There are three Loganair flights leaving Edinburgh Airport in the space of an hour… and only two check-in desks open. When we finally reach the front of the line, I am keen for things to go quickly and smoothly.
“Do you have any dangerous goods?” asks the check-in agent.
“Yes!” responds DorkySon, with great enthusiasm.
DorkyDad and I look at him in horror.
“You do?” says the check-in agent, eyebrow raised.
“Hang on, hang on,” says DorkySon. “Did you ask me if everything is good?”
I love Edinburgh so much.
Ten years living in Hobart may have knocked Auld Reekie off the top spot in my favourite cities list. But as the place where I went to uni, fell in love, had a baby, and made many lifelong friends, it will always be somewhere I want to revisit.
Last time we were back in Edinburgh, in 2018, I found the whole thing a little disconcerting. Perhaps not enough time had passed since living there, or perhaps my roots in Hobart weren’t quite so deep at that point, but whatever the cause I found it hard to straddle the line between local and tourist. It almost felt too familiar, strolling around the streets of Marchmont and popping into Margiotta’s for a Guardian and a lottery ticket.
This time round, I had no such issues. It was a pure joy to be back. I was definitely there as a tourist – just one with pals to see and no need of the Google Maps app.
We stayed near the Meadows on a beautiful, tree-lined street where squirrels sipped from birdbaths and schoolkids laughed under the window as they walked or scootered to school. DorkySon couldn’t believe how dingy the tenement stair was; I couldn’t believe how clean and well-lit it was compared to every shared stair of my student days! Not only did the main door lock work, it had a soft close mechanism so there was no door slam soundtrack throughout the night.
That’s not to say there was no discombobulation – but that had more to do with jetlag than location. On our first night, deep in dreamland and grateful to finally be fully horizontal, I woke up to DorkyDad fluffing up his pillows, searching for the light switch, and readying himself for coffee.
“Wow, he said. “That was one of the great sleeps of my life.”
“Mate,” I replied, peering at my phone screen. “Go back to sleep. It’s two in the bloody morning.”
September has long been one of my favourite months.
When we lived in the northern hemisphere it was the most beautiful threshold between summer and autumn, full of soft light and turning leaves. Now in the south, it marks the beginning of spring. The windy season, for sure, but also the start of longer, lighter days, and those occasional moments when the sun is warm enough to bare our pale arms to the air again.
It also seems to be a month of big events, running on a six-year cycle. In September 2001, I started at Edinburgh University. In September 2007, DorkyDad and I got married. In September 2013, we moved to Tasmania. In September 2019… well nothing major happened, but perhaps that was the universe giving me a break knowing what was to come the following year.
Anyway, that history means that September is always full of anniversaries and ‘remember when…’ conversations.
I am a nostalgic little creature. Always looking for patterns and coincidences. When I realised that the date we were due to fly out of Tasmania for our recent UK visit was ten years to the day since we had flown out of Heathrow to move here, I was delighted. Not only that, but the weekend we were due to spend in Edinburgh marked 22 years exactly since I first arrived at Pollock Halls as a Fresher.
All in all, it felt like the signs boded well for a good trip back to Scotland.
It was time to leave Harris for the second part of our trip: a week in Edinburgh, followed by a few days in Helsinki, and then the long, long journey home.
We’d said our goodbyes, stuffed things back into our bags, and negotiated the notoriously tricky security line at Stornoway Airport. We were sitting on a tiny plane waiting to taxi to the runway.
Ten minutes later… we were still sitting there.
Twenty minutes later… we were still sitting there.
The pilot came on the radio and said he was going to turn the plane off and turn it back on again, in an attempt to fix whatever mechanical issue was causing the delay. Unfortunately, the old on-off-on again trick doesn’t work as well on Embraers as it does on iPhones, and a few minutes later we found ourselves traipsing down the aircraft steps and back into the airport. Continue reading
No matter how many times you’ve done it, there’s still something miraculous and disconcerting about strapping yourself into a metal tube and flying across the world.
Airlines go to great lengths to persuade you that it’s a normal and comfortable thing to do. They try their best to make that tube feel like home. Qantas welcome you with a hearty ‘G’day mate!’ and hand out complementary socks with cartoon kangaroos on them. Finnair design their cabin lighting to resemble the aurora borealis, and Loganair provide Harris Tweed headrests and Tunnocks caramel wafers. But when you undertake ten flights in three weeks, from Tasmania to the Outer Hebrides and back again, the resulting sensory overload means there’s no escaping the strangeness of air travel. Continue reading
Dorkymum | Stories from Tasmania 