Day 319 - Determination

 DETERMINATION

Prompt - Determination : Write about not giving up

Gypsy Brae ahead now.  They heard the assemblage before they saw it, a childish babble of excitement.  That meant the masses hadn't left yet, there was still time to get a clear path ahead.  And that maybe, just maybe, they were still on schedule.  Five miles to go.  Watches checked.  They needed to do it in a bit over eighty minutes.  It was still possible.

The route took them left, up past the refreshment tents and the shouted encouragements of the volunteers.

"Banana please" shouted James when he was about six metres from the first table.  A woman promptly grabbed his choice, held it out in his path and he grabbed it without breaking stride.  "Thanks."  And he was past.

"Water please."  George was a bit slower with his request, had to pause, grabbed the bottle, and tried to move his legs as fast they would go.  It took almost thirty seconds to catch James, who wasn't about to let up.  He'd spotted that the shambolic group to his right was being called to order, sensed the countdown was about to commence.  And then he heard it.  Looked at George, a pace behind.  The returning look mirrored his own, fear of being caught behind the five milers mixed with exhilaration that they might not.  

No words needed, both raised their speed, kilts billowing, heads shoved forward, to get ahead.  And did it, with seconds to spare.  There would be a few of the quickies from that group would come with them, some, so much fresher, might head off into the distance, but the dreaded pack had been avoided, well before the paths would narrow and hold them up.  They grinned at one another and settled back into their natural pace, taking in yellow fruit and clear liquid.  

"I always hate this bit."

"Hmmm."  George more economical with his oxygen supply.  They'd got to the path that would take them off the coast pathway, heading inland towards their final destination, and, for the next mile or so, on the most uphill section of the fourteen and a half miles.  Why now, when they'd already been pushing for ten?  It felt so cruel, and their calf muscles concurred.  But they grunted their way up, trying to grin some appreciation for the enthusiastic cheerleaders at the top, and rolled their eyes once past.  The next mile would be the worst.

Up past Silverknowes Golf Course, the sun getting ever hotter as midday loomed, the cool of the harbour long since forgotten.  On up past the white harled semis, the cars in the drives, the tidy wee row of shops, the stewards shouting at them to go on the right hand pavement.  As if that mattered.

And finally back on to the walkway cum cycle path that would see them through to the final section.  Not too many kilties before or behind now, they were on their own.  They walked on, feet sore, backs aching, legs complaining, minds numbing, bodies sweating as if they'd sprung multiple leaks.  On and on.  A board on a lamppost made them smile again.  Three miles to go.  Maybe a bit over fifty minutes, exhausted old bodies permitting.  

Over that intersection and down.  Over the bridge that offered false promise, it wasn't the one they wanted to see.  Then the real thing.  The parting of the trees revealed their first glimpse of their cantilevered end point, Murrayfield Stadium.  It was enough to return some life to limbs now finding it harder to respond to the brain's demands.

And then they were at the end, down, turn, down turn, down, turn, and on to the path by the railway line, more turns, more straights.  End in sight across the parched parkland.  Watches checked again.

"Shit."

"Shit."

They had three minutes.  Could they?  Would their sixty-something frames and muscles allow?  Stride out, ignore the pains, the reluctance, the sense of doom.  Push on, push more.  And they were coming in now, under the trees, the buzz of the crowd ahead, the greeting party assembled before them.   As they crossed the line they punched the air, and the wee guy with the mike laughed.

"Well done guys, high fives", and he held up a hand for slapping.  The effort barely registered now.  Elation took over.  They came close to hugging the women handing out their finishers' medals, but resisted, moved on, into the open space.  And, finally, stopped.  Three hours twenty nine minutes.  Target achieved.  They would suffer tomorrow.  Maybe Tuesday as well.  But they'd done it, what they'd set out to do.  Determination overcoming the ageing process.  Maybe it was for the last time.  But they'd done it once, and that's what mattered.

