A return to Edinburgh

Edinburgh holds, for you, a long series of mental associations, and they begin to tumble in as you settle down.

The city is a moveable feast in the month of August, when the Edinburgh Festival, and The Fringe, are in full cry. Artistes from all over the world are performing in halls and auditoria, on the streets of The Mound and the Royal Mile, and all the areas surrounding the Edinburgh Castle. There is a Jazz Festival, and a Book Festival. It is the largest annual Festival in Europe.

Memories from student days, in and out of the Festival, come alive. Maya Angelou reciting from ‘I know why the caged bird sings’. Sexually assaulted at 8 years of age. Enduring poverty and racial oppression as she grew up in San Francisco. A prostitute for a spell. Becoming one of the most celebrated Poets in the world. Living in Ghana for some years. She would meet Malcolm X and participate in Civil Rights protests. She would hang out with her bosom friend Oprah Winfrey, living and performing in the swankiest venues in Europe. Once, at the Edinburgh Fringe, she mesmerised her audience with her life experiences and her Poetry, and then threw them the line ‘I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t laugh’, when people like you felt like crying for her.

Had the road between your old digs on Heriot Row and the city’s main street, Princes Street, developed a steeper slope, you wondered? Nowadays you got an unmistakable sense of labouring uphill.

In one of the Fringe venues, Ify Nwadiwe held his audience spell-bound for every minute of his one-hour performance. Most of his jokes were about his father, who had emigrated to the USA from Nigeria. It was a love-hate recap, and probably not entirely true. His father was appalled that his son wanted to be a Comedian, when other Nigerian immigrant fathers were training their children to be engineers and surgeons. When Ify became a ‘big man’ by featuring in a popular television commercial advert, a job that earned him $100k, His father gathered his Nigerian friends together and ‘flexed’ to them.

‘Ify’, he said, beaming with pride, ‘tell them how much you’ve made from this advert’.

The crowd erupted in laughter.

Edward, a Nigerian Uber driver, rolled up to take you on a drive across town. The traffic was slow because many roads were closed to cars.

You wanted to know if he was a student.

‘No’, he said, as if you were challenging his right to ‘Japa’. ‘I live here’.

You drove past The Playhouse, where you had watched Ella Fitzgerald on tour several decades ago. The years had taken a toll. Often, she forgot her lyrics, and simply scattered seamlessly across. And by God, could Mama Ella scat!

‘That Old Black Magic’.

‘Miss Otis Regrets’.

When you closed your eyes, you could still see her, with the Playhouse stage-lights catching a glint on her thick spectacles.

No visit was complete without a trip to the mountain redoubt, Edinburgh Castle. Nothing reflected the character and complications of the Scots better than the stories of the Castle. It was built a thousand years ago by King Malcolm – yes, the one murdered by Shakespeare’s Macbeth. At that time, Edinburgh was a small settlement, with a market on the Royal Mile, overlooking the River Forth and the port of Leith, which brought in an expanding trade.

Mary, Queen of te Scots, a prominent figure in local history, had a mission – to get rid of all witches in the land. Her son James VI who was born in the Castle, wrote a volume on ‘Demonology’. More than 300 people, mostly women, were put to death in or around the Castle for ‘witchcraft’. Mary herself was to lose her head, literally, after she escaped the Castle to London, but that was another story.

The Castle, as a military base, was attacked several times over the years. King Edward I, aka ‘Longshanks’ or Hammer of the Scots, spent much of his reign trying to subdue the unruly Scots. He besieged and seized their Castle. Scottish patriot William Wallace (‘Braveheart’) rose in rebellion. He was captured, drawn and quartered, meaning his body was torn apart into four pieces. The pieces were sent to the four corners of Scotland to teach the Scots a lesson in English Justice.

The battle for Scottish ‘Independence’ from the English has been fought on and off for several centuries since then. The Scots have had their moments, such as when King Robert the Bruce triumphed over King Edward II in 1314. That great victory is celebrated to this day in the anthem ‘Flowers of Scotland’ which Scottish fans sing when they confront, and are almost invariably walloped by, the English on the Football or Rugby field. ‘Independence’ is still the battle cry of Nationalists, but the lives, Crowns and destinies of the two peoples are intricately, and almost inextricably, interwoven, despite Scottish protestations to the contrary. Those protestations get very loud when they have had ‘a pint or two’. The Scottish pint of beer is heavy with alcohol and three times the standard pint of beer.

In the night, you sat through the Tattoo in the Castle grounds. It was a breathtaking coordinated parade, a light-and-sound celebration, with bagpipes and military detachments from different countries. You remembered that a few years ago, a detachment from the Nigerian Army had participated and got the crowd clapping in delight. After several cultural vignettes, they had exited the stage to the piped tune of ‘Iya Ni Wura Iyebiye…’

The tickets for the 2027 Tattoo, it was announced on the public address system, were already on sale online.

It was almost midnight when you made it out of the Castle and down The Mound. You had planned to order an Uber but decided on impulse to walk back to your digs. It was downhill all the way, and not so hard, really.