So for the foreseeable future (currently looking at about a fortnight) we're stuck in Lothian. Lothian is a vague kind of a concept of a thing, a mythical place and a set of boundaries that exists only in some Health Board definition of where things might be or should be put. I guess the provision of health services looms large in the thinking but not in the same way as the emptying of dustbins, allocation of parking permits or postcodes.
It's abstract in a way that challenges spacial perception and makes a person question quite where they might be standing in the universe (or if that is even possible). So as my shoes touch the muddy earth or the damp and rotting autumn leaves on the path or the new tarmac on the road I live near to I'll wonder to myself, "Am I really here or am I really in Lothian?"
In the end I concluded, after some slow coffee and rapid chocolate, that I knew what I always knew but perhaps due to educational influence or societal programming I did not dare admit it. Like Camelot or Middle Earth, Valhalla or Narnia, Lothian is quite simply a state of mind, and for the time being nobody can leave it or enter it. Peace be unto you all on your abortive travels.
In other news the nearest Aldi store is in Borrowstone Town Ness and the nearest Greggs is in no man's land between Broxburn and Newbridge. I'll just play relaxing music during the essential journey.
Meanwhile far away across the water, Fife burns like a Big Country lyric. (Photo Tom Duffin.)
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