The three night curse

A note to my future self: do not book a slew of three night stays in a row. Make sure you have a six night stay somewhere in there. Because after three nights in Nottingham, three in York, three in Newcastle, the thought of three in Edinburgh, three in Glasgow, two in Inverness, and three in Bristol is super depressing.

You can't really unpack for a three night stay, but you can't really keep everything in the bag either.

I almost feel like I'm running a restaurant, and putting the tables and chairs out every morning, and putting them all away again every night. Sure, there's a romance in the ritual. But it can be a little deadening too.

We were both tired as we packed up the Sherman Tank and got it out of the mousehole to take up north. The drive to Edinburgh seemed straightforward, and we picked a nice halfway mark for a coffee stop: Berwick-Upon-Tweed.

This place was a surprise: a seaside cobblestoned nook, full of boutique stores and quaint village ways. It was like a medieval Nelson Bay. Stuart and I had an adequate "elevenses" in a sad quiet pub with Tudor beams, before we had an electrifying walk across the Tweed river, taking photos of the centuries-old buildings. Every street corner and every lane had something historic and picturesque in it.

We walked past a cafe called "The Mule on Rouge" to go to a bookshop called "Interesting Books and Zines," a queer oriented counterculture bookshop curated by a handsome man named Ben. Stu and I bought some weird stuff - thrillingly weird stuff - and walked out of there feeling upbeat.

The drive into Edinburgh was especially high pressured because we had piles of dirty laundry and we knew that with Queen Elizabeth's funeral, finding a place to get this done (within that oppressive three night window) would be difficult. We ended up finding a place in filthy-rich Stockbridge where we might get it done Express for a hefty cash gratuity. We'll do that tomorrow morning so we aren't complete derelicts by the time we hit Glasgow.

Edinburgh is grotesquely fashionable. And all the buildings in our neighbourhood are posh Georgian manors and mansions. The people in the street are young, thin, and with disposable income that they are disposing off in Edinburgh. I am absolutely intoxicated with the luxury and the glamour. Hampstead was bad, but this is worse. I think I might have picked up a superiority complex in the queue at Waitrose. (One child saying in Heightened Received Pronunciation outside as we exited, "Mummy I can't remember the last time we even went to a Waitrose."

We are settled in our AirBnB, but both a bit weary of all the moving on. It's hard to get attached to places you keep leaving according to a strict metronome rhythm. Ten cities in four weeks was too much. Never again.

However, I am excited to have a bath tub again, which I will go and use now.Read more