Day 299 - Concrete

 CONCRETE

Prompt - Concrete : Write about walking down a sidewalk and what you see and experience

It's a warm day for late October, and yet another minor piece of evidence towards the impending disasters of climate change.  But it's cloudy too, a bit breezy, and there's a hint of moisture in the air that suggests rain isn't too far off.  I've left the green expanse of the Links, which now spreads out to my right, and walk along a tree lined stretch that offers many parked cars, imposing old terraced housing on the other side, and a pathway which requires careful observation, for I know from past experience that there are many cracks and uneven surfaces due to tree roots breaking through.

There's a small group of people, of mixed ages, stood by the bus shelter across the road.  They look upwards to smile, not at me, but into the phone camera one of them holds in her hand.  A selfie?  Here?  Must be tourists.  Perhaps that's their guest house behind, for there are many such along this road.

I move on, the grass either side laced with the fallen brown leaves of Autumn.  A few cars go by in either direction.  I look for a gap, and make my way across to the other side, the residential side, squeezing past a baby blue Fiat 500.  On this side the pavement is more even, a little wider, making it easier to keep a decent distance from oncomers in these covidy times.  Street furniture provides the signage of urban environments, a traffic sign informs drivers of revised traffic lights ahead, a school nearby.  Low on the wall to my left a street name - Hermitage Place - sits beneath railing on which the residents have displayed No Parking In Front Of Gates.  Maintaining access to a drive must be difficult in a street that sees so many residents, holidaymakers and commuters parking nose to tail.  

I'm approaching the junction now, where the road I'm on meets three others, but in a pattern that renders traffic management more complex than at a simple crossroads.  The end of the Links, the green, to my left is coming, just past that bus stop across the road, and I can see, ahead and to the right, the imposing red brick structure that is now flats, but was once Leith Academy school, where my mother attended way back in the thirties and forties.  Awaiting the buses two women sit in the shelter, one at each end, both intently looking at their phone screens.  A sign of the times.

The lights are at red, but the crossing indicator is green so I speed up to get across before the change, carefully avoiding the path of a man pushing a baby buggy, clearly on a mission to get wherever he's going as soon as possible.  There are more people here, mostly in something a bit waterproof, for the threat of rain is increasing.  Two teenage boys, in the curious black tracksuity outfits that are some kind of age-denoted uniform, cross in front of me.  Once on the other pavement I pause to look along Duke Street, an electric car crossing my field of view, looking incongruous against the old world of the old school.  A bus turns the corner, almost empty of passengers, while two lines of car wait their turn to cross the junction.  I continue up Easter Road, the wind feeling stronger in my face, but still with that mildness to it.  A blonde woman in a green coat stands to the side, in conversation with the phone held to her right ear.  Ahead of me a woman keeps stopping to check on her dog, which is reluctant for keep up with her, tugging against the lead.  On the street to my right the traffic has begun queuing at the red light, including another near-empty double decker.  Past them I look on the entrance to the Tesco car park.  It doesn't look too busy in there.

Past the pub with the hanging basket, I look for a way past between the woman with the recalcitrant dog, and a stolid hooded walker in grey.  The dog forces her to stop once again and I go out into the street to pass, but she reasserts her authority over the pooch so that we are no moving in parallel.  I speed up, slow briefly to check that the side street is clear, then move on.  The woman/dog combo is held up by two big women with prams blocking the pavement, but I stay in the gutter to get past the bus stop, where there are several people hanging around.  A move not quite without danger, for one of those electric scooters whizzes past close to my right elbow, with no sign of respect for people or the law.

But I'm back on the pavement again, and there are few others walking this way.  Past blocks of flats, with a solitary sign showing that one has been sold, past the roadworks on the opposite side.  Ahead there's a tall man in black clothes, grey beanie, sitting astride a bike while he checks something on his phone.  His sunglasses incongruous on this greyest of days.  He doesn't look up as I pass.  Seconds later another man walks towards me wearing, yes, sunglasses.  What's going on here?

