"Is this the Edinburgh train?"

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life."

Samuel Johnson, September1777

"Hello, is that The Samaritans? Could you come and get me? I'm stuck on The Tube..."

Editor, The Jaggy Thistle, May 2015.

To That London then, a few days past, to squire my significant -other- for- life on a work trip,  visit with family, peruse the culture and free the self of the weight of materialism, mainly by spending all my fuckin' money...

Distance is no object in London because that's what London is: distance. You walk for miles to get to the tube station, followed by more miles inside the tube station, down past the inner circles of Dante's inferno, to reach your train. A few rattles and bumps later you get out of the train and do the same thing as you just did but this time in reverse.

 Managed a trip from Hammersmith to King's Cross all on my oaneeoh, I think I went via Polmont, because by the time I got to KC, i met myself going back the other way...

A warm chat with the newsagent local to our hotel. He has a Scottish neighbour he tells  me, who now finds Scotland too cold. Or as he puts it:"She's become a soft southerner..."

To dinner in Hammersmith, where, from the next table, it sounds that crows have learned to speak English. Oh no, wait. It appears to be two cast members from Eastenders, are deploying not only the dulcet tones of Cocknee but topping it off with linguistic innovation: Cocknee with upspeaking.

 As in: "So ah went dahn the pahb? And you'll never guess who ah met, dahn the pahb? Only bleedin' Brad from bladhy Ibiza!" Resolve to go dahn the lawndret to see if Dot's done me washin'.

 Oh God, I've must have got bit...

Buying food and drink in London can be a laborious business. I found that the best course of action is to simply empty your wallet into the salient till. Saves time basically...

Buying food and drink in London can be a joyful, delightful business. Had lunch with offspring at an Italian cafe near Kings Cross. 

Omelette with tomato and onion fighting for space on the plate with 3 enormous slices of fuckin' real, fuckin' brilliant Italian bread. Offspring couldn't finish her dolomite sized portion of pasta napoli that sung an aria of flavour. 

Two cans of (ahem) "juice" .Total bill: ten pounds forty please. Elsewhere in London they charge you £10.40 to show you to a table, or so it seems...

 No idea where exactly this place is but wherever it is, its too far away.

Talking to the hotel handyperson. He's originally from Macedonia, worked sites all over The Midlands as a spark. Knows my home town basically because he punts my local  team in the bookies. He's never been to Scotland but he reckons its much like Macedonia because of the way Scottish guys working on the sites described it. I take it the guys are describing the lochs and mountains, because if they were describing, for example, the main drag in Alexandria, then Macedonia must be a toilet...

We were in London as visitors obviously, we're too posh to be tourists, but having walked through central London I can safely assert this: if Scotland managed to divert just ten percent of the camera totting spending machines that swarm the streets of London then Scotland would be full.

Looking out the window of the train as it belts past Dunbar towards Edinburgh. There's no one on the beach. There are places where space is no object, there's loads of it and its empty.