I was tired. I was jaded. I was stuck in the office on a beautiful June
day. Work had left me exhausted. It was something to do with all the thinking
you have to do – it never lets up for a minute. I felt cast adrift, as if on a rowing boat in
the middle of the Atlantic ocean.
At 12:15, with enormous relief, I stepped
outside, and my world was transformed.
The sun shone brightly and I made for the Princes Street Gardens. I
found an empty bench. A phalanx of schoolchildren
were playing on the swings, screeching their heads off, watched by anxious
mothers. I closed my eyes. Within seconds I was transported into
soothing, pleasant slumber. That lasted
a mere ten minutes. The one ‘o’ clock
gun went off. I awoke in a panic – I
thought we had declared war again. My left foot had gone to sleep, so when I arose,
I staggered the first few paces like the recipient of "'Enery's 'Ammer" until my
circulation returned.
The park was
crammed full of people. Most were
dressed in bright summer clothes. Tourists
wandered along, clutching expensive digital cameras and those wretched ‘selfie’
sticks. A couple of children posed next to the statue of the Polish chap patting
the friendly-looking bear.
In the middle
distance, I heard the unmistakeable noise of a brass band. They were playing the theme from the film ‘The
Good, the Bad and the Ugly.’ I walked
further and the noise became louder.
Then I saw them on the bandstand, an orchestra of schoolchildren,
immaculately turned out in blue sweaters, with their music teacher
enthusiastically waving her baton. They
were terrific. The drummer crashed away,
the cornet players burst their lungs, and the tuba player almost developed apoplexy,
so hard did he blow on his instrument. A
hundred or so pensioners were watching from the front stalls with their hearing
aids turned down. I wished that I had
had time to stay and listen, because there is nothing so moving as children
playing in an orchestra, but I had to return to my bunker before half-past one
and my colleagues began to notice my absence, though I don’t suppose they would
lift up their busy heads if I fell off the edge of Flamborough Head.
The
eastern gardens were even more busy than those in the west. A fat American tourist unashamedly zipped up
his fly in full view of passers-by. An
old man with a face as brown and battered as an ancient trilby drank deeply
from a beer can. Herring gulls hopped
amongst the feet of the tourists, with a baleful eye on anyone not likely to be
a source of food.
I crossed Princes Street and wandered up to St Andrew’s
Square Gardens. They were alive with
people of every nationality, every hue. Young men perched on uncomfortable
stone stanchions munching chicken salad sandwiches. A woman played with a pug dog, throwing it a
blue plastic ball to fetch. People lay
strewn about the grass, soaking up the sun.
I went back to the stuffiness of the office knowing that for one hour at
least, a thousand perfect strangers had enlivened my life and had made me feel
a little better.
