Jekyll and Hyde

Edinburgh: City of mist and rain and blown grey places. 

Six, seven, eight storeys high were the houses; storey piled above storey, as children build with cards.

Charles Dickens

At this juncture it would almost seem redundant to repeat my everyday saying that I do love Edinburgh. But that's not really why I'm writing this today I don't think..... not at all... it's more because as life goes on and the days fly by, I know that Vicky and George are going off to university and - hold on a second - I'm actually in my last year.

Who else thought that by the time they hit university they'd have their whole life planned out? I know I did. I thought by fourteen I'd have finished and published The Dance of Shadows. Well, we can see that didn't happen. Similarly, I thought that once I was doing my degree, I'd figure out where I want to go in the future... that's still about as up in the air as the sun. Of course, we're all naive before we really hit reality, children are naive,  but we have to grow up at some point. Rankin has a long discussion about this in Rebus' voice in Knots and Crosses, when said detective muses on his missing daughter and contemplates a student with her Worker's Union 'rascism is fascism' slogan. 

Holt and I had a nice conversation yesterday too, about the people we know, the difference between the people we work with, those characters from outside our respective university bubbles, and all of us that are safely ensconced within it. George and Vicky are quite lucky, they've had their gap years and come back, thankfully not talking about 'tanzan-ee-yah' as if they're part of the roaring twenties, but with the understanding that they have had to work as well. George had a dull-as-dishwater job that was a good commute away from home and he appreciated that it was that job that saw him round Europe in August. Similarly, Vicky worked at our old school alongside our granny, a girl's school called Godstowe, and was earning well below minimum wage but is now nicely set up for university. They have their heads screwed on right (more or less for Allner's anyway) and they're starting the best roller-coaster of their lives. 

Some how, this large tumble of disparate things: the twins, Rankin, dissertations, Holt - they've all muddled up and here I am wondering exactly what I'm trying to say. I wax lyrical and ramble - you know this by now.

So this is the crux I promise: I love Edinburgh. It's the city that I come home to, even though I didn't grow up here. It's the place where the people make me smile, where even on wet, blustering days I look at the skyline and think how glad I am to have ended up here and not Oxford or Exeter or Bristol. For me, even those dark places below the Cowgate or the uncomfortable corners of Leith or the worrisome routes between Haymarket and Tollcross, haven't really reflected a second of Mr Hyde. Sinister stories, horrific happenings - you don't turn a blind eye -  but this is still a city seen through a veneer, the pretty sheen of studenthood. Coming back, knuckling down, going through all that reverse culture shock crap... I don't think it's really a return-from-America-thing, I'm fairly certain it's a 'shits-about-to-hit-the-fan' kind of thing. 

And Vicky and George have all that to come. And Holt's already figured it out and is on to the 'how to deal with it' stage. And Rankin pulls it a part then laughs at it because he was one of us too. That Dicken's quote - Edinburgh being like a house of cards that's been built by children? I'm beginning to understand the metaphor now. 

Good luck twins, hold onto your naivety and follow the forty-five rules written by a ninety year old if you can. Also, I promise this is the last lame-as-broken-blackberry entry. From now, I'm going back to my roots, updating you on what things are interesting and what things make me happy and probably a lot more about travelling. Restless feet have got me moving. 

As ever, thanks for ploughing through my incoherent scribblings. 

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER

Everything Changes

Reverse Culture Shock

 and the Realisation that 
Everything Changes

Hello again readers, 

It's only  been a few days but all I have the urge to do these days is write. A lot of my scribbles have been creative - I restarted a well-loved story during the Fringe. I first wrote it years ago but a new friend reminded me of it and I've been puttering about on plot etc ever since. Similarly, when I first came back from the States, I jotted out a new novel that I hope might one day sit next to your Grishams and James and Christies and such. Yup - I decided to turn my hand to crime, probably all that Criminal Minds I watched in ADPi. 