At least the DPD delivery driver, now walking across to his double-parked van, looks more sutied to the day.  He drives past me soon after.  The flats on either side are older tenements now, solid and reassuring.  A man in a parka goes past with arms swinging military style.  On the other side I young man is hanging out of a first floor window.  He shakes something - I can't make out what it is - then puts both hands akimbo on the sill and looks up and down the street.  Does he know I'm recording him?  The window to his left is wide open too.  Has somebody burned the toast?

I walk on.  A man approaches holding his phone horizontally to his face, in conversation.  I have never understood the fashion for using a phone this way, when it's so much easier held up to the ear.  I am old school.  I've caught up the the DPD van, parked little more than a hundred meters from where I saw it before, and the driver comes round to open the rear door as I pass, checking his device for whatever it is he is to deliver.  Just then a siren sounds.  I'd seen the flashing blue lights approaching in the distance, and here's the ambulance that owns them, threading through cars that have stopped to make way.  I hope that whoever they are going to, or carrying, will be OK.

The traffic resumes, so do I.  Past a corner shop, past another dog walker, the wind getting stronger.  A woman comes towards me, head down and serious of expression, wearing a green hoodie.  Spread out across her enormous chest are the words Staley Falcons, which later research tells me is a US baseball team.  She certainly doesn't look the athletic type...

My boots keep me going onwards.  I pass a young woman, masked, trying to get key into the lock of a red tenement door.  She isn't having much luck, but when I look back seconds later she's gone.  In presumably.

More flashing lights ahead, yellow this time, as a Highways truck pulls up by the kerb to my right, and men in high vis clothing emerge to do whatever their task is.  Now the rain has come though, and I quicken my step, seeking shelter.  A woman comes around the corner, pulling a fur lined hood tight about her head.  One more side road to cross, between two red cars waiting to turn, past the bus shelter, past two women who shout unintelligible farewells, one to head down the hill from whence I came, the other returning to the warmth of her flat.  The rain gets heavier and now getting to my destination is all that matters.  There's traffic, there's road signs, there's people, but all I can see now is the car park of Lidl and a place out of the sudden downpour.  Time to go shopping.

Day 132 - Transportation

 TRANSPORTATION 

Prompt - Transportation : Write about taking your favourite (or least favourite) form of transportation

Once upon a time I'd have been tempted to look to the air for my favoured mode of transport.  Flying took one to more distant places, in a short time, and airports were interesting places.  That latter statement has altered drastically in the past two decades.  Airports are to be endured, and for spending as little time in as possible.  Flying has become a (sometimes) necessary evil.

I used to love driving too, and recall being sat at the wheel for nigh on twelve hours to traverse much of Spain, and thoroughly enjoying it.  Perhaps I still might on those quiet roads, but I suspect not.  My concentration is not what it was thirty plus years ago, and I become stiff and sore after a much shorter distance sat in one place.  I prefer somebody else to be doing all the work.  In Edinburgh I rarely drive, not when I enjoy waking and the bus and tram service is so good.

I might make an exception for cycling, which I always used to enjoy, and am looking forward to trying again.  But that will be locally, for fun and fun only, and is not really 'proper' transport in consequence.

So my favourite nowadays has to be on rails.  Able to sit and look out at the changing scenery, read or listen to music, get up and have a walk up and down, and with end points that still retain some of their glamour.  Railway stations are far more pleasant places to be than airports, and you don't have to spend so long in them either!

And out of the forms of train travel I've experienced by far the most memorable (if not the most relaxing...) is the sleeper train.  I guess if it's a service you use regularly you can get into a routine and a rhythm that allows to you to really sleep.  So far I've only made three sleeper journeys.  (At least as an adult -  I can vaguely recall going on one from Ostend to Austria, and back again, as a schoolboy.  The magic somewhat diluted by having to share a cabin with five other farty kids...)  On none did I get a good night's sleep.  But all three provided memorable moments and images in my mind which will always remain.  

This is making me want to book a sleeper to somewhere, just for the sake of it...

