Taking the High Road

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHLNjiTtshI]

I’m off to Scotland in the morning. Not like this – who do you think I am? Chris Dillow? In my little car with its greasy windscreen and Vostock driving position, starting before sunrise.. a prelude to a later, nastier trip in a big white van full of books and booze and the odd stick of furniture that I’ll have to nose through Edinburgh Festival crowds in the heat of August to whatever kind of flat I’ve managed to find for us.

I’ve been with my partner, who is starting work on a collaborative project with the University of Edinburgh in September, for eleven years, in which time I think we’ve chalked up four days apart. This trip is going to last for three.

There are times in life when it’s best just to hit fast-forward (God has disabled the “skip track” button in this mode) and this is one. Forward to the first properly cold day of the year, and a shivering walk down from Arthur’s Seat through the world’s best grey streets to my warm pint of 90/- in the Jolly Judge.

Sorry about your misfortunes. To me the loss of a loved one (in this sense) would be nothing at all to the consequent throes of MOVING – I think I hate moving almost more than anything. Are you really going to have to do all that? Isn’t there some Men’s Lib. that can stop it? I remember that arsefaced trendy John Mortimer (argh! s**t! farkks!) saying a client of his complained mildly of having to sell his house just because he came home and found his wife in bed with a pop-group member. I know the cases aren’t the same but still. My sympathy, chum. Philip Larkin to Kingsley Amis, 11 January 1983

1 Reply to “Taking the High Road”

  1. “Edinburgh Festival crowds in the heat of August”: perhaps.

    Favourite headline from the Evening News:
    “Edinburgh sizzles in the seventies”.

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