And here's a small, incidental point. As I was leaving, I noticed on a label recording the mine's owners that one of the principal beneficiaries of all this sweat and toil at the coalface was none other than our old friend W.J.C. ScottBentinck, the fifth Duke of Portland, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, what a remarkably, cherishably small world Britain is. That is its glory, you see that it manages at once to be intimate and smallscale and at the same time packed to bursting with incident and interest. I am constantly filled with admiration at this at the way you can wander through a town like Oxford and in the space of a few moments pass the home of Christopher Wren, the buildings where Halley found his comet and Boyle his first law, the track where Roger Bannister ran the first subfourminute mile, the meadow where Lewis Carroll strolled; or how you can stand on Snow's Hill at Windsor and see, in a single sweep, Windsor Castle and the playingfields of Eton, the churchyard where Gray wrote his elegy, the site where The Merry Wives of Windsor was first performed. Can there anywhere on earth be, in such a modest span, a landscape more packed with centuries of busy, productive attainment?
I returned to Pegswood lost in a small glow of admiration and caught a train to Newcastle, where I found a hotel and passed an evening in a state of some serenity, walking till late through the echoing streets, surveying the statues and buildings with fondness and respect, and I finished the day with a small thought, which I shall leave you with now. It was this: How is it possible, in this wondrous land where the relics of genius and enterprise confront you at every step, where every realm of human possibility has been probed and challenged and generally extended, where many of the very greatest accomplishments ofindustry, commerce and the arts find their seat, how is it possible in such a place that when at length I returned to my hotel and switched on the television it was Cagney and Lacey again?
CHAPTER TWENTYFIVE
AND SO I WENT TO EDINBURGH. CAN THERE ANYWHERE BE A MORE beautiful and beguiling city to arrive at by train early on a crisp, dark Novembery
evening? To emerge from the bustling, subterranean bowels of Waverley Station and find yourself in the very heart of such a glorious city is a happy experience indeed. I hadn't been to Edinburgh for years and had forgotten just how captivating it can be. Every monument was lit with golden floodlights the castle and Bank of Scotland headquarters on the hill, the Balmoral Hotel and the Scott Monument down below which gave them a certain eerie grandeur. The city was abustle with endofday activity. Buses swept through Princes Street and shop and office workers scurried along the pavements, hastening home to have their haggis and cockaleekie soup and indulge in a few skirls or whatever it is Scots do when the sun goes doon.
I'd booked a room in the Caledonian Hotel, which was a rash and extravagant thing to do, but it's a terrific building and an Edinburgh institution and I just had to be part of it for one night, so I set off for it down Princes Street, past the Gothic rocket ship of the Scott Monument, unexpectedly exhilarated to find myself among the hurrying throngs and the sight of the castle on its craggy mount outlined against a pale evening sky.
To a surprising extent, and far more than in Wales, Edinburgh felt like a different country. The buildings were thin and tall in an unEnglish fashion, the money was different, even the air and light felt different in some ineffable northern way. Every bookshop window was full of books about Scotland or by Scottish authors.And of course the voices were different. I walked along, feeling as if I had left England far behind, and then I would pass something familiar and think in surprise, Oh, look, they have Marks &C Spencer here, as if I were in Reykjavik or Stavanger and oughtn't to expect to find British things. It was most refreshing.
I checked into the Caledonian, dumped my things in the room, and immediately returned to the streets, eager to be out in the open air and to take in whatever Edinburgh had to offer. I trudged up a long, curving back hill to the castle, but the grounds were shut for the night, so I contented myself with a shuffling amble down the Royal Mile, which was nearly empty of life and very handsome in a dour, Scottish sort of way. I passed the time browsing in the windows of the many tourist shops that stand along it, reflecting on what a lot of things the Scots have given the world kilts, bagpipes, tamo' shanters, tins of oatcakes, bright yellow jumpers with big diamond patterns of the sort favoured by Ronnie Corbett, plaster casts of Greyfriars Bobby looking soulful, sacks of haggis and how little anyone but a Scot would want them.
Let me say right here, flat out, that I have the greatest fondness and admiration for Scotland and her clever, cherrycheeked people. Did you know that Scotland produces more university students per capita than any other nation in Europe? And it has churned out a rollcall of worthies far out of proportion to its modest size Stevenson, Watt, Lyell, Lister, Burns, Scott, Conan Doyle, J.M. Barrie, Adam Smith, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Telford, Lord Kelvin, John Logic Baird, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and lan McCaskill, to name but a few. Among much else we owe the Scots are whisky, raincoats, rubber wellies, the bicycle pedal, the telephone, tarmac, penicillin and an understanding of the active principles of cannabis, and think how insupportable life would be without those. So thank you, Scotland, and never mind that you seem quite unable to qualify for the World Cup these days.
At the bottom of the Royal Mile, I came up against the entrance to the Palace of
Holyroodhouse, and picked my way to the centre of things along a series of darkened back lanes. Eventually I ended up in an unusual pub on St Andrew Square called Tiles an apt name since every inch of it from floor to ceiling was covered in elaborate, chunky, Victorian tiles. It felt a bit like drinking in Prince Albert's loo a not disagreeable experience, as it happens. In any case, something about it must have appealed to me because I drank a foolish amount of beer and emerged to find that nearly all the restaurants round about were closed, so I toddled back to my hotel, where I winked at the night staff and put myself to bed.
In the morning, I awoke feeling famished, perky and unusuallyclearheaded. I presented myself in the entrance to the dining room of the Caledonian. Would I like breakfast? asked a man in a black suit.
'Does the Firth have a Forth?' I replied drolly and nudged him in the ribs. I was shown to a table and was so hungry that I dispensed with the menu and told the man to bring me the full whack, whatever it might consist of, then sat back happily and idly glanced at the menu, where I discovered that the full cooked breakfast was listed at .14.50.1 snared a passing waiter.