Dayy 118 - Shoes

 SHOES

Prompt - Shoes : What kind of shoes do you wear?  Where do they lead you feet?

That time of year is here again.  Well almost, as it's a bit cold yet!  But when the rains vanish and the sun comes out I will be getting my walking boots back out again.  A few short walks to begin with, to get the feet reconditioned, then starting push up the distances, until I'm back to doing twenty kilometres and more.

Of course the feet should already be used to them, but we have been in lockdown mode, and sporting events were not for mere fans to attend.  In more usual times the boots would have been kept bedded in over the winter, my preferred footwear at Murrayfield to watch Edinburgh Rugby do their thing.  Preferred largely because that lets me wear two thick pairs of socks, an essential component in preventing desperate shivering.  But now preferred also for their colour scheme.  Those blue boots suffered a broken lace at the end of last summer, and their replacements are a bright orange, to match my team's colours.

But attendance at rugby matches has had to be virtual for many months now (other than one outing last August when the SRU were permitted to experiment with a socially distanced crowd.  It wasn't even cold enough for the boots.  So the boots have sat, waiting patiently, until their summer role drags them from the top shelve of the hall cupboard.  That time is now.

My previous boots were bought specifically to attend games at Murrayfield.  Albeit back then it wasn't in the stadium, but in the covered art deco venue next door, the team was Edinburgh Capitals, and the sport ice hockey.  The rink was affectionately known as Freezerfield as it was the coldest in the league.  Wearing those boots, and the double socks they allowed for, meant I was consistently toasty though my normal three hour Sunday night stint in the place.  Then came my conversion to kilt wearing.

That came from a desire to do Kiltwalk to raise fund for the Capitals, but their sudden demise meant I'd walk for money for Advocard, where I was a long standing volunteer.  So the boots took on a new role, more like the one they were envisaged for by the manufacturers.  It wasn't hill walking, nor trekking across countryside, but pounding the streets of Edinburgh.  Helping my body adapt from walking perhaps eight or nine kilometres, to fifteen and twenty and more.  Continuous walking, trying to set a decent time, then a better time.  I set myself various routes, but once I was up to speed the most enjoyable was the full length of the Water of Leith Walkway.  And then the Kiltwalk itself, which proved to be really enjoyable, and less taxing on my ageing body than I'd expected.  I managed to do the route a lot quicker the year after.

Then the pandemic came.  My old boots developed a fault, were replaced by the new blue numbers.  Over the summer I still did my walks, avoiding people as much as possible, and while there was no formal Kiltwalk taking place I did complete a virtual one, walking the river walk previously mentioned in about three and a quarter hours.  Since when the boots have sat waiting for their chance to re-emerge.

There won't be an Edinburgh Kiltwalk this year.  I am waiting to see what the 'national' one will look like due to take place in Glasgow at the end of August.  Will the logistics make it feasible? I hope so.  If they do then I need to be prepared.  I need to start training, I need to break those blue and orange boots in again (or maybe I mean my feet...).  In a few days they will be back on, shorts donned, and I will walk in excess of ten kilometres, and see how I feel.  Then build up gradually, week by week.  Even if there is no Kiltwalk for me this year I can still enjoy the walks, the feeling of my legs getting stronger, the sun on my face, the sense of detachment it brings.  I have discovered, quite late in life, how much I like walking.  Alone with my own thoughts, just me pushing myself as hard as I can.  That might be a bit tougher now, being yet another year older, and having some breathing issues after a bout of (probably) covid, but I'll do my best and be content with that.  Those boots will take me over familiar paths - stretches of the usual KW route, a trek out to Murrayfield via the coast, into East Lothian, along the aforementioned walkway, and along the Union Canal.  I like to think the boots are looking forward to it as much as I am.

Day 104 - Vacation

 VACATION (HOLIDAY!!)

Prompt - Vacation : Write about a vacation you took.

