everything and nothing has stayed the same

I notice the cold the most. I shiver as I rush from one university building to another, and, having lost my gloves, my hands mottle and spread between bronzed tan at skin on my wrists and bloodless cold white beneath the skin of my knuckles. 

And I notice the dark. I am very lucky to live on Scotland's sunniest side, and I love the briskness of a crisp blue day with no clouds to quell the biting wind. But the late mornings, the early evenings, and the days of never-ceasing dusk haunt and hollow me. I arrived home and none of my clothes suited me anymore. I cleared out the browns, the greys, the blood reds and forest greens. I walk down old grey streets with a bright red coat and a bright yellow scarf and hold the clear sky close.

Though everyone tells me it's like I never left, I have returned to Scotland a minimalist. I write and write and see people who matter most and leave this tiny town when I can. I have been here a fortnight straight now, my longest streak, and in a few days it will be time to leave again. St. Andrews is best enjoyed part-time.

I think about Melbourne always. About the sun, the city, the sky, its scrapers. The friendships, the good bits and the bad. Cycling down Swanston, my mind at peace, and up Heidelberg, taking my thoughts out on my aching legs. The glow and buzz of the ever-shining CBD and the dark of the suburbs lit by streetlamps and strange starlight. Experiences which are mine and mine alone. Stories I inevitably won't end up telling because you can never tell them all. Can you even share an experience once it has already become a memory?

The hardest, strangest part of going away is coming home. I suppose I knew that all along.

It's not just haggis and ceilidhs, you know

edinburgh

In the dusk of early afternoon, Edinburgh glows blue. We cross the bridge on Viewforth and follow the steps down to the canal, where barges steam gently, yellow and red and green. The water is frozen, the ice crinkled like plastic wrap over the rocks and frilled plants and litter below. Stone skimmers, thwarted by winter, find new delights as their pebbles bounce off the ice with a xylophone chime, and, though the ice prevails, white bubbles rise and ponder at each stone’s touch. An open loaf of bread sits expectantly halfway across. Someone remembered to feed the ducks.

We walk this route each day, past the ice, past the bright barges, past the ducks with frozen feet. On Lothian Road exhaust smoke glows gold in the car lights and mingles with the fogged cold dragon breath of bustling humans. Dour lovers kiss at the bus stop and a homeless man in fingerless gloves reads a well-thumbed book to his dog. The castle, grey and impregnable, rises up as we pass Cambridge Street. Far above the grey cobbles and stone stairwells and windswept wynds, the last veiled rays glance off its windows.

Huddled beneath two red coats and two tight scarves and two warm hats, we walk this route each day.

glasgow

The first weekend of term was spent in Glasgow. Sauchiehall Street, like Melbourne’s Swanston, stretches from near the university to the centre of town. My sister walked from Kelvingrove, and a parade of little girls in princess dresses, fresh from a birthday party, did the same. I found the princesses first. Elsa was in the lead, holding tight to her mother’s gloved hand, and Cinderella and Anna followed shortly after, clutching party bags. With my bright yellow scarf and bright red coat, Imogen was the one who spotted me, but I found her as proud Rapunzel brought up the rear, tossing her hair.

It was a dry weekend, sun-filled and snowy, and uncharacteristically so. I squinted in the sunlight at the entrance to the quads as Imogen’s camera, Virgil, snapped at Glasgow University’s old stones. Kelvingrove gardens were white and gold and at George Square Wellington wore his hat with pride. We ate mushroom burgers at the 78, snacked on chilli peanuts while watching Gone Girl, and in the dark talked our way to morning.

Glasgow, wide and freeingly anonymous, is as close to Melbourne as Scotland comes.

dundee

Little has changed. Clark’s still sells late-night strawberry tarts. Henry’s still sells amaretto coffee. My sisters still cut their own hair at 2am. My family are still loud with seasoned jokes we need only half-tell. We are as we ever were: between us girls we have more piercings, more hair-dye, and more makeup than ever before, but we are as we always have been, just more so.

st andrews

And now I am back under scudding Renoir skies and ink-blot trees, translating thirty lines of Virgil* a day and wearing my scarf a la Bardot to fight the biting North Sea wind.

I don’t quite know where this blog will lead now. I suppose we’ll find out along the way.

*Not the camera this time.