Postcard from Edinburgh - Fly and dry

The airport is, I have discovered, where couples of any age go to bicker and where parents take their kids to scold them. It's like Asda with cheap booze. So just like Asda then.

When cheap flights took the romance out of air travel by allowing the sort of people who wear football shirts when not playing football to fly, the airports tried to put back some glamour on the ground by turning the departure lounge into a retail emporium of delights, like a duty free Willy Wonka factory, but with more vodka and Toblerone.

Then 9/11 happened and now by the time people get airside they have been treated like a criminal, even if they are not one, at security - although in the interests of balance on-line check in means that a machine asks you if your bags have been left alone with a drug dealer or terrorist for any length of time instead of a real person asking this, so instead of being gripped with a mad urge to snap of the sort of sarcastic answer that sees you answering awkward questions in a small room lit with sickly fluorescents while your friends fly out to Malaga, you simply click 'whatever' to every prompt on the machine, paying about as much attention as you do to accepting the terms and conditions of an iTunes software upgrade and hey ho, you are good to fly and wondering if the booze trolley on the flight will be self service as well.

It's not.

The was glamour at the airport this morning though. TheTeam GB Paralympic team were milling about, obviously getting ready to fly off to their secret undersea volcano training base in preparation for conquering the world, or at least the medals table.

On the flight to Edinburgh, I don't think I have ever been in a more crowded aeroplane. We were packed in so tight that I thought they would have to relax restrictions and allow one of us to sit up front with the pilot, although being stuffed into an overhead locker was probably a better bet.

The flight itself was uneventful, apart from the overcrowding and everyone going through mobile 'phone withdrawal. You can also tell the exact point when you cross the Tweed in an aeroplane, that's when the turbulence starts.

Edinburgh though is a lovely airport to arrive into. It has that fierce national pride that inhabits all small countries, with large cheerful pictures of beautiful countryside or inspiring architecture and upbeat messages that translate into 'Welcome home!' if you are a returning native or just fancy yourself a wee bit Scottish and 'You Have Arrived At The Best Country On The Planet' for everyone else. There is a real 'Scotland - why would you want to be anywhere else?' sense to the place.


The taxi ride into the centre of town allows one to study the familiar landmarks, in particular the roadworks to lay down more new tram rails. They are still building the bloody thing. Either that or Time Team are here doing a special on a huge scale.

What was unfamiliar was the sunshine. All the tourists were sweating in their waterproofs, having not packed any dry-weather gear, while all the locals are wondering what the enormous ball of fire in the sky signified. Obviously not the end of recorded time and Doomsday, as one of the signs of that is predicted to be the tram line being finished. I'll tell you what sunshine in Edinburgh signifies, it signifies time to get something to eat and then start drinking, outside for a change.


There are hundreds of great places to eat in Edinburgh but fuck it, having found a decent pub last year that does good food the plan was to hole up there for the remainder of the stay.

But eventually, drawn out by the sun, it's time to wander.

Something of a surprise on George Street, the road is closed. In London roads have been closed recently of course to allow Olympic events, like the marathon, the cycling and the triathlon to take place, which have all resulted in road closures. But this is Edinburgh and so the only decent reason to close a road - apart from laying down some tram tracks - is to put down some artificial grass and erect a pop-up bar. Genius!


A pastoral scene with bar stools in George Street is not the only change for this year. The Assembly Rooms have been redecorated. This is entirely at odds with Fringe comedy, an art form associated with something sticky underfoot that smells of the ghost of binge drinking past. Instead Stewart Lee does his act in an elegant space smelling of new Axminster.

Stewart Lee's act is good, for over an hour he simultaneously performs and deconstructs his act. So, so much better than seeing his at the Strand, the comedy club that outlaws laughter.

Emerging into the sunlight with the feeling that we may just have seen the best show of the Fringe first, time for a beer before the next show. It's warm and people are walking round in their tee shirts.

Edinburgh fashion tip - one that fat men appear to have seized upon like a cheeseburger - if you are overweight and wear a character tee shirt, or a tee shirt with an amusing slogan on it, people will be too busy either chortling or thinking 'cock' to notice your shape and speed up their pace to get ahead of you in the queue at the chip shop.

From the Assembly Rooms to the Assembly Hall, Rainy Hall in particular. This is the sweatiest venue on the Fringe. They ought to be heading out fluffy towels, birch branches and Volvo key fobs as they take your ticket. Marcus Brigstocke is performing his new show 'The Brig Society'. Very good and surprisingly a lot of new material, considering the sheer volume, in both senses of the word, of ranting that he does on 'The Now Show'.


Finish off at the BBC pop-up village on Potterow and 'BBC Presents'. This show starts at eleven in the evening and it's fair to say that the real star here is the audience, a giddy mixture of sleep depravation, booze and BBC license fee payer belligerence and one can see the fresh young acts 'only doing a short spot' visibly pale as the audience fall quiet during their performance. Nothing strikes fear into the heart of a young man who aspires to fill a prized seat on a tee vee panel show quite like sleepy indifference.

Volcano skies

Another volcano has erupted over Iceland, causing budget airline owners to go on television and talk about ash, explaining how it is more important that they be able to fly incredibly complicated and fragile machines through volcanic ash clouds in order to ensure stag and hen parties get to their destination than it is to ensure the safety of anyone living underneath the flight path.

If aeroplanes can fly through clouds of volcanic ash with no ill effect, how come you’re not allowed to smoke in the toilets of these same aeroplanes? I mean, if they are robust enough to stay aloft in a cloud of volcanic ash, I presume that a single B&H sparked up in the bog is not that much of a big deal, right?

