A brief wander about the streets of Edinburgh this morning afforded the perfect antidote to an otherwise delightful summer’s day in the capital.
First to Calton Hill, and the slow trudge to the summit, ankle-deep in the detritus of last night’s lovemaking, booze, narcotics and clumsily spilt sausage suppers. And, inexplicably, an abundance of Cheesy Wotsits.
In a bricked-up doorway separating the private Regent Terrace Gardens on the other side from the heaving hoi polloi on this, we encountered ‘PIPSQUEAK WAS HERE!!!’
She looked to us like a bobble-hatted and unforgiving descendant of the girl in the Les Misérables publicity, or possibly a younger sister of the kick-ass street artist by Eddi reported here in November 2011.
Close by, another work evokes memories of Marie Antoinette and, perhaps, Leonid Brezhnev. The wording reads ‘Let Them Eat depleted Uranium’.
Hurrying away in search of less complicated sunshine on the slopes of Inverleith Park, we turned right at last into Portgower Place and stepped literally into the jaws of horror.
We cannot boast an exhaustive knowledge of piscine choppers, but these felt to us a lot like Monkfishes’, presumably wrenched from their owners in a local restaurant kitchen and incompetently discarded afterwards. We have no idea what the dangly frond things were, apart from squidgy. Perhaps some reader can help.
In any case, do not make the same mistake Spurtle made. Eschew open-topped sandals and stick to diving boots on your Sunday morning strolls through Stockbridge in future.