Revellers, drunken revellers:"Fall together by the ears!"

Edinburgh, Saturday August 6, 10.40 am. As I tap out this news update the sun is shining brightly on the castle battlements just across Grassmarket, but if the forecast is right (and they usually are here) it will soon begin to rain steadily for the next few days. So I shall be able to test Wendy's raincoat which is not as shabby and disreputable as my 35-year old one. Edinburgh is vibrating to the beat of hundreds of Fringe performances here below my deck and windows overlooking Grassmarket, and of course many more on the High Street and other segments of the Royal Mile. My jet lag or a full bladder or drunken revelers woke me at 3.30 am, and until I realized they might not understand an Elizabethan curse in a bleary Australian accent, I was tempted to open the door on to my deck, and shout "Fall together by the ears!" or a more full-blooded curse. But I'd have woken up other guests staying here and at the 2 or 3 other new hotels that have displaced the tenements that used to be here, along with some interesting old shops. I remember once getting an antique 16th century pair of globe maps of the world as presents for Peter and Jenny many years ago when we lived here, to take as house presents when we were going to stay with them in 1968. That old map shop has long gone... But gentrification has mostly been tastefully done in Edinburgh. The old buildings in the Old Town that were stained black as tar by centuries of coal smoke have almost all been sand-blasted clean, restoring the honey-blonde colour of Midlothian stone, and no black smoke emissions emerge from the rows of chimney pots on every roof top because now all are heated by North Sea gas. Only the Scott Monument on Princes Street remains black as pitch, to contrast with the pure white marble of Sir Walter Scott's statue. I've just come back from a 1 Km walk, along Grassmarket, up the steep winding West Bow to George IV Bridge, along to the small bronze statue of the faithful terrier, Greyfriars Bobby who sat beside his master's grave in Greyfriar's churchyard for 10 years after his master died. I took a photo of Greyfriar's Bobby, and will download and add it to this post later.