Wednesday, June 22, 2005

20/06/05 Scott Monument

Strolling along Princes Street, I spontaneously decided to go up the Scott Monument. I surmised that it had been more than twenty years since I had achieved this feat, and thought it was time for another visit.
In case you didn't know, the Scott Monument was built in honour of the Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott. He wrote a series of dry,unreadable novels such as "Ivanhoe" and "Waverley" and was duly rewarded with immortality by this monument which looks like Thunderbird 3. As monuments go, I reckon it's a good one, and its architecture fits nicely into the Edinburgh context in a way in which the St James Centre doesn't.
You don't get decent monuments these days.
I was browsing this week in my local branch of "Monuments R Us", and found the standard very poor.
I'd forgotten how cramped the spiral staircase was. It's quite awkward when you meet people going in the opposite direction to you, and you have to squeeze past them.
My visit was notable in terms of timing to a large group of attractive german females coming down the steps as I made my way up.
It took quite a bit of manoeuvering to get past. I have to be honest and describe this as something of a "Festival of Frottage".
There's nothing you can really do to avoid it becoming this.
It doesn't take much to get my paranoia levels to a heightened state. I began to wonder whether they thought that I spend every day in life going up and down the Scott Monument, in the knowledge that such situations are an inevitable feature of the narrowness of the spiral staircase.
Oh dear, here comes that frottage fetishist again.
Hopefully, the fact that I've only been up the Scott Monument twice in the last 20 years demonstrates "reasonable doubt" in a court of law, should anyone decide to press charges.
Although, I would be slightly worried that the controversial Scots verdict of "not proven" might be deemed appropriate and I would have to live with the stigma of not being found definitively innocent hanging over my head.
The view at the top is very nice though.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ah, Jim...

I think you are being too.. how you say .. modest.. on a summer's day such as this I think perhaps you have some difficulty maneouvering such a tight space. Perhaps the fire service are required with buckets of ice, no ?