If I look back over the last near-on six and half decades and think of which holiday I had that still makes me smile more than any other it isn't the one that would seem most obvious.  Not spending a few days in one of the great European cities.  Not lying on a Mediterranean beach.  Not watching the glorious sunrises on a Greek island.  Not the sleeper train across three countries.  No, my favourite remains one which only lasted for three nights away (on one of which I got little sleep), took in three cities, and never left the main island of Great Britain (well, it was always underneath somewhere).  And which let me experience something I'd been thinking about for many years.

We still lived in Southport at the time.  So Day One consisted of making our way to the nearest train station, getting train and bus to Liverpool Airport, and boarding a flight to London City.  Then the DLR into central London.  Hotel for the night, a decent meal and a wander, and an earlyish night.  Day Two gave us a chance to go to a gallery, do some shopping, sit in the sun in the gardens in one of the Bloomsbury squares.  An excellent meal in a Belgian restaurant and off to Kings Cross to catch the sleeper to Inverness.

That was both experience I'd been wanting to try for a long time, and the largely sleepless night. I remember  being awake around three am and conscious that we'd stopped moving.  As it seemed to be a long stop I went to the window of our little cabin and tried to figure out where we were.  An old station clearly, a large and imposing one from what i could tell, and strangely familiar.  Maybe I hadn't quite come fully awake as it took me at least five minutes to realise it was Edinburgh Waverley, a place I should have recognised immediately.

Day three therefore began early.  By six it was clear I wouldn't be getting more sleep, so I dressed and sat in the dining car watching the scenery as the likes of Aviemore and Kingussie flw past in the clear Highlands morning.  We were given a laughably small breakfast (but the tickets were dead cheap so who's complaining?) and pitched out into chillingly cold Inverness station at eight am.  We had booked into the station hotel, and they took in our bags for us, but there were at least five hours to pass before we could get to our room.  So we wandered the streets of an unfeasibly uiet city, looking for somewhere suitable to eat.  There didn't seem to be much around, so maybe it was simple gratitude that made the cooked breakfast in the Lemon Tree Cafe taste like one of the finest repastys of my life.  Or maybe they just did a really good fry up.  Sadly, when I went back a few years later, it had closed down.

Fortified by the scran we did more exploring as the streets started to get a bit busier.  Looked in a few shops, checked out the river and the castle, and made the best discovery of the trip.  Leakey's Bookshop is housed in an old Gaelic church and is one of the biggest second hand book venders in the country.  What a wonderful place to pass a couple of hours, made more so by the cafe on the upper floor where we had lunch (though that too has fallen victim to the passing of time), and leaving with as many books as we thought would fit into our cases...

An evening in Inverness, a comfy room and a good night's sleep, and we entered Day 4, heading homewards.  A mid morning train to Glasgow took us to meet my oldest and best friend, who then took us to lunch in his favourite Italian.  Less than three hours after arriving we were on our way out of central Station heading for... Wigan.  OK, I didn't say the whole trip was perfect, did I?  Changing trains in Wigan means changing stations and standing on the platform of the hideously ugly Wigan Wallgate waiting for our final conveyance, the train to Southport. But so what if the final few hours were a bit of a come down?  By then I felt I'd had several memorable experiences, had finally got to take the sleeper from London to Inverness, discovered a great bookshop, and been able to see my pal I didn't get to see very often.  Sometimes it's the simplest things that prove the most memorable.

Day 22 - Smoke, Fog and Haze

 SMOKE, FOG AND HAZE

Prompt - Smoke, Fog and Haze : Write about not being able to see ahead of you

At times we take risks, thinking we've calculated the odds to be in our favour, though we know in reality the dealer always wins.  Well, nearly always.

I'd been on the road for five hours and needed food.  And a rest from the concentration behind the wheel.  At least, I thought, the worst was behind me.  The traffic around Birmingham, and later the Liverpool-Preston stretch, had been bad, slow moving although never really coming to a halt.  But now, past Lancaster, the rest of the trip would be less stressful, even in the dark.  I knew the route by instinct now, and felt I was not so far from home.

