5.10 .06
Pond Scum: Worlds Created With A Pencil
By Steve Finbow
Later, as he lay in his bed reading Plum, Steve Finbow reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within his life during the previous three weeks.
Two weeks ago, I was in Edinburgh. As I write this, I am in Williamsburg, New York City. In six days’ time, I will be back in London. Soon, I hope to be in Hokkaido, Japan. Globetrotter or what? Well, actually, what. What makes a city distinct from another? Is there a presiding atmosphere in a city? Does it have a certain character? What gives a city its traits and its tics, its terrors and its tremors? Do buildings create a city’s filmic identity? What I mean is, as the L.A. of Blade Runner is all rain, neon, and darkness, is London all smoke, beer, and drabness? Is Edinburgh all kilts, whisky, and jockness?
By Nicholas Allanach
Americans love Edinburgh. Have you been there? I have – four times. The first time was with my parents when I was eight years old. There is a photograph of me and my brother dressed in identical tweed jackets, short trousers, and grey knee-length socks. We sport Nazi-youth blond buzz cuts. On our heads we wear – oh, the shame, the shame – tartan hats. Bad enough, but we are not wearing the hats tourists usually buy. Oh, no, not us. No tam o’shanter for the Finbow boys. No, we are wearing glengarries. My brother’s in Royal Stewart and mine in Black Watch tartan. (I apologise to my brother for this memory – his look these days is one of eyes tattooed on his ears {rather than ears tattooed on his eyes – that would be weird}, multiple piercings – including a Prince Albert, and the unmannered dress code of a dandified Road Rat.)
The second time I visited Edinburgh was with Alison Stewart (no relation) and we were aged 17/18. We spent hours looking for a pub that would serve us alcohol. I remember we both got very drunk and fell asleep on the train back to Newcastle. That was about it. Kelly and I stayed in a po-mo/minimalist hotel on my third visit. We saw all the major tourist sites, the ones that provide Edinburgh with its international image: the castle, Holyrood Palace, Arthur’s Seat, the statue of Greyfriar’s Bobby – sort of like a McLassie (although, that’s somewhat of a tautology). Edinburgh prides itself on its scariness – you can go on murder, ghost, and horror tours. I would not be surprised if there isn’t a Trainspotting tour including gift hypodermic needles, lunch – Scotch eggs, haggis, head butts, and a swim in the toilets of a Leith pub.
The last time I visited was with VC (please wait for further instalments). She was there to pick up a visa for her year in Japan. We went to the embassy where I found an illustrated booklet explaining the dangers of visiting foreign countries – of which more in a future column. We went to a book store (a very good one – I bought I Am Not Jackson Pollock by John Haskell, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, and The Wild Sheep Chase by Murakami as VC’s going-away present. Then we walked up to the old city, went for a beer in The Mitre and then decided to walk up (well, walk not far up) Arthur’s Seat – the remains of an ancient Carboniferous-period volcano which, along with Salisbury Crag, take the form of a crouched lion, apparently. So far, so rambling, but in getting to the peaks we had to pass the new Scottish Parliament building – Holyrood. This building – initially estimated to cost £50 million and finally costing £431 million – opened in September 2004. What do the Scots get for their money? They get a building resembling a piddling mission in a far-flung country, replete with bamboo and bad concrete. You can imagine a dissolute Graham Greene character kidnapped from its beige-wood corridors. Its water features make the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain resemble an Olympic-size Trevi. The reception area looks like it has had a Travelodge refurbishment. The main chamber is an explosion in an IKEA factory. The tower buildings are something pre-Glasnost East European slum architects would have rejected as too Brutalist. And the exterior of the debating chamber would not be out of place in a science-fiction film with set designs by Terence Conran and décor by Chief Shaka Zulu. In whole, it looks like it has been uplifted from the Limpopo and, by way of Chernobyl, dumped at the foot of an extinct volcano that everyone wishes would again begin to fulminate.
Now, I am no Prince monstrous-carbuncle-on-the-face-of-a-much-loved-and-elegant-friend Charles. I like modern buildings. I like the Swiss RE building (the Gherkin). I love Frank Gehry’s buildings. I even have a soft spot for the newish British Library – even though every time I visit, the guards follow me around as if I were some kind of folio Fagin. But I do not like the Scottish Parliament building. It is a scrofulous toad among doves, a leper among supermodels, a Dan Brown among Naipauls.
Can you imagine Manhattan without the Empire State Building? (The World Trade Center lives on in our memories, spectrally puncturing the sky.) Can you picture London without St Paul’s? (Or the London Eye for that matter?) New York and London have ugly buildings – the United Nations Headquarters is not exactly Versailles and London’s Centrepoint is a shark-toothed, baleen-mouthed concrete and glass nightmare. Edinburgh has given the world Robert Louis Stevenson, Muriel Spark, Ian Rankin, and Irvine Welsh among others. These writers have created worlds with their pencils (or pens, typewriters, laptops – but you get my point). I am not sure what architect Enric Miralles was attempting with his design for Holyrood but the result is a building that would benefit from the attentions of an overzealous eraser (or Wite-out, Tipp-Ex, delete button).
Afterword: Because Lola has fifteen men staying in her apartment; I am residing in a gorgeous guesthouse in Williamsburg. Tastefully decorated, it has a laid-back Zen feel. The rooms are spartan – stone floors, high raftered ceilings, white walls. No television – hooray! I get hooked on American commercials. Vegan breakfast. OK, so this is what I do – I smuggle in bottles of Olde English 800 and $10 bags of shredded squid, wasabi peas, and beef jerky for my midnight snacks. With Martin Amis’s The War Against Cliché and P.G. Wodehouse’s Leave it to Psmith, I am happy. For now.
Click here to read previous Pond Scum columns.
Click here for Steve Finbow's bio and a list of works published.
© 2006 Me Three
