Edinburgh Mornings (winter)

You know how things from your childhood are never quite the same when you revisit them as an adult? My experience now of Edinburgh winter mornings - the feel of the air, the smells, the colours and the quality of light - is exactly as I remember. My bus route to work is virtually the same as it was then so the visual part is largely unchanged too.

This morning, I was outside hanging up the washing in the backgreen. Not very many people here use clothes dryers and if you don't have a backgreen, you have to turn the heating on and hang your wet laundry inside on drying racks. Every tenement in Edinburgh has an area at the back with clothesline poles (some of them the original black-painted Victorian iron ones, with decorative finials and spokes for securing the clothesline) and this space was always called a backgreen until estate agents fancied them up in property ads as "drying greens". The backgreens are shared among the residents of each tenement but I seem to be the only one who uses ours.

Before going any further, I must clarify 'tenement' because I know you're all thinking I'm living in the projects. Tenements are a style of building found in most or all Scottish cities and towns. The first tenements in Edinburgh were built in the 16th century to accommodate a growing population. Edinburgh was a walled city then and life revolved around the castle and its environs. The geography (rocky and hilly because of previous volcanic activity) meant there wasn't enough suitable land to build single family homes, nor was the terrain conducive to that. So they built upwards and the rich lived among the poor (the less money you had, the higher up you lived). Only a couple of these originals survive (as museums) but the city is full of tenements built in the 19th century. Many of them have plaques carved into the sandstone with the date and sometimes coats of arms depicting the residents' occupations. Mine was built in 1896 and bears the arms of the sheep skinners for whom it was built (there was a tannery nearby, using power from the Water of Leith). People don't refer to their building as a tenement though. In Edinburgh, it's called a stair and in Glasgow, a close. You live "up a stair" or "up a close".

Now that the weekend winds and rain have blown through, everything looks all washed and polished and it was lovely being outside in the sunshine, hearing the birds singing and the tapping of a woodpecker nearby. My backgreen faces onto a fairly quiet lane and any traffic noises from the main road at the front of the building are muffled a bit. There was a lovely smell of woodsmoke - probably a gardener burning brush and garden debris - and a trio of pigeons all fluffed up against the chilly air. Even though it was cold and windy, I felt quite exhilarated in the fresh, clean air, watching the wind whip the wrinkles out of the wet clothes and breathing the smell of wet grass and earth. It felt like spring, really.

I leave for work at 8:30 when it's already light outside. When it's overcast or raining, Edinburgh is a grey city. The old buildings and walls are made from local sandstone and the colours vary from light biscuit to terra cotta. When I lived here before, all the old buildings were blackened by soot from the coal fires people burned to heat their homes. The smoke-filled air was the source of one of Edinburgh's nicknames, Auld Reekie (Old Smoky). Most of the buildings have been sandblasted clean and burning coal is forbidden now so the lovely soft colours of the sandstone are easier to see, but there's still a greyness to some of them and the carvings are still blackened in most places.

The part of Edinburgh I live in has always been mixed commercial and residential and my route to work takes me past a walled cemetery with red brick Victorian factories in the distance (now being converted into high-end flats), and some lovely early Victorian 2- and 3-storey terraced houses with walled front gardens, most of which are now B & B's. Where the bus turns onto Leith Walk for the journey into the city centre, the road curves upwards, with regimented rows of late 19th century tenements along both sides. These buildings are usually 5 storeys and all have shops or other businesses at street level. At the top of Leith Walk, the buildings are earlier and less utilitarian-looking. At Queen Street, the classic Georgian architecture of the New Town takes over (except for the over-the-top Victorian Scottish National Portrait Gallery, heavily carved and the pinkest sandstone I've ever seen). So in the space of less than a mile, the architecture spans three centuries, including a sprinkling of late 20th century buildings designed without sympathy for their surroundings. All the way up Leith Walk, there's hardly any greenery and most of the colour you see is that of a painted door or shopfront.

When it's raining, the greyness of the architecture melts into the grey sky and everything is softened by the mist and monotones, like an old fuzzy black and white photo. The Scottish word used to describe this is "dreich", which means gloomy and dark. Once the bus has passed through St. Andrew Square onto Princes Street though, the view, enhanced by the dreich weather, is breathtaking and I never tire of it. The same scenery I enjoyed from the top deck of the bus on my way to work (which is just up the road from where I work now) is still the same and just as spectacular. On the south side of Princes Street lie Princes Street Gardens, a valley of brilliant emerald green that stretches the length of Princes Street, except where it's interruptied by the art galleries. The grey skies and rain, whether a light drizzle or a slanting, wind-driven assault, make the green of the grass stand out as if it's been painted.

On a sunny morning, the city is so transformed that icy winds and torrential rains are forgiven and forgotten. The light sandstone is warm and honeyed where the sun hits and the darker stone wears a soft and rosy blush, in contrast to its brasher orangey colour when wet with rain. Most exterior window frames are painted white and the contrast against the stone is lovely. Bare-naked trees and church spires stand out sharply against faded, watery sky and everything is suffused with a pale golden light. The quality of light here is clean and clear and bright, but without harshness. I think it must have something to do with the northern location and moisture particles in the air.

My daily enjoyment of this paradise is enhanced, always, by music via my MP3 player, usually something by Handel or Bach so that I can fully appreciate the view. It should be noted that I stop reading my book, no matter how captivating, for the Princes Street part of the journey.

The smells in the air when I get off the bus outside St. John's Church, across from the department store where I began my working life at 15 as a window dresser, are the same now as they were in 1969. There's the mossy, fusty, mouldering smell from the old stones of St. Cuthbert's graveyard (next door to St. John's) and the warm crunchy smell of toasted hops or barley from a brewery in Fountainbridge. The best smell though - and you can smell this all the way along Princes Street in the morning - is frying bacon. Lovely salty slices of it tucked into soft, freshly baked and buttered rolls (see January 1 story) for consumption by those lucky people who don't feel an obligation to breakfast on yogurt and fruit. Sometimes the scent of it in the air is just as satisfying though.