As I turned into Tebay services the dusk was falling, but the scenery to either side had already started to fade away into the mists.  I had my food, and a walk around to ease the weary muscles, before heading back to my car.  It was dark now, the car park was already less far populated than on my arrival, and I felt confident I'd be stopping outside the door before midnight.  The mist was still around, thicker now, but it was only as I pulled away that I realised just how much it was reflecting my lights back at me, and how the exit out of the services faded into a shimmering grey wall.  

By the time I got within a hundred metres of rejoining the motorway I knew it was going to be bad, that there was hard work ahead, and that this could be a long, long night.  Any attempt to go above thirty five felt perilous, like walking blindfold along a narrow alley.  When I came up on red lights ahead the lorry was already much closer to me than I'd expected.  The tension grew in my shoulders, as I involuntary hunched forward in the forlorn hop that another ten centimetres closer to the screen was going to improve my vision...

White lights in the mirror, gaining rapidly, suddenly alongside, already gone past.  What speed was that one doing?  Sixty?  Seventy?  Insanity?  I slowed further, anticipating a crash scene ahead.  But none came, and I passed a few lorries going even more cautiously than I.  I checked the dials.  I'd done less than fifteen miles in the half hour since leaving the safety of the car park.   Home seemed far away.

Another set of lights rushed to come by.  Did these guys know something I didn't?  Or were they desperate?  Indifferent to life?   But another thought coalesced in my mind, forcing out all others, and began to make calculations.  A white Transit van came by, cab in darkness, but with, crucially, fog lights doing their best to pierce the gloom behind.   The 'If I...' in my head became an 'I will...', and my foot pushed the pedal down in pursuit.  Red lights ahead were swallowed up in the swirl, but only for a couple of seconds as I found the belief to stick to my plan.  I stayed back far enough to maintain visual contact, and concentrated on matching my speed, now around seventy, to his.

My internal sophistry had convinced me.  My brakes were almost certainly much better than a heavier van.  As long as I kept the fuzz of those red lights in sight I'd be able to watch out for any untoward movement of the vehicle, or the brake lights suddenly coming on, and be able to react in time.  Otherwise I'd keep on following, for as long as he kept it up or my powers of concentration allowed.  The road, I already knew, was quiet, so surely those odds were on my side?

It was a tiring way to travel.  My single minded focus on those life lights, and continually monitoring the distance between us, was headache inducing, arm stiffening, grip clenching, despite all efforts to try and relax a bit.  I wondered how long I'd be able to keep this up for.  After fifteen minutes it was starting to feel like a seriously bad idea, my body rebelling against the tension being piled upon it.  And then we were through.  Just like that the world went from opaque shining greyness into soft universal black.  The white van slowed noticeably, and I thought the driver must be trying to bring himself down from the adrenaline rush he'd subjected himself to.

While I could feel only relief at the immediate sense of freedom that moment gave me, of surviving my game of Cumbrian Roulette.  Pulling away from the van, the driver probably unaware of how grateful I felt towards him, I settled down to a comfortable eighty and looked to pull back the lost time.  Midnight looked on again.  And the dealer looked on in despair.

Day 7 - The Rocket-ship

 THE ROCKET-SHIP

Prompt - The Rocket-ship : Write about a rocket-ship on its way to the moon or a distant galaxy, far, far away.

Eighteen hundred and fifty days.  Just over five years.  Not that 'days'  or 'years' held any meaning now.  It was the numbers that mattered, not the units.  Eighteen fifty activated the first decision window.  Her decision.

There had been four of them to begin with.  Alexei had been first to go.  'Day' nine hundred.  A routine check and maintenance walk.  Every ninety 'days' they took it in turn, but this one refused to be routine.  The stickiness of the airlock door should have alerted them, but omens don't belong in space.  And anyway, it wasn't the door that did the damage.  The odds on what happened happening must have been billions to one against.  Space debris.  In deep space.  Hitting the exact spot where their colleague was checking the secondary comms array.  Had been checking.   He was long gone before any of them could even react to the images on their screens.  Long gone.  As was their ability to talk to each other.  

