The Improvised Adventures of Rebel Without a Coat, 2013 - Episode 2: Leeds/Edinburgh

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Episode 2 – Leeds/Edinburgh

Friday the sixth of April. On the top floor of a typical Edinburgh flat building, I'm facebook chatting, talking about girls with my friend Dave who told me just before I went traveling to "try not to get bummed by some homeless psycho". I'm pretty tired after a good night and thinking about going to bed soon and for some reason about three smoke alarms seem to be going off in the general vicinity every two minutes. My friend and long lost partner in funky musical crime who is hosting me in his flat is the only person tall enough to reset the bastards and has had to get out of bed to save us. I think he has it under control now...

So, I set off on my mystery adventure about a week and a half ago. I smoked my last roll-up outside Shudehill bus station in Manchester, smoked my last baby, last one before resigning myself to a state of I-have-no-money-and-I-may-as-well-not-get-cancer cleanliness. I threw the stub and the on-its-last-legs lighter in the bin and went to wait for the Megabus. Soon the inner-city streets were slipping towards the motorway as Incubus bellowed in my earphones, "Goodbaaaaaaaaaye... Nice to know you!"

Aaaah...after months of having my head stuck in a bucket of Mancunian rain - or should I say crap snow, cold air, tiredness and listlessness - the feeling of movement slowly and subtly begins to stir somewhere deep within the dregs of my being. The journey from Manchester to Leeds is a short one but takes me alongside the Pennines, low, brown-green English hills that, covered in a thin layer of snow, somehow echo images of Russia. Who knows, maybe I'll actually see Russia at some point on my travels. But this is nice for now. I arrive in Leeds and trundle off down the road towards the main bus station for about thirty seconds before realizing I've left my large rucksack in the hold of the Megabus. I dash back and tap on the glass, and the driver opens the hold. I grab my rucksack and do up the clasps, pulling my small rucksack backwards over my arms so that I look like a very fat tortoise, and pick up my saxophone case, now in fully-loaded travel mode. This is how I am to walk around from destination to destination over the coming weeks, months or years or however long I see fit to roam aimlessly through the timezones. I set off again with an ominous feeling of stupidity and irresponsibility, wondering how many times I'm going to leave the bag I'm living out of, or something equally important, somewhere that might cause it to drive to the next city. Oh well, fuck it. I'm bound to lose something.

I tell Auntie Dot and Uncle Trevor I'm only going to be eating all their food for a couple of days, as I'm going to look for a couchsurfing host in Edinburgh. Potential couchsurfing hosts have profiles that tell you what kind of person they are and whether their couch is currently available, and you have to go through and look at profiles, find the cool people, read their references to make sure they seem trustworthy, send out some personally written requests that say why you want to stay with them specifically, and hope that one of them replies to you in time. Not surprisingly, I am incredibly slow at this process and I eat all of Dot and Trevor's food for just under a week, spending a great deal of time watching soaps, drinking tea and joining Dot and Trevor on random shopping excursions. Although I do manage a burst of motivation on Saturday afternoon and get a bit of busking done. From Tuesday night onwards I have a friend who is around in Edinburgh who I can stay with, so on Monday night I plan my two hundred mile hitchhiking excursion, make a little "North" sign, and pack some lunch for my first hitchhiking adventure in some time. Dot wakes me up bright and early at six thirty in the morning. And offers to order me a ticket for the 1.30pm Megabus. Hmmm. Sleep now. Hitchhike another time. Yes please. The more hitchhiking I do, the more jaded I'm going to get by it, I know this from experience, so a free ticket to minimize the amount of hitching I have to do is a welcome way of keeping that adventure fresh and exciting when it does happen. Plus I slept bloody awfully last night. I don't know what it is, I go through these little phases of insomnia, and I'm hoping this isn't going to plague me on my travels. I spend a good deal of the coach journey falling half asleep to the sound of my favourite podcast, the Duncan Trussell Family Hour. Five hours later I drag my stiff dead legs off the bus and into the car park, and after seeing piles of snow deeper than I've ever seen before lining the meandering country roads of the outer suburbs of Leeds, it's very unexpected and refreshing to feel relatively mild air and see soft evening sunshine upon stepping into Edinburgh, which usually greets me with a unique chill that seems to drift in from the North Sea...

