Location: St Christophers Inns Hostel, Edinburgh, UK
Weather: a crisp clear night
I stir from sleep. It’s dark outside my window. A 2 hour nap at 5pm will mess one up, but something tears me from writing, reading, or any activity. The wanderlust stirs once more. Time for a nocturnal excursion.
To lose yourself in a new city late at night is a joy salted with risk, but the risk brings out the flavor. You’re somewhere between alert and asleep, guarded and receptive. The quiet is abiding. The sounds are more resounding. The shadows are deep. Light spills down the streets like water, gold from lamps, bold red and green from signals. The silhouettes of things are both hazy and sharply defined. It’s as if the world shifts into old camera film. I recall one letter CS Lewis wrote that touched on such witching-hour walks— the night takes on a “dreamlike receptivity.”
There’s nothing like a long walk finished by midnight “chips” in ketchup. Especially at a hole-in-the-wall shawarma spot. But the night's just begun.
On the way back I take Craig’s Close— possibly the narrowest, steepest staircase in Edinburgh, little more than shoulder wide— and poke my head into Mortal Kocktail. This is a pub/arcade, also carved from the wall, halfway down the Close. Almost a speakeasy, really, and just next to the hostel. At this hour it’s hopping.
The hostel clerks are regulars. Its no surprise I find them here. I stick around to celebrate my new spot in Barnton Bunker. Tonight, there are the clerks— Ruta (Latvian girl), Nathan (New Zealand man), Alan (Scottish-Spaniard)— and their friends— Zach (Australian, black hair), Taylor (American, red hair), and a Swede with glasses, whose name I can’t recall. We crowd around a leopard-print booth, playing Shithead (the card game) and Connect-4 over a pint. Taylor tells me of his days as a motorcycle racer before a big injury put him out of the game. Zach regales me with his worst hangover. Most of them vape or smoke, but don’t hold my sobriety against me.1
Close to 3am, last call for drinks. The pub starts to close down. Our band exits, trudges down the steps. But Ruta tells us about a great pie shop she knows.
“They’re still open,” she says, “It’s 24 hour.”
The vote is unanimous. Off we go.
It proved to be a half-hour hike. The time flew by as we rambled the empty streets, talking, laughing. I can’t remember a single joke said during this time. It drives me nuts because of course, everything is hilarious at 3am after a drink or two.
Storries Home Bakery glowed white like the Pearly Gates. The bakers, like two angels with tired eyes. At last, we had reached our fabled temple, our holy site!
I had spent more than I wanted to that night, on the chips and the beer, so I only got a caramel donut. Its taste was made heavenly by timing, if not quality. I also got a bite from another’s pie. Tasted savory, cheesy, like a meat-lover pizza. Not bad.
We said our goodbyes. The Swede and I talked of conspiracy theories, and then of God, before he had to peel off at the train station. It is past 4am. His flight was in 3 hours. I bless him on his travels.
My feet drag as I climb the 8 flights of stairs back to my room.
I turn my head for one last look in the window. I see, backlighting the Balmoral clock tower, the faintest hint of dawn.
I had several nights out at M.K. with this crowd. Now I recall some details of this one have blurred a bit with others; we played Connect-4 (rather aggressively, too) on a different night. Photo included anyways to set the scene.