In which Layla and Roz meet their new Brixton home, and do the Edinburgh Festival

By Layla

It feels like a thousand years since I lay in bed watching the British coastline drift into view, and at least 800 years since we stepped off the glory that was the Queen Mary 2 and down into the grey reality of Southampton. But soon we were on the train and hurtling into London for a new adventure, and a misguided plan involving pulling numerous giant suitcases around the London Underground. But at last we wrangled them successfully, dropped them off in various locations, and emerged unscathed from Brixton Station into our new home neighbourhood, where our estate agent greeted us in relief to find that we were real people rather than finding he had sold a flat to participants in an elaborate ruse. And so we proceeded to view our new home. Somewhat belatedly, some might say…

There is something disconcerting about going to view a flat that you’ve already committed to buying, that you have never seen before. In fact we had done our flat-hunting long-distance, from Washington. Having witnessed various London friends having a prolonged and horrible time trying to buy properties in person, we opted for the exciting tactic of sending various friends round to view good prospects on our behalf with a view to securing one to live in on our return. After rejecting one for mice, one for a dodgy lease, and one for being dank and joyless, we hit upon success with flat number four, and put in an offer. Success! But also trepidation… A few months after Gaby first viewed it for us, we entered, holding our breath… what would it be like? And then we breathed. Phew: it’s fine. We dashed around taking photos and measurements.  We spotted the tip of the Shard and Southwark Cathedral over the rooftops from our living room window… and then in a state of excited shock, we retired to the gloriously hipster Brixton Village, a hop, skip and jump away, for an organic sandwich and a pretentious coffee and a little jig of delight: we did have somewhere to live!

But of course it was certainly not time to move in: we still had almost two weeks of holiday to go, and the first part was to be spent in Edinburgh. So off we went on the train, to be met by Iain and Gary at Waverley Station and escorted to their house where they kicked off a delightful few days of Edinburgh Festival fun by bestowing champagne and Tunnock’s teacakes. What could be better?!

Edinburgh is always a delight. The castle provides a gloriously scenic backdrop to proceedings. Arthur’s Seat (a big hill) pokes temptingly through gaps in the charming old buildings. In the other direction, the water glints. Cool coffee shops lure us in. And in August, the city bustles and sparkles with thousands of performances, with every space transformed into a theatre. We aim to go every year.  Roz, who has a very clear (some might say obsessive) festival technique, was perturbed that due to lack of wifi while crossing the Atlantic, she had been forced to buy tickets before reading the shows’ reviews, so our timetable was riskier than usual…

But it was of course all proved to be fine. Over the course of almost 5 days we saw around 15 shows including at the Fringe Festival, Film Festival and Book Festival, plus two art shows. We also got to spend time with our lovely hosts Iain and Gary, plus David, Lee, Alan, Rebecca, Kenny, Jill, and Phil (plus their children). We drank wine in Ecco Vino. We ate ice cream in the sun. We admired the new flat rented by recent London exports, Lee and Alan. We drank much coffee in hipster cafes, became convinced that steam punk light fittings are essential for our new flat and had numerous avocado dishes for breakfast. We walked around Arthur’s Seat in the sunshine (and Roz also ran around it while I stayed in bed…). We arranged a painter to go into our new flat. We unlocked one of our phones, procured a new phone number, and set up wifi for Brixton and thus regained our Britishness – at least from a telecommunications perspective. It’s so much fun to roam around cool festival hubs where everyone is sitting on benches between shows, drinking gin and pimms and being cheery. And working our way between venues, we get to enjoy lots of the city. We don’t usually go to art during the festival, but we loved an exhibition about Lee Miller and Pablo Picasso, and enjoyed dressing up in Victorian garb for a photo exhibition. The best play we saw was Every Brilliant Thing and the best comedy was Robin Ince, though we also enjoyed several others. The most lovely author was Jackie Kay, the coolest was the mathematician Cedric Villani, and the whole book festival had a delightful vibe that made us happy. The most rubbish thing we saw was probably Chicken, an ill-conceived dystopia. The most rubbish audience member was me, falling asleep in the front row of what was a rather excellent show in a small but exceptionally ill air-conditioned theatre… oops! I’m just saying: we were quite busy! I also won the prize for least committed audience member: I strongly wanted to see Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens, but could anyone want something strongly enough to stay up til 1am? Certainly not me!

Today we dragged our giant suitcases to the book festival, made a spectacle of ourselves by pulling them into a lecture with Matt Haig, and then headed to the airport, where we oddly encountered my ex-girlfriend of about 11 years ago getting the same flight as us. What a lovely Edinburgh interlude. But onwards: our Icelandic adventures await!