Traveling On

Friday morning began at six in the morning on the train from Brugges to the airport in Brussels and then on to London. As you may have read there was a baggage handler’s strike at Heathrow for British Airways. When I landed in Heathrow it was pandemonium. All of the BritAir flights had been canceled for the day and there were enough miffed passengers milling around the airport to start a small riot. I wouldn’t have liked to be standing around in any kind of BritAir uniform.

I had the fortune to have flown British Midlands International and they were not having a strike. In fact, they were doing their best to handle all of the passengers from their major British competition. Their charity would have been better received had it not been for the smug smiles.

Anyway after wading through milling lost people I boarded a plane for Scotland where I got the chance to wade through even more milling lost people. It is August so it must be festival time in Edinburgh. As usual this place is a madhouse this time every year.

According to publicity that I’ve seen this month there will be over 25,000 performances of plays, dance, opera, performance art, and children’s shows. That doesn’t even begin to embrace all the music from the classic to jazz to Celtic or any other type of music you might wish to hear. These are just the numbers that are expected for the fringe festival, this doesn’t include the other six major arts festivals and book fairs that are also held each August. This month there will be over two million visitors to this city, most of them signing beneath my hotel window last night at two in the morning.

I’ve picked out some shows and bought some tickets but hope to do a bit more before I leave on Tuesday. But, most of all I will spend time with friends and try to catch up with the past year. They will tell their lies and I will tell mine and the winner buys the next round.