McHHN

Back from a sunny Edinburgh to a rainy London. The contrasts don't stop there.

In Edinburgh, everyone seems to know my family, and all my cousins live in massive houses, and there is hospitality and largess all around, and talk of publishing my Grandfather's memoirs, and huge huge plasma TVs to watch the rugby, and every other building you go past is pointed out as having been of some significance or ownership or management to or by my family. (There was even an article in the Scottish Daily Mail about someone trying to do up their private plane in the same style as a house that my cousins used to own.)

Quite a contrast to London where the only recognition is from the drunk fuck sitting on the steps of the Church at the end of my road, and the only thing needing publishing is another complaint to our neighbour about her dog barking. But I guess contrast is where it should be sometimes. I got back to London with a renewed vague warm feeling of family, and a sense that I will be back up to Scotland in the not to distant future.

Highlights of my mcvisit included a great Richard Long show (I know, I know, but I like him), a goofy Andy Warhol show, and a quiet walk around a park outside Edinburgh listening to Music For Airports. Also saw a friend of mine, and her son in law who is now almost entirely covered in tattoos - which was entertaining. We went to The Borders of Scotland to see my friend. It is a bit like that opening sequence of The Man Who Fell To Earth, although I managed not to sell my wedding ring, or meet anyone called Mary Lou.

Edinburgh is rapidly gentrifying itself, although there are still some pretty run down looking areas, populated by women who have obviously self-tattooed because they didn't have time to get to the tattoo parlour in between pregnancies, and a lot of rough old fuckers, who would knock my block off if they heard my accent. But I was safely protected from this threat, being chauffeured around in my cousin's enormous 4 by 4 (approx size of small flat in London), and being warmly received into mansion after mansion. (All three of my sisters where there too, which might explain the slight blip in the ether you felt over the weekend.)

Anyway, back to London life. Now, where's my mace and my scowl to get me across town...