COLD ST LEONARDS

I'm sitting on a bench at St Leonard's, looking across at the sphinx-like Salisbury Crags. It is absolutely freezing today. The wind whips at the collar of my mackintosh and the tips beat a tattoo on my ear-lobes. I have to brace my feet hard against the ground to avoid being blown down a hundred feet of grassy bank and onto the Duddingston Road. A ne'er-do-well with a five-'o'-clock shadow and a dalmation lumbers by, his shoulders hunched against the biting wind. The spotty dog sniffs at my leg, but finds nothing of interest and ambles on. This pair are followed by a Newfoundland dog walking an old man in a woolly hat. It cannot be the other way round, because the man is five feet tall and about nine stones dripping wet, about two-thirds of the weight of the dog. 'He should be riding on its back,' I think to myself as it drags him remorselessly up the steep incline to where my bench is. I notice that the old man's eyes are watering against the wind and his nose is dripping like a tap with a leaky washer, but he daren't let go of the leader or he'll end up flat on his face,
The view from here is spectacular apart from the Colditz of Dumbiedykes, where my eldest son resided during his salad days. The description of the dark majesty of Salisbury Crags will have to wait, however, for it is now too cold and blustery for me to write properly. Roll on summer.