Our Friends in the North

I lived in Luxembourg in 1995 when it was awarded the title of “European
City of Culture”. This was greeted with a lot of cynicism from within the
ex-pat community (who made up more than 50% of the city’s population). We
were of the opinion that a pot of yogurt contained more culture than you
would find in that place. Despite its wealth, the Luxembourg authorities
where keener on building swimming pools that were 1cm short of fifty meters
and therefore couldn’t be used for official meetings and bowling alleys in
windswept suburbs than they were in opera houses or theater.


From a literature perspective, the only evidence of notable achievement was
a plaque in the town square to commemorate the fact that Victor Hugo had
spent a night there on his way to his holidays in Alsace. In short, the
culture there was so shallow, you could paddle in it.


I say all this to mark the difference between that and my current abode.
I’m now living in Edinburgh and arrived just before the annual festival
kicked off. There is so much culture available here that it’s a little
overwhelming. The International Arts Festival hosts opera, ballet and the
other elements of the arts that are understood by few but patronised by
many with more money than sense.


The official festival also hosts ground breaking plays and (let’s be
honest) a lot of rubbish. The key it seems is to see a performance in the
early weeks that will take off and become a West End or Broadway hit. Then
you can smugly say to your friends that you saw the next Les Miserables
when it was being performed in front of 4 people in a public toilet. The
only problem with this strategy is that you either have to see a lot of
shows or be right on top of the word of mouth process.


The upshot is that if you want to see a show in the third or fourth week of
the festival and can get a ticket, then it’s probably not worth seeing. All
the good stuff will have built momentum and will sell out. This is a
particular problem for the likes of me who have a day job. I can’t sit
outside box offices reading reviews of last night’s shows, like the
thousands of American tourists who throng the narrow medieval streets of
city centre.


But the official festival is now completely swamped by the Fringe Festival.
Google any comedian you have ever seen (apart from the dead ones) and
chances are they will be in Edinburgh at the moment. The sheer number of
performers and shows means that they kick off at 10am in the morning and
take up every venue available from Churches to phone boxes.


The fringe festival has become so big that it now has its own offshoots,
like the free fringe and the “we’re too cool to be part of the bigger
thing” festival. And if that’s not enough, there is also the International
Book Festival and a couple of music festivals going on at the same time.


I may of course have arrived at an opportune time and Edinburgh is a
cultural wasteland for the rest of the year. But somehow I doubt this. You
can’t laugh for a month and then keep a sour look on your face for the rest
of the year.


Otherwise, it feels a bit odd to be back living in the UK, twenty years or
so since I left it after my last stint of paying taxes to keep the Queen in
Corgis and the British Army in tanks. There is an air of familiarity about
the place that reminds me of my time in London in the early nineties. But
there is also much that has changed. Coffee shops have replaced the old
greasy spoon cafes, gastro pubs have taken the place of the smoked filled
dens I used to drink in and the high streets offer a greater choice of food
than an Indian and Chinese takeaway.


But the things that are the same surprise me most. The most obvious is that
quaint British obsession with queuing. If you stood behind a friend on the
street, you would soon have twenty others standing behind you, all working
on the assumption that there must be something at the front worth queuing
for.


You see this best at bus stops where strict protocol exists. Most people
stand in a straight line even if this means snaking out the back of the bus
shelter and standing in the pouring rain. Occasionally somebody breaks off
to have a cigarette or to corral a noisy child. Their position in the queue
will be memorised by everybody else and their place preserved, even if this
means waiting for them to finish their fag when the bus arrives. This is
very unlike Australia where the arrival of a mode of public transport
causes an outbreak of panic and an exhibition of Darwinism involving
survival of the fittest.


This process gets disrupted in August when thousands of tourists arrive for
the festival. A party of Germans tried to get onto a bus I was queuing for
on Saturday and approached it from the right hand side, oblivious to the
fact that fifteen Scots were in an orderly queue on the left. The resulting
standoff reminded me of the siege of Tobruk as the Scots Guard stared
menacingly across no man’s land as the stubborn Germans tried to advance.
Thankfully, the driver stepped in and put the tourists in their place.


The message seems to be getting through because the queues outside the
comedy and theatre venues are a picture of orderliness. Americans and
mainland Europeans line up like soldiers on parade as they wait to be
entertained. Most shows pride themselves on their anarchic nature. It’s
ironic that their audiences are so orderly about getting in.


There is a lot of culture here. It’s just a shame that that the beer isn’t
as good as Luxembourg. But that’s another story.