Its easy to forget that while Edinburgh is a city of learning and the Scottish enlightenment (Athens of the North to us) it is also a very Gothic city (Gothic not Gotham, although some might disagree). But of course some great gothic fiction comes from this great city, The Confessions of a Justified Sinner comes to mind and indeed The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde, because for all its London scenes, it always felt like an Edinburgh book to me - you could take Stevenson out of Scotland but you couldn't take Scotland out of the man, and I feel this about myself. I would like to spend an extended time back in my own home town, not for nostalgia but to re-connect with the art and culture and the people of my youth. Perhaps one day I will rent a house and do just that for the summer (although my memories of warm Scottish summers is definitely a return to a place that doesn't exist - nostalgia, this picture is Edinburgh in May, in the rain and boy was it wet.) No doubt the nay sayers will disagree, though. Now here's a funny one, I googled Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony and this came up - never heard it before, so this is a first for me and serendipity because Edinburgh is, indeed, a rock on the water:
