East Lothian: Credit where credit is due

Sentimental post warning……

It’s funny how life is. You spend your whole young life trying to get out of a place and then as you get older you realise just how great that place was all along.

When people ask me where I am from, I say Edinburgh. It’s easier. And more impressive I suppose. Edinburgh is one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. I’m proud to live here. I’m proud my son has Edinburgh as his place of birth on his birth certificate. It’s a great place to come from.

Except, whilst Sam comes from there, I don’t really. I was brought up in the county of East Lothian.

I was driving down to Gullane last night to visit my Grandmother. Pitch black on the coast road to Gullane. I love that coast road. In the winter (as it was last night), it’s fucking miserable. No mistake. Pitch black and hazardous. All twisty and windy, with you running the risk of driving into the sea at every turn. If you could see the sea then that would be a start, but in the winter, the sea, the sky and the road merge into one big depressing blackness. It’s the sort of place you’d expect to see Jason from Friday the 13th step out of the gorse bushes with a carving knife, before bouncing up and over your windscreen and roof. Of course, if you reversed back, the body would be gone. And then you’d be fucked.

In the summer though, not only the coast road but the whole of East Lothian is an amazing place. As I’ve become older and wiser I can see it’s immense charms. More importantly, I can see how happy a childhood I actually had there. Endless beaches and rocks interspersed with ruined castles and mysterious islands, one of which (Fidra) was the inspiration for Treasure Island.

East Lothian is also overrun with second world war defences, mostly in the form of concrete anti invasion tank traps. I can just picture Hitler and his cronies at the Berghof discussing the invasion of Britain and deciding to ignore the south coast in the first instance and settle on establishing a beach-head at Aberlady Bayright enough !!. These tank defences still came in hand though as in later years they became one big crumbling playground for East Lothian kids and I spent many a happy hour clambering from one block to another.

In my youth, I cycled it’s roads, walked it’s beaches and had nine types of shit kicked out of me by neds (or their forerunners) in it’s parks and amusement arcades. As an adult I’ve done all of the same, but without the kickings.

I guess what I’m saying is that maybe I live in Edinburgh, but I don’t come from there when it comes down to it (as much as I’ve told myself I did over the years). I may not live in East Lothian any more, but as I get older I appreciate it more and more. I may not even live there again, but I know what made me.

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