fastening

At the time, the drive up was fairly novel, though has since become much more familiar. The three of us shared the driving, peering through the frame of my bike in the rear-view mirror, where it sat atop the large but fairly full boot of the Prairie. I drove the section through Gateshead and Newcastle, noting the sudden crosswinds on what was then a newish section of road dropping into the Tyne valley, long before there were any Angels of the North to watch. We'd have stopped once or twice but had left before dawn and arrived slightly before three in the afternoon, arriving from the south with a view of the city I hadn't had when visiting by train six months earlier. I don't remember passing Cameron Toll but do remember noting Newington Cemetery, then the RCP, then Appleton Tower (then still shabby and grey) and DHT and the library looming over Buccleuch Place. We'd missed the rush, so I was the only person collecting a key at that time. We exited and turned right at Cash Registers (Buccleuch) Ltd., then crept slowly along towards the pointy bits of the NLS, until we found the right number, then the road around to the car park at the back. Tim and Steve were already inside; I met Jafer and Ed (who moved out after a few weeks, never to be seen again) a bit later. I got my stuff unloaded, eventually worked out which key worked the bike shed, then made arrangements to meet my parents again the next day before they headed back home.

The other flat on the ground floor was filled with slightly older people, but the two flats above ours and the other side on the second floor accumulated in the evening to head to Potterow, which was holding a thing called the Double Decker Disco. I disliked both, but it ended up being mostly just sitting about trying to chat to people; fortunately, we were in a quiet bit away from most of the noise so it wasn't impossible. I'd been on a National Trust working holiday thing a couple of weeks before with another bunch of people I'd never met before so was sort of primed to be less awkward than I'd find something like that now - there was also the advantage of everyone being in mostly the same boat, knowing no-one else yet and, most importantly, having a reason to be there.

I'd studied the wee photocopied inter-campus-locale maps which came with the admissions bumph (comparing where necessary with the 1970s street planner (too old to show Potterow itself) which my parents had from an earlier visit to my mum's cousins in Oxgangs when I was too small to remember anything except the shape of the castle to the south from Princes Street) so knew the way there and was trusted to lead people back even before I knew how Buccleuch Street was pronounced and before I'd really had much of a walk around; the preceding March I'd arrived at Waverley, gone up Cockburn St, the high street, then GIVB and Middle Meadow Walk to get to the Hugh Robson building and was then bussed to KBC so didn't get to connect any bits on my first afternoon and evening in town. There would be plenty of time for that later, though I had no idea at the time I'd still be here thirty years later.