The sun is still going strong the next morning and I take the sax into town with the vague intention of doing some busking, then decide a walk up Arthur's Seat would be a better idea. Arthur's Seat is the top of a two hundred-odd metre rocky hill that forms an unmistakable part of the Edinburgh skyline, literally over the road from the Scottish Parliament in the heart of the city, and is a popular tourist hiking spot for splendid reasons. There's a good few ways of getting to the top – various combinations of road, grass and muddy footpaths for the avid hiker and lazy musician alike. I take a somewhat medium difficulty route and stop a few times to sit on a rock and reflect on life from on high. There's something enchanting about a view that entwines nature's sea, green grass and snow-blanketed mountains (and even distant snippets of beach) with humankind's humbly hewn sandy stone cathedrals and monuments, white rectangular flat blocks, shiny glass and hilly rows of houses. I make it to the top and I whip my sax out for a spot of busking. The sax sounds a bit dead and empty because there's no reverb, the scenario is not as romantic as I imagined, and I make a pound before deciding this is not the most profitable spot despite the ever-present huddle of tourists. Bloody well worth a try though. On the way back down the hill someone tells me they enjoyed the music. Good enough for me. I reach the road winding down around the hill, sit down on a bench and whip out my netbook and earphones for a spot of audiobook listening. I'm listening to the audiobook version of my current all-time favourite book, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Those of you that know me will be sighing at this point and hoping I don't start going on about it. Needless to say (if you've already heard me going on about it) this modern-day gospel of spiritual enlightenment is a perfect thing to listen to whilst sitting before some daffodylls and wild scrawny young trees overlooking a lake.

After running the battery down I wander back into town to find some pub wi-fi while I wait for my friend to get back for the evening and let me in. I strike upon Greenmantle, a nice pub I went to once or twice when I lived here, and a delightfully confident and friendly barman who addresses me "bud" presents me with a basket of assorted Twinings selection teas from which I pick out some sort of redbush and vanilla concoction. Bloody good choice, I think as I'm checking my emails.

Later that evening my friend is busy so I head for Henry's Cellar Bar to see Lach's Antihoot Radio Night, run of course by the legendary Lach who I met during the Fringe when stumbling upon the open mic night he was running nearly every night for the duration of the festival, where I got to perform alongside some wicked musicians, poets and comedians. I'm already a bit late and I manage to walk blindly past Henry's Cellar Bar about three times before finding it plonked soundly underneath Lebowksi's – ah, yeah, hence the word Cellar. So I've missed the bit where they record for the radio but made it before the second half where a couple of performers do a set each. The woman on the door is debating a discount when Lach appears and asks her to just let me in, on account of my being "an amazing poet". As always Lach puts on a great show, introducing to the stage a great songwriter followed by a quirky loveable comedian, before doing his own set which as usual is his own unique blend of raw passionate music, witty crowd banter and of course ridiculous rock-and-roll anecdotes which usually involve acid or famous people. Night well spent.

The next day I drag myself out of bed around half past one and am inevitably about twenty minutes late to meet an old songwriting chum who is bemused by the fact that I'm late when I'm traveling without a phone and she can't call me and ask where the bloody hell I am. I thought she knew I was on African time. We wander around Superdrug and I paint my nails for the first time using a selection of different colours from the "test and play" section, before we get shooed off by a member of staff who points out that we are stealing nail varnish. Apparently you can only use the ones that say "tester". My nails look shit. After some more wandering, and eating lunch and discussing the pitfalls of romance in Princes Street gardens, we part ways and I'm off back to my friend's place. He puts on a fine spread of chilli and nachos and I finally watch Trainspotting after years of going, "I really should see Trainspotting". It's pretty good.

Friday is mostly a day of toast and tea. My friend has some social soirée that evening so I go down to the Ale House for their jolly open mic night. I'm a bit early so I go for a wander, which turns into a nice stroll taking me down an unknown road that leads me past the Scotsman headquarters. The Scotsman used to amuse me and my good friends on the Isle of Skye to no end with cracking headlines that contained words like "head-in-bag killer". I have to go up and look at the latest headlines on the sandwich boards outside. One of them reads, "violence threat for pervert church elder." Classic. I continue down the road to a dark underpass that brings me out opposite Arthur's Seat, now looming in the evening darkness that slowly wraps itself around the night, accentuated by a striking lack of streetlight on the surrounding roads. Strange to be so close to the city centre and yet feel a quiet desolation in the air that reminds me of lone camping trips. On my way back to the Ale House I pop into one of the other bars that I think might have an open mic going on as it used to do and I can see instruments in the window, and I bump into Cameron, the safe dude that puts on the Whistlebinkie's open mic night on a Monday and sometimes gives me an extra free beer for performing (you normally just get one). He's doing a gig, so we catch up briefly and I leave him to set up. Ale House has a good vibe going down. I get up and do the first live renditions of the only two songs I've written so far on the ukulele I got for handy travel songwriting, as well as a poem, in my customary bare feet. Afterwards a lovely bloke compliments me on my songs and says, "your toes get right in there". I give him a copy of my album and later on he buys me a drink so I stay a bit longer and end up waking my friend up to get back into his flat.

Well, he ends up having to get up and sort out the bloody smoke alarm anyway, so there you go. As I say, I think it's sorted now. Adventures so far so good. Goodnight for now...

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Comments

[Christina P]

The world is made of glass
I heard you bumped into a mutual friend of ours in Edinburgh. I'm kinda hoping your adventures bring you this way sometime. Peace, love, stay safe and happy, xo

[rebelwithoutabackpack]

is this pearty?