Back to Sundays

Sunday and the fifty-ninth Covid blog (back to Sunday blogging).

I promised to post blog about my visit to Edinburgh and my last couple of days.

Regular readers may recall a blog I posted in June 2020 which will link to today’s blog, about roots and family and reconnection.

Social media can be both a blessing and a curse, it allows both hatred and love to emerge through its language of both opinion and fact, it also makes public our most lethal and dangerous of enemies that of ignorance.

It can reveal to us personalty traits of others we may have previously unseen, which can make us feel angry or sad or full of joy, but we always have a choice, I choose to seek the latter.

In doing so, I have reconnected and partaken in events that simply would not have happened and one such meeting occurred on Thursday morning in Edinburgh, outside The Scottish National Gallery.

Having posted my blog and stories of my visit, my second cousin Edwin contacted me on SM to discuss the possibility of meeting up. We hadn’t seen each other since we were eighteen (being the same age) at a family wedding.

Edwin and his father (also Edwin) are the closest family links (still living in Aberdeen) to my mum and as I get older I find I miss her more, rather than less. I think because I believe she would be proud of all I and my girls have achieved, especially since she passed.

My love and creativity in and for the arts, all stem from her. The saying “The apple never falls far from the tree” couldn’t be more apt, I have followed my family’s path it seems, from acting and writing to teaching.

Our roots remain inside; they grow and they change with each generation but our genealogy is always there, inherently ours.

So, to receive this kindness and possibility, meant so much and I know it would have meant such a lot to my mum and my uncle too, who has also passed. When I was younger, Edwin and Edwin would come down in the summer and stay with us and we would most often go to London as a family.

My mum, my dad, my aunt and my uncle (my mother’s brother) and my other two cousins. Always the four of us as children; James, Heather, Edwin and myself (Edwin and I were the youngest) would be together.

I mainly remember visiting The Tower of London, Buckingham Palace (outside) London Zoo, rain, umbrellas and lots of laughter. Meeting Edwin again was tied up in those childhood memories. We also visited as a family when we went up to Aberdeen on holiday, not just Edwin and Edwin but the rest of the family including my Auntie Lizzie (Edwin’s grandma).

When we met once more, I was incredibly emotional. I am known for being emotional, one of my colleagues told me that I am one of the most empathetic people he has ever met. Which is pretty much my thoughts about him, as he is one of the kindest people I know.

I cry at both sadness and happiness, and meeting my cousin again was a mixture of both.

There was no hesitation in our hug, forty years is a long time, Covid unable to rob this moment and our memory of family.

We sat on the steps and talked for at least two hours without moving but it felt far less. My mum told stories all the time when I was growing up of our family, I understand why now, and they are in my very bones. Not everyone wants or needs to talk about their past but my mum always did, it was so important to her and I was able to tell Edwin things he had not heard before of our family.

We talked about the past of course, but the present and the future and of our own families and eventually we stopped and went to lunch, which was lovely.

Seeing each other again meant so very much and when we said goodbye and hugged again, the tears fell once more for me. I felt like I could feel the presence of those lost but my tears were not of sadness, but of happiness and of warmth and love of family.

It was such a special day and one I truly did not expect and for the rest of the afternoon I found myself smiling, which was probably very disconcerting to passers by.

The final performance I saw that evening on my trip was the perfect end to a wonderful day and my favourite show of The Fringe for me:

‘Black is the Colour of my Voice’ a play with music rather than a musical I feel, based on the life of Nina Simone.

It was written and performed by Apphia Campbell and she was absolutely phenomenal. So much talent from both her writing and her voice, heralding the black rights movement of sixties America and the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King.

At around forty minutes into the play I did not stop crying, it was so emotive, the abuse that Simone suffered as a woman, the injustice at her colour and a voice that spoke to the heart. I had no hesitation in giving a standing ovation, something I only give when I believe it is warranted. I was not the only one and hearing the comments from both men and women who also said they had cried at the same wrongdoings, gave me hope that the world is perhaps more caring than is often seen.

On Friday (my final day) I rose early as I needed to be out of the Airbnb by 10am. I stopped to have breakfast at the bistro on the corner of the street where I had stayed and it felt very Parisian sitting in the sunshine with my coffee and croissant.

I then strolled across through the park towards the city for the last time. There is a community garden within the park in which there are sunflowers. Sunflowers are very special to me, my closest friends who now sadly are no longer on this earth both connect to these flowers.

It was one friend’s favourite flower and for my second friend a symbol of a very special play in which we performed together. So whenever I see them, I feel they are talking to me, although in this instance each other. No doubt laughing at my inability with Google maps.

I thought I would save the castle for the last day and while walking along ‘The Golden Mile’ I saw a guy dressed as William Wallace, some may recognise him as ‘Braveheart’ the blue faced Scottish warrior who fought the English, portrayed in the universally recognised film with Mel Gibson in the role of Wallace.

Wallace was my mum’s hero but would have been my enemy. Being both, the English would have seen me as Scottish and the Scottish would have seen me as English. Either way I’d have been dead, so it always makes me smile that my mum idolised him when she too would have been seen through his eyes as the enemy, a lass betraying her kin by marrying an Englishman.

My idea was thwarted though thanks to Covid restrictions and a limited daily number to enter the castle.

Next time.

I did also want to visit St Johns Church where I had previously lunched with the deceased but hadn’t entered the building and I was so very glad I did. There is currently an installation and exhibition of ‘Peace Cranes’ inside, that took my breath away.

“The peace crane" is an origami crane used as a peace symbol, by reference to the story of Sadako Sasaki(1943– 1955), a Japanese victim of the long-term effects of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. Sasaki was one of the most widely known hibakusha (Japanese for "bomb-affected person"), said to have folded one thousand origami cranes before her death.”

These photos really do not give it any justice as it is absolutely beautiful. I also watched a ten minute film made especially for the exhibition and the final message seems more important than ever in light of recent world events.

I will never understand man’s inhumanity to man.

My ‘Fringe’ experience was not the vibrant vibe I expected although I learned so much and in terms of performing the verse play I have in mind.

My visit however, was special and unique and something I will treasure.

I still have two weeks of the school holiday left and exciting events planned. Covid (which I now feel akin to Voldemort and have begun to call it such) I hope will be avenged, in respect of the theatre trips I have booked and planned. Once again proving, that we are still not out of the woods quite yet…

Stay Safe,

Joy xxx