The accident which took Lungowe was even more bizarre.  But when everything in their little world was routine it was hard to stick to procedures.  She should have been wearing a full heat suit in the core room, but it was only going to be five 'minutes', wasn't it.  But.  Always but.  But it wasn't five minutes, and as she battled to renew one of the lower hydroponic circuits the time stretched out.  They called to her to leave, thrice, but each time it was "nearly there".  But nearly wasn't as close as it should have been.  By the time they got to her it was already too late.  One of them should have been near at hand of course, but...

That had been 'day' fifteen hundred and eight two.  Two hundred and sixty eight 'days' ago.  What would once have been about nine months.  Whatever they were.  She and Paul said little now.  It was all about waiting, and performing what had to be performed.  The contingency routine allowed for half crew, no less, so they got by.  She got by, for Paul did what he had to do, no more, and avoided any other responsibility.

So the decision was hers now.  They were around a hundred and twenty 'days' flight time from taking up orbit around their destination.  There were two hundred and eighty other human beings on board, in cryogenics stasis.  There were guidelines on how quickly they could be reactivated, and reintegrated, returned, refreshed.  They would have to be revived in batches, the size and frequency to be determined by the views and experiences of the transit crew.  Which, now, really just meant her.

She'd been pondering it for days.  With Paul's personality gone AWOL it would be down to her to perform the orientation procedures.  She didn't think she could cope with more than three at first.  She needed a leader, someone who would relieve her of the burden of command.  A technician to take on a share of the maintenance workload.  And - this was the tricky one.  She'd have liked  the wellbeing specialist, who had always been intended to be in the first batch, to help the four work through the impact of half a decade in intergalactical transit.  She needed her.  But.  Always but.  Paul needed proper psychiatric care.  Maybe she did too.  Maybe?  Huh!  The decision was made.

She punched in the codes.  The beginning of the end had begun.

Day 3 - The Vessel

 THE VESSEL

Prompt - The Vessel : Write about a ship or other vehicle that can take you somewhere different from where you are now.

2020, the year of limited horizons.  It began with short trips away, to Dublin and London and Glasgow, with plans bubbling for hotter climes, and overnight stays in other cities and towns in my own country, and day outings of modest explorations.  The lockdown came and plans melted into memories as the viral restrictions shrunk the world, made home the safest place to be.  

So those thoughts of buses and trains and planes became walks, and more walks.  Around parks and graveyards and the same old familiar, increasingly familiar, streets.  It wasn't Edinburgh that was my home now, it was North Edinburgh, it was Leith and Newhaven and maybe, pushing the boundaries a bit, Meadowbank.  The two kilometres into the city centre is now a serious journey, to be savoured for the unusual sights it offers.  And the very thought of the Southside... even Liberton and Morningside and Corstorphine take on an alien allure when they become no-go areas.   While a trip to the time-bending, energy-sapping planet of IKEA was to enter a place of danger and wonder. 

So I find myself wondering, when the restrictions begin to lift and the world around me becomes a pin cushion of potential destinations, where will I want to go?  What transport will lead me to a fresh new view that reignites imagination?  It's both the curse and the advantage of the year gone by that my answer should be so prosaic.  My aims have got lower, but my appreciation of the simple things, and of places that have gone from everyday to unattainable, has risen.  Which means the journey I most look forward to making is on the train that leaves Waverley heading west, past Linlithgow and Falkirk and the bleakness of Harthill and through the East End high rises to deposit me in my Weegie destination.

I was there in February, so it will be more than a year between visits.  What was then a confusing building site is now the finished article.  The photos suggest a space of light and air and architectural grandeur.  Which feels like a fitting beginning to a nascent desire to reclaim life put on hold.

Less than an hour in a Scotrail carriage and I will find my place to be in 2021.   Queen Street Station.  We have to start, and end, somewhere.