A Marmite Excursion

How far do you suppose it's sensible to go for a squeezy jar of Marmite?

I ask, because habits die hard, and since the last time I saw the desired item it was in Asda in Leith, that was where I chose to go.

After all, getting there is an exciting outing of some magnitude, taking in large swathes of the city foreign to my southside eyes, and I was on my own, it being a Wednesday with his Lordship no doubt playing a version of hang gliding with his rucksack in the wind on the Biggar Hills.

My journey by bus started in York Place, after a wool buying trip to the shop of equal shares for all, and took me past the office of our esteemed leaders before pitching me out at Newhaven harbour.

The tide and the fleet were in, and the colours of the boats, their floats, the sea and sky were unexpectedly bright and lovely given the weather forecast, although the wind did threaten to have me over the side of the quay.

With the marmite purchase secured along with another one of Asda's designer notebooks (which go down well in Budapest) and some computer paper, it was home on a no 35 bus with its wonderfully eccentric route through Leith and Holyrood to Lauriston Place and thence eventually to the airport.

Who needs trams to get you to your holiday aircraft when you can sit on the top deck of a Lothian Region bus for nothing, peer into streets and buildings ravaged by the passage of time, and be jolted about on the cobbled back streets of Leith as if on some form of fairground ride.

The journey was very slow, giving me plenty time to look at the idiosyncratic shops up Easter Road and the tourist ones up the Royal Mile.

The pedestrians were equally varied from the little old Leith ladies wearing their winter coats and perms, stooped over their shopping bags, the equally old men with their sticks and limps, and the tourists with sunglasses pushed up into their fancy hairdos, and maps at the ready.

The trams would be a quicker mode of transport to the airport, but infinitely less interesting and beside, I for one may not live long enough to climb aboard one at their present rate of progress.