I don't know about the mellow fruitfulness but we've certainly got the mists. The swifts have departed and with them goes something of the summer. The leaves are still green but it won't be long before they begin to turn.
Edinburgh at the end of September. The students have returned, bringing a bohemian element back to the streets. The nights are drawing in, casting a gloom by 6 o'clock in the evening.
The greyness is alleviated by the car headlights shining cheerfully through the mirk. But the pavements are damp and the slates on the roof glimmer in what light remains in the sky. People scurry home; this is not a night to linger on the streets. It's not really cold, not yet, but the wind carries an intimation of winter.
This is reality. Summer always seems to be an illusion: those balmy evenings (both of them) are not Edinburgh; wearing shorts is not natural in this city. Today, in Morningside and Stockbridge, in Liberton and Trinity, we are looking out the woolly jumpers and skirts, and checking the central heating. The heavy overcoats can wait another month. But winter is on its way.
And so summer passes and we move on. Not a matter of regret - in Edinburgh, we enjoy the good weather when it appears, but the presbyterian mindset is comfortable with adversity. It is somehow fitting that the old stones of the city centre are battered by the wind and the rain. And we can look forward to the bright, sharp, sunlit, frosty mornings...
Truly, we are a grey people.
2 comments:
Goodness me, HW, you've come over all poetic. What's got into you? Actually, you do exaggerate a little for effect, IMHO. It isn't that grey in Edinburgh. In fact, compared to the north of england, where I was previously, I was surprised last winter by the number of genuinely sunny winter days there were here...
If Edinburgh gets too grey
Remember Leith isnae far away
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