rush ticket.
It’s running long, and I’ve a taxi booked at my hotel to take me to the train. So I bail (guiltily, happily); the strum and drang of the sisters will have to continue without me.
11:45am. Ahh, the Caledonian. Tucked up into my wee bunk bed reading, as the train slowly rocks out of the station.
Saturday. Edinburgh.
6:30am. Train attendant banging on my door to deliver the oatmeal and fruit. Open the blind. There she is, Scotland. Half my DNA sings as fields of heather interspersed with stone cottages roll by. And I think of my mom, always. ❤️
9:10am. Roll off the train at Dalmeny station. Light drizzle. My friend Clare and her wonder dog Ziggy meet me, we walk through the beautiful Ferry Glen woodlands to the high street where her 275-year-old stone house (St Helen’s!) overlooks the water.
It’s Ferry Fair in South Queensferry. The town’s excited. And decorated, with a stage awaiting the crowning of the Queen (a local child) and her court.
The first recorded historical mention of this event dates back a millennium. During the reign of King David I in the 12th Century, Queensferry had the status of a burgh town and as such was allowed the privilege of holding a weekly market and an annual fair.
It’s a lovely tradition but this year I’ll miss it. Clare and I are right into the thick of it with two shows at the EIF (the main festival as the Scots call it).
We hoof it through the crowds to catch the Lothian Bus#43 into Edinburgh (30-45 minute ride depending on traffic). But Ferry Fair has run roughshod over schedules, so we hightail it further to the train station.
That’s a 15-minute journey into Edinburgh Waverly – the only train station in the world named after a book series. And whose massive stone clock outside is set five minutes early so travellers don’t miss their train.
Clare has a genuine interest in others and thus excels at casual conversations. It’s really lovely.
There’s Keith who runs a children’s school program and is learning guitar. And a couple in their 70s/80s who are heading into the city centre for four comedy Fringe shows that day, of a total 41 shows they are taking in.
And it’s Oasis time, so bucket hats everywhere.
3pm. Interval of Make it Happen – a play about the financial crisis of 2008 and the rise/fall of the biggest bank in the world, the almost 300-year-old Royal Bank of Scotland. The wine-drinking Edinburgh audience is abuzz.
They came to see Sandy Grierson play Fred the Shred (the Scottish CEO who had the nerve to be an outsider from Paisley AND destroy the bank). But the fact that former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is both a character in the play and an audience member is exciting.
Nothing I love more than juicy political satire on stage. James Graham, the playwright, has taken artistic liberties with movement and motion and Adam Smith – as one does in creating dynamic theatre that aims for greater truth not reportage – which will no doubt earn him criticism. But I loved it.
5:20pm. Politely push our way through the enormous crowds in the blazing hot sun (not often you say that about Edinburgh, but it’s heat wave time), to get to our next event. An opera in concert of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito at the grand Usher Hall.
Quick stop for a take-out veggie wrap from a Turkish café, and we’re in the throngs of the Grassmarket. Set in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle, the long street dates back to medieval times. Once an area of markets, riots and public executions, it’s now restaurants, woollen shops and street performers.
Up one of the city’s endless stone staircases that connect Old Town with New, and we arrive at our next venue, swallow half our wrap with little time to chew, and slide into our seats for the glorious music of Mozart’s final opera.
Almost three hours later, Clare, Mark (her husband has met us there) and I fall into an Uber to take us back to South Queensferry. We’re agog at the talent of Hera Hysesang Park who sang Servilia.
We’re also busy googling what happened to Fred the Shred. Spoiler alert: he made out just fine with his annual £600,000 pension, exclusive golf memberships and intact self-worth.
(Did I mention he brought down the bank established by royal charter in 1727?)
Sunday. Edinburgh.
10am. No rest for the wicked. We’re up and out the next morning, back on our beloved #43 bus. It’s our first Edinburgh International Book Festival events. We’re seeing the esteemed actor Dame Harriet Walker on her new book She Speaks: What Shakespeare's Women Might Have Said, hosted by Jackie Wylie, Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Scotland.
Harriet gives several readings and I decide to buy the audio book, which she narrates.
Back outside in the gardens, the sun is shining. AGAIN. We eat halloumi and falafel wraps from a food truck before heading back inside for our next event with Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar before moving to the UK in the 1960s as a refugee during the revolution.
4pm. Fifteen minutes left in this event and the crowd is politely steaming. Moderator Richard S. has epically failed his job. First, he hasn’t understood he’s not the show. He may be one of the world’s pre-eminent academics, but he’s not the reason we’re here.
And secondly, he wilfully jettisoned the audience Q&A. That is not just not on here in Edinburgh. The festival staff will hear about it. Gurnah himself seems embarrassed. But the signing queue is long at the bookstore, so all’s well that ends well.
Stay tuned for Part 2!
Definitely wets my appetite for travels to England and Scotland again <3