Imagine a whale in the street, bruising and blubbering painstakingly toward the firth, half-flattening the cars that have been abandoned in its way, their drivers fled a few yards and then, like you, returning to goave. It’s a street in Edinburgh: you can choose your own – perhaps in Gorgie, elbow-lessly shoving aside tenements, or too far down the Lothian Road for hope of cold salt water – but no, it’s the road leading out to the Forth Bridge, the one that in your vague memory map passes the Zoo, that bar you think of as Cameron Brig though you know it isn’t, as though all the nasty grain whisky came from one pub. The whale is tearing itself apart as it heaves painfully ho, stuck with glass and metal from all the cars, doors open like insect wings, studded with motorbikes, which, when crushed, look even more like bluebottles.…
