Speculating about Edinburgh

My post last week about leaving Edinburgh was repetitive and a bit incoherent. It was cut and pasted from two versions of my memoirs without editing because I was in a hurry to post this episode and didn't take the time or make the effort to blend the two versions and do the essential editing. I've said it before: everything ever written, with the possible exception of the lord's prayer and the Gettysburg address, can be improved by editing. Another thing I've often said before is that whenever I go back to Edinburgh, or even merely think about Edinburgh, I wonder why we ever left. It doesn't take long to list some excellent reasons why the move made sense then and still does today. The most cogent is that Jonathan is alive and nearly 50 years old; if we'd stayed in Edinburgh he might have been dead before he was 10. The rest of the family have all done better here than if we had stayed in Scotland. It's idle fancy to speculate about how our lives might have evolved if we had made a different choice at some past decision point. Nonetheless it's fun to speculate and like everybody else I'll keep right on speculating.