The volcano has once again spoiled ‘the big getaway’. Are we to take from this that volcano’s are seasonal? It even meant that President Obama had to leave Ireland early. Didn’t Air Force One visit Europe last year when there was volcanic eruption going on? Possibly volcanic eruption is the ultimate deterrent to stop other aeroplanes sneaking up on it or something.


Looking out the window, I’m not sure if I’m looking at a volcano sky or just a normal vivid, polluted sunset. Apparently when Krakatoa erupted the skies were crimson for weeks. If anything, the skies seem clear of anything remotely resembling a special effect. Which is a good thing, I’ve seen the pictures from Iceland and have no desire to spend day after day scooping sooty talc off my lawn.

Certainly, in terms of stopping air traffic an erupting volcano has done the trick once again. The secret volcano base is, of course, the lair of choice for the supervillan. Usually however their plot to bring travel chaos to the civilised world involves lasers, missiles, computer hacking and at least one tank of piranha fish rather than a straightforward eruption.

What’s interesting is that the people stranded at the airports seem to kip under red Cross blankets or the sort of tin-foil sheets used to wrap marathon runners or chicken. Between the climate and industrial unrest, I’m amazed that every airport doesn’t have a thousand of those foam camping mats stockpiled in a room somewhere. Air travel is supposed to be romantic and glamorous. Christ alone knows that the budget airlines are doing their best to dispel this image by charging you for a sandwich on a sixteen hour flight, but checking in the passenger’s suitcases so they a) have to fly with you but b) don‘t have a change of clothes when they wake cold and gritty on the airport floor is either supremely stupid or the sort of evil genius that is deserving of an undersea volcano base.

Hethrow Airport

(On our drive into Heathrow, we gave the strikers from UNITE a friendly toot. This was not out of any particular sense of solidarity; after being comically overcharged by BA on a flight back from Edinburgh to London (my carbon footprint is the size of a yeti’s…what of it?) I’m going to be punching the newly uncluttered air when BA fold like a cheap tent, but I reckon a little toot makes the workers feel a lot better and hey, the flags were jolly. Actually, I can’t see what all the fuss is about over the BA strike. This is cabin crew striking, right? So, if the people who hand out sandwiches, crisps, tea and stun guns (I’m presuming) on National Express coaches go on strike, can we expect the same degree of media hysteria? God, I hope so.)

Heathrow Airport. It’s huge, like a modern urban sprawl composed of places that were once villages in their own right, with customs like inbreeding, morris dancing, scrumpy festivals and duck ponds for dunking witches in. At Heathrow, it’s the terminals that are the villages, with their own shops, cafes and pubs. But unlike most villages, the majority of the population are just passing through and those that do work here come from all over the world, (well, all over Eastern Europe) rather than from all over the surrounding half mile radius.

The main occupations of the transient population of a terminal village (odd name for a place where most people are going from or through rather than ending up) are: waiting, sleeping, eating, drinking, battling constipation or nerves, and shopping. Luckily the shops of the terminal village are there to provide a diversion, reasonably priced coffee and extravagantly priced luxury items.

In the golden age of air travel, rich people flew from aerodromes where the terminal was a hut and transatlantic flight was mostly powered by glamour and hair oil. The arrival of the package holiday meant affordable travel for the oiks – sorry; ordinary folk, while the rich invented first class. Now the terminal is full of the sort of people who might travel standard class on a train or even, throwing caution to the wind, decide that coach travel is for them.

However, if you want to purchase a handbag that costs three hundred quid and, because it’s tax free, still feel like you got a good deal, then the airport is the place for you.

Mostly because in the terminal you have quite a disconnected sense of reality and it does make sense to buy designer sunglasses in preparation for an English summer and a bar of chocolate bigger than your mouth (Toblerone, what’s going on there?). Boredom has a lot to answer for.

And like many villages, it has it’s own backroads, byways and winding lanes, or in this case, a walk to a boarding gate so far away that I fully expected us to be greeted with a different regional accent when we arrived and then asked to adjust our watches to the new time zone.

Postcard from Spain - come fly with me

Airplane jam - how twee!

After years of resolutely holidaying mostly in England (I still maintain that there is noting as hot as a hot English summer – we’re just not ready for it, rails buckle, roads shimmer, hosepipes are banned and the media is full of drought alerts before the average person has had time to turn from ‘pasty’ to pillar box read) I’ve decided to upgrade my carbon footprint from that of a kid who has to wear one of those special built-up shoes to that of a yeti.

Somewhere along the way, air travel was deregulated enough to fly cheaply. The trade off has been that you are basically travelling in a National Express coach with wings. The only way to come to terms with being cooped up for a couple of hours on a short haul flight is to drink, and because it’s short haul there’s no time to mess about with beer.

That’s why I favour champagne when flying. On the flight back from Spain I paid 22 quid for a bottle – far cheaper then it would normally cost in a bar, not much more than it costs in a supermarket. Gratification about this was offset by the cost of the packet of mini chedders that I selected as a savoury accompaniment – at three quid for a packet of bloody crisps you may be at 30,000 feet, but you must be flying over la-la land.

The flight back was, somewhat to my surprise, at 02:40. This is not, as one might imagine, 2:40 in the afternoon, but 2:40 in the morning. After the initial wailing and sulking, I actually realised that it’s probably the best time to fly – you drive to the airport at midnight so there’s no traffic to get snarled up in, you fly overnight and you arrive at dawn – a bit pissed but essentially ready for a couple of hours kip and then to face the day!

Also – I like staying up so late it’s early, I can pretend to be Jack Bauer, or young.