Prelude to the Giants

I am about half way through my mission. So far, I have taken trains and buses, cycled and hitched across large swathes of Scotland, even dipping briefly into England (Berwick –upon-Tweed, admittedly a location that has had its share of border conflicts and now best known as the answer in quizzes to ‘what English football team plays in the Scottish league?’), made a guest appearance at T in the Park and spent a day off being driven deep into East Lothian. I spent a weekend teaching the next generation of critics at the National Festival of Youth Theatre in Glenrothes, which has the largest pound shop I have ever seen, and have been without phone signal and Internet for days at a time.  That last is oddly disturbing and liberating.

But the purpose of my mission has been both the drive to my enthusiasm and has provided highlights. I am seeking out the Giants in the Forest, a series of sculptures placed around Scotland. Sometimes they are remote – one destination was the Bowhill Estate in the Borders, a good hour from the nearest village – sometimes to hand – The Edinburgh Giants are five minutes walk from the office of The List. And although they are all based around a similar design, each set (they come in threes) has its own distinctive identity.

Looking back over my written and recorded responses so far, I can see themes emerging. The first week was spent in the Borders – dropping down to Berwick, then hooking across to Galashiels, then Peebles before rising back to Edinburgh. My writing is full of timid attempts to capture the thrill of travelling outside of the city. There’s a similar problem in the day trip to see the Holyrood Giants: I am worried that my thoughts are unremarkable, a trite collection of obvious tourist comments.

I recognise how predictable, how mediated my responses are. The first day, an extract from my original introduction, makes vague comments about how ‘escaping the city’ encourages a ‘more open, gentle state of mind.’ Nature is probably going to be described as beautiful and calming if I read on. Then I start contrasting my usual urban anxiety against the spiritual warmth of the countryside.

Then there are the photographs I took in Edinburgh. A vista that takes in Arthur’s Seat and an old graveyard: a panorama across Holyrood. They are generic, and even as I click the shutter, I sigh at the realisation that what I am seeing is never going to be captured on film, or in words.

I am spreading out my recollections in front of me. I flicker between styles: here’s a stab at beat poetry, this one is a parody of a travel article from a broadsheet paper. Every so often, I fall back on my standards; acting like everything is an exercise in aesthetics. I am on an adventure, but I struggling to find the way to relate it back to my critical writing.

Let’s start with a cliché, then. You can take the man out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the man.