Dumfries to Edinburgh
August 5th 1995
The number 100 bus went from Dumfries to Edinburgh three times a day, except on Sundays, when there was only one service. It left from the Whitesands Bus Stance, which is right next to a small weir and the old bridge over the river Nith. Apparently the english army used that bridge when they invaded Scotland on their eternal bloody quest to dominate and destroy. Nowadays, the bridge is only used by pedestrian traffic and there's a newer bridge a few hundred feet upriver.
The seventy-odd mile journey takes about three hours and passes through countryside almost all the way. It's a weird sort of countryside though - for me, at least. I was severely disturbed by the massive bare hillsides we passed through on one part of the trip. I've got so used to seeing hills covered in trees and i've become so sensitive to deforestation that the effect of these hills, which most british people would see as beautiful, unspoilt countryside, was very strange. It was like seeing a close friend, who's always had a good head of hair, go suddenly bald. I could only see the damage done, centuries ago now, by the destruction of the forests that used to cover this island. The forests of Scotland were systematically chopped down by the english invaders so the anti-colonial resistance movement had nowhere to hide.
Wherever i went, Australia, Mexico, India, Britain, i was constantly aware of the damage that had been done to the land around me. I saw not just what it is then, but what it would have been like before people started destroying it. I visualised a forest covering bare hills and i noticed signs of erosion and soil damage caused by recent deforestation. Of course some places were ruined a very long time ago - Europe in particular - while others were only destroyed recently, as a result, more likely than not, of european colonization. I would see destruction where others, perhaps less aware of truly wild nature, would see beauty. I made me sad to see bare farmland, with only a scattering of stunted, scrubby trees, but most people would have thought it was nature and it was wonderful - the ones who didn't know what a real forest is, anyway.
I thought it was fairly likely there were no real forests in Europe. Sure, there were plenty of little clumps of trees that people called forests. Like Epping Forest, for example, just to the north east of London. Epping forest may well have been a forest once - as, in fact virtually everywhere on the island was - but to call it a forest these days is a bit of a joke. Epping Wood, would have been a bit more realistic. But then, the so-called "United Kingdom" was the second most densely populated country on the planet, if you don't count Singapore and Hong Kong, and it had only very recently been overtaken by India. So i supposed it wasn't entirely surprising that the entire island had been completely ruined by overpopulation.
Anyway, the bus eventually arrived in Edinburgh and i was met at the bus station by Ian, who i'd come to visit. I'd never met him before, but we'd swapped quite a few email messages via internet over a bit less than a year. It's strange meeting people you sort of know through that type of method of communication. Somehow you unconsciously get an image of them, like you do when you listen to people talking on the radio, but they never look like your image of them.
Ian was playing in Samba group who were performing at the Jazz Festival that was taking place in Edinburgh that weekend. They were going to be part of a procession through some of the streets near where the festival was taking place and we walked from the bus station to where they were due to start from. There were a few other things happening there too, including a brass band who were playing in the street and led the procession. I've never really come into contact with Samba before, in any way that made me conscious that it was samba i was listening to, so it was interesting to find out exactly what it was. Samba's entirely percussion, it originates in South America and uses quite a few different types of drums and other percussion instruments - i can't remember the names of any of them. I like percussion and i enjoyed listening to them playing as they wandered along the streets.
That evening, we went to a pub in Leith, overlooking the water of the Firth of Forth. It makes a lot of difference to a city, being on the coast, i thought. London was a horrible dismal and depressing sort of city, but if it was on the coast, it could have possibly be quite a pleasant place. I felt that if i had no choice and i had to live on that grim little island, i'd probably seriously consider living in Edinburgh. Although, i doubted i'd be able to handle the cold winters there - but then, i couldn't handle the winter anywhere in Britain!