Anyway, this isn't really about any of that. It's not about the continuation of ideas or their coherence. It's about the beginning of the return, the start of comparisons and critiques, reverse culture shock as my beautiful, wonderful, Jeykll and Hyde city comes under the scrutiny of Post-America-Me. 

I love Edinburgh. I fell in love that warm, bright day in March 2009 when I stepped out of a taxi with my overly concerned mother and saw the city framed by Arthur's Seat. The sky was so blue and clear and the wind had the hint of winter still in its touch, but the sense of spring, of possibility and adventure was tingling in my fingers. Or that could have been the chill. Either way, I was hooked. Oxford and interviews and the heavy bleakness of IB seemed distant, unimportant next to the fact that I had an offer to this place - Edinburgh. You can read about my first reactions to Edinburgh here. It might make a good opposition to this addition. The other comparison might be my Carolina Culture Shock after being asked if I wanted to go shag by a perfect stranger. 

I reckon that right now I'm moving out of the Honeymoon period as reality (dissertations, classes, work) sets in.

During the Fringe and even before the Fringe when I was dreaming of Edinburgh, there was hardly a fault I could find in anything related to it. Even the weather has always been my favourite weather - you know the kind when it tangles up inside your clothes and you feel the thrill of a chill on your skin? And it still is. But there's something: a niggling, wiggling, wriggling something that tugs at my sensibilities. It's not that I miss Chapel Hill. I don't, not even when I think of the balmy nights spent on Franklin Street. But I miss the people. I miss Jay and Foxie and the hours spent moaning over deadlines and planning to go to Coffee Shop and failing. I miss Coffee Shop on a Tuesday Night when every international descends on the bar. I miss 304 Pritchard and everyone in it. I miss lunchtimes in ADPi with all the girls. I miss Rebecca and calling her up to swap silly stories about ridiculous nothings. 

I could hear people upstairs before I went to Stella's houseparty tonight. They had plenty of friends over and I could tell, from their voices, that at least some of them were friends of mine as well, friends that I left behind  when I went to America. I think most of all I miss them and I miss the feeling of being part of a group as I was before I left. I'm scared to start my fourth year, terrified of the lack of familiarity that I feel when it comes to university in the UK. The societies I was apart of, especially MUSOC, is now full of new faces that look at me with puzzlement and curiousity. 

"I was one of you," I want to say, "I've only been gone a few months..."

I can feel the approach of that all too recognisable sensation of oddness, of not quite fitting in, of being uncertain in a world that's both similar and different to what you know or, in this case, remember. 

Some of this I chalk up to restlessness. This is the first time since I left Chapel Hill that I've not had a new adventure up my sleeve. Going up to St Andrews for the day or nipping up to Glasgow for a show only seems to encourage my all-consuming want travel and travel and travel. Funnily enough, I don't want to leave Scotland, but I'm now hyper-sensitive about the fact that I've never been up to the Highlands or gone to the coast or seen a loch. It's utterly barmy. 

Somethings Never Change. Opal Lounge 2012.

Of course, some things never change - our little holland house crew is pretty much exactly as it was, meeting up and everything picking up where we left off. The boys are back from France/Melbourne, the girls are returning for their fourth year and even though the absences of Madeline and Mineta are far too keenly felt, there's the sense that if you put us all in a room we'd just leap straight back into conversations about dodgy men on the meadows, how to creep each other out and/or tea. 

I love Edinburgh. Every day I walk through Marchmont and across the Meadows and smile and I let the absolute joy of being here sweep over me. Relishing every moment that I can say belongs in this city, I walk and I talk and laugh with my friends. But there is the constant catching up and not even the knowledge that they also have to catch up with me can appease the fact that I left them and now I have to come back and build my world up again. 

Je serai poète et toi poésie,

SCRIBBLER

Do you want to go Shag?

Do you want to go Shag?

