Sinister: Oft Listening how the hounds and horn

[Gordon]

A while back, someone had been stabbed outside this place. She'd worked
the case. Just another act of violence, another life wasted.
'Got plans?' He looked expectant, nervous, childlike in his ignorance
and egotism. What could she tell him? Belle and Sebastian on the hi-fi;
another gin and tonic; the last third of an Isla Dewar novel. Tough
competition for any man.
- Set in Darkness, by Ian Rankin: p.133

To be honest it wasn't easy waking up. Through in Edinburgh at around
08:45, I wandered along Princes' St. Gardens; towards the fountain, and
sat drinking a can of red bull whilst perusing Sunday's Observer and
Monday's Metro, the chill, bright air meeting my simmering blood as I
read of Mr. President's thoroughly mis-placed and ill-advised reaction
to human grief.
I arrived, a bit late, down at the Dean Valley office to Mark's
question: "Gordon, do you have a key?" Naw... Alex who does the
reprographics was through the glass so we knocked and he let us in
through a fire exit. Public holiday, you see... So, I said to the three
people in the studio well, I may as well bugger off then: it's a nice
day.
I went in search of Thomas de Quincey's grave. It's supposed to be in
the grounds of St. Cuthbert's along with, as Will tells me, the inventor
of logarithms. On the latter part, I have sought the assistance of my
father, who explains that logarithms are a way to transform
multiplications into additions, via a series of tables. For those of you
born pre-1970 (and I shouldn't imagine there are many) such calculations
as we now do with pocket calculators were, in those days, done with
slide rules, thanks to this man Napier.
I could find neither his grave nor that of Thomas's, though I searched
for over an hour through grandiose and modest slabs, panels, grottoes,
carved obelisks, celtic crosses, draped stone urns, cut-columns...
peering at names of brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, things that
occupied the lives of those interned, or died of, at any time between
about 1742 and 1896... the wind whipped in the sun's vortex through
trees, dappling in dynamic chiaroscuro the carved skulls and stone
leaves:

...here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had
disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be
bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket: portable
ecstasies might be corked up in a pint bottle....in the character of
l'Allegro: even then, he speaks and thinks as becomes Il Penseroso
-de Quincey

So I sat in the park; just where the picnic had been, reading. Not a
cloud in the sky and sunshine! Warm, sweet, Indian summer sunshine [Rob
:)]. I toyed with 'doing things', like galleries; going to see the Royal
Yacht Britannia down in Leith but figured: this is 'time out'. Spend it
'out'. Relax... And so I did.

Later...

YO! Below has manga cartoons projected big as Tintorettos on the
whitewashed plasterboard; each rapid frame some studied stereotypical
detail, strangely touching: even in silence the eyes give away the
baddies until a tree-top view blurs the moral compass.
I sip an 'open sesame'. Topped with cinnamon, it contains: amaretto;
baileys; brandy; triple sec; rice spirit; cream. The table-top ash-tray
is inset and lit from underneath by a low voltage halogen, and there is
a dispenser which proffers beer at the touch of a red button.
Fashionistas enter.

Train home. The table is rapidly filled by staff of a bank: which is
strange, for a bank holiday but, whatever... A young, new employee sucks
major ass. He sits opposite a beautiful colleague, and it's only after
she disembarks, at Stirling, that him and the older, senior, executive
go all locker-room over her. It disgusts me totally. The duplicity; the
politics: they make me feel sick and angry.

I write this so to stave off cynicism.

people who 'fit'
people who 'don't fit'
common denominator?
people.

I am more guilty than some, and less guilty than some others, but as
some placard reported from Central Park said: 'An eye for an eye is a
whole world blind'

Gordon


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