Portobello

Inevitably I think of the sea. 

I think of the line of it, dark, against a pale blue sky and the sun-yellow band of the beach. It helps that the view is framed - by a window in a room above the promenade. Things tend to stick in the mind when they’re like that, given a shape and a structure; a place.

The room was where I went to do yoga - trying to ease my lower back and the wrenching, burning, tightness.

And so I think of pain too. 

I don’t remember when it started exactly - or actually when it really ended, when I felt healed. It must have been lingering but I woke up one morning on the huge but soft, and I realise now, unsupportive mattress, barely able to move. It would take months to be told it sounded like a herniated disc, years for it to be confirmed by a privately-arranged MRI, having still been in pain intermittently but unsure exactly what was wrong. 

I can picture the scan now and the white blob exploding from the base of my spine like a squashed balloon.

Things stay in your mind when they’re given a shape. 

In the meantime there was physio, massage, acupuncture, lotions, potions, pills, tests and anything or anyone else selling hope.

I lived in Portobello just for a few weeks - an April of another life.

I needed to end the lease of my Edinburgh flat and finding somewhere in the city itself that didn’t look like a crime scene or that wouldn’t cost two thirds of my meagre wage had proved impossible. All there seemed to be was a month in the coastal suburb while the owner went home to Australia (her current flatmate would still be there so I unfortunately I wouldn’t have the place to myself). 

It would be too far out. I’d always have to get the bus to get to work rather than walk. But it was a nice flat, spacious with a piano and that big bed. Close to the beach, at least. 

Sometimes you just have to go where you’re being pulled, being pushed. Maybe I’d be a Jane Austen character going to the seaside for my convalescence. 

It wasn’t just the back pain. It was the general stress of moving, of being on a friend’s couch (my few possessions in boxes in their kitchen) and of working out where I wanted to be, looking for where I belonged. I had been in Edinburgh for just over five years and I think I started to feel a bit jaded, like the city was squeezing me out.

I think then of a library book I was reading at the time - Gods of the Morning by John Lister Kaye, who founded and lives in a nature centre in the Highlands. He writes about changes, the rhythms of the seasons, and in a photo somewhere in the ether of Instagram the book sits open on the kitchen windowsill of the Portobello flat, its pages fanned out like an accordion (there wasn’t a view of the sea from the flat but from that window - which I had quickly decided would be excellent for perching and reading and drinking tea - you could see Arthur’s Seat, golden in the evening sun). I still have the notebook in which I’ve copied out a passage, that and some other scribblings written then, preserving a past self:

“We all migrate. We venture out and we return home. Whoever we are, wherever we may be and whatever our private pretensions - are also part of the same grand opera: the pull of life’s imperatives.”

Of course I found myself wondering about my own migration then, about being pulled back. Up, north, back home - not too far from John Lister Kaye’s centre as it happens. Without anywhere permanent to live and a fairly menial job, it felt like maybe it was time.

In the end I don’t think I walked along the promenade much, didn’t take to the waters or sit on a bench breathing in the salty air. I did try the Turkish Baths, hoping again to unleash the tension, to melt away.

A few weeks later though, and back sleeping on the friend’s couch, I take the train further along the coast and stand knee-deep in the water at North Berwick on what was one of the hottest days of the year. 

And so I think of the sea again. 

I am on the phone: clear, cooling water lapping at my legs, and making plans to come home. I can’t remember if I’ve handed in, or am about to hand in, my notice at work. I can’t remember if it’s May or June. Memory and time always moves things around. What I do remember feeling, what I came to realise, is that making changes, venturing out - and going back if you have to - isn’t that hard when you just decide to do it. 

I also remember something the yoga teacher said - in that room with the window overlooking the sea. I wrote it down in that notebook: 

“Everyone has their own pace, we’ll all meet in the end.”