Culture Shock and Other Stories

The other night... well, about a week ago or so, we were at a party at the Lexis'. The five of us Brits were looking very much like the stereotypical English/Scottish we are as we bobbed from side to side to the music playing, sipping at our drinks and making small talk with strangers who gushed about our wonderful accents. It was during one of these conversations when this rather charming young man from Wilmington turned to me, asking me whether I'd like to go shag. 

My mind flew to the gutter and I rather embarressingly stuttered out, "Er... umm... no."

He looked rather crest-fallen but my face must have been horror-stricken. I'd only known him about ten minutes at this point.

"You don't like to dance then?"

HUH? My mind is rapidly rushing out of the gutter now, "What?" I asked a little more eloquently but still utterly confusedly.

"Or... wait... do you shag in Britain?"

Yes we do shag in Britain, I want to say, but I'm completely lost by this point, how else would I be here?! And then the penny drops as I remember a flippant comment long ago as my mother explained how Martha was a very good shag-dancer. 

The Carolina Shag is a dance. A little bit like our old school rock-n-roll that parents like to bring out at parties but mixed up with what looks like flamenco footwork to me. 

Oh and there goes the tornado siren again. I can imagine some of the expressions right now. My mum will look aghast but my sister will probably have her hand over her mouth in a strange expression of amusement and concern. Shadenfruede. Jay is probably doing that weird half-grin thing whilst Zoe reads on with distress - it's the South after all and maybe Chapel Hill is going up 'Wizard of Oz' style. Holt... well he'll look at this with the eye of a literature student and wonder if this is good reading. 

So on a day like today I feel almost completely at home. It's grey outside, it's under 30C and it's been raining for most of the day. But then, like with almost every day, something happens that reminds me that this isn't home at all. Today it was a tornado siren going off as I turned the kettle on thus thwarting my attempts to make tea. But yesterday it was Rush Round Three and seeing how different their systems are; before that it was being asked if I wanted to go shag. This is 'culture shock' - infamous and a little bit intimidating.

They say it consists of various stages including the honey-moon period, disillusionment period, homesickness, assimilation and autonomy. It sounds almost scientific. 

This is my rendering: 

It was done in Paint whilst waiting for the All-Clear from Alert!Carolina so Mock away. 

I think it'll probably happen - especially now that I'm getting messages from people about being back in Edinburgh, walking past the old 2/2, realising that unlike everyone else I'm not coming back this year(thanks for that one Holt I very nearly teared up =P). But despite the moments where I feel critical or lonely or very very far away from home, or terrified about a natural disaster, or thinking 'oh so-and-so would love this' before realising so-and-so will likely never see 'this' and feeling rather morose - despite all those things and many many more, I already feel like this is a place I could fall in love with and never want to leave. 

There are, as John May already pointed out, many things that are ODD (those capitals are necessary) about being in America. The toilets are really low and 'full to the brim with water', he says, and the traffic lights are barmy (you have to add at least an extra five-ten minutes of walk time to lectures because of the lights). The traffic runs backwards, pedestrians are 'peds', lectures are compulsory, tutorials can be almost 50 people big, you can't drink until you're 21, night life closes at 2am, you get random days off for things no one understands, mere month-year-old babies are brought to university football games in full UNC uniform, there is more carolina blue than stars, a kettle is a water boiler, tea has to be bought from a health-food store, the university supplies starbucks, the Old Well is a water fountain, the buses are free, the food is all fried and twice the size of anything you'd eat at home, the people are all friendly and the little silver coin that looks like a five pence is worth more than the medium silver coin that looks like a fake ten piece. 

Confused yet?

There's more - but I'll make another list for those at some point. Despite all the confusion, despite all those weird little things that I'm hoping will suddenly arrange themselves into a moment of Fridge Brilliance, I'm loving it here and don't worry, I just received a text from Alert!Carolina giving us the ALL CLEAR for the time being on the tornado front. 

So back to real life (if you can call this real life) and on y vas!

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER