The One that Got Away

The Field of Remembrance below the Scott Monument really is a sobering experience. Thousands of small wooden crosses, arranged in regimented rows, each sporting a blood red poppy on their chest. It reminded me, as I'm sure it does others, of the war cemeteries in Belgium, which I am privileged enough to have visited. As I felt completely overwhelmed, and unable to relate to such a tragic eventuality, I am not going to attempt to write anything more about it, for fear of offending or saying things beyond my station.

I can, however, lament about the fact that I had to say goodbye to a dear friend today. Yet another one who moved to Edinburgh for university at the same time as I has reached the moment where their wings are about to open and take them far away from here. When I came to university, I had some idealised version of a four year period that would come to an end with a Grease-esque song, dance and funfair. It hasn't been like that at all. For a start, hardly anyone seems to do the "just four years" thing anymore. I guess when so many people do an undergraduate degree, there needs to be something to set them apart from the 2:1 endemic, hence a postgraduate degree comes next in line. And then there are the five year undergraduate programmes, the degree changers, the drop outs and start backs, the intercalators. In addition, those who did leave the city did so in a very quiet fashion, over a period of months, trickling away without a ferris wheel in sight to all four corners of the globe. As time goes on, I imagine more and more people will leave the capital, some of whom may never return. Which is fine...I just wish I was one of them.

I'll always remember each and every one of them though...<3