Woke up this morning, got myself a croissant. And a cup of half-decent coffee. And a banana.
Actually, I’ve been waking up numerous mornings and getting those previously unavailable comestibles from the corner shop. Independent Edinburgh in 2033 has become almost citizen-friendly. That doesn’t make up for the previous three decades of austerity and gritty bread, but it means life for the masses has become more tolerable.
Which, of course, is the point. The Council of City Guardians is full of wise guys and dolls. Widespread unrest and verbal, even physical abuse of the tourists were completely unacceptable. First they tried locking people up. Then they realized that the way forward was to bring a little happiness into the long-suffering citizens’ lives. It didn’t take much: a smattering of democracy (‘Elect Your Own Ward Representative!’), the opening up of the tourist zone to locals on Sundays, better food and drink. Cinemas even show films that were long banned on the grounds that they would incite civil disobedience – The Wild Bunch, 1900, Alphaville … As for books, almost anything has come into the city’s libraries. Elmore Leonard is popular, probably because his criminals are so convincing – Edinburgh folk have a taste for people who break the law. Then again, the sainted Elmore didn’t approve of prologues.
Even the blues, previously prohibited as subversive, have been made available, the Council’s thinking no doubt being that twelve-bar wailing and bawling is more to be pitied than bothered about. Their loss. It turned out that blues enthusiasts are all over the place, nursing battered cassettes and the ancient machines to play them. Exchange clubs immediately sprang up and my ears were blown, both by songs I hadn’t heard since I was a student and by musicians I’d never come across. Life is almost worth living again.
Here’s the but. Nothing good or even mildly bearable lasts. There’s always some genius who thinks he – and males are inevitably the overwhelming majority – can take things to the next even more wonderful level. Actually it was several demented specimens, not all of them from Edinburgh. Suddenly the ‘S’ word was back in fashion. Since the Enlightenment Party won power in the last election thirty years ago and cut the city off from its neighbours, Scotland had become a ghost, a fossilized memory, a cry of anger and frustration carried away on the wind.
Now it was back in a big way. Initially I was with the old bluesman Taj Mahal – ‘Done Changed My Way of Living’ often enough, thanks. Then sitting on the fence became hazardous as the pointed posts dug in. It was make your mind up time. There was to be a referendum on whether the former capital should take its place in the reconstituted nation. That’s right: citizens who for decades hadn’t been allowed to choose their sexual partners were going to be trusted with voting for their and the city’s future. People in high places were either smoking top-grade tourist dope or there was something distinctly fishy going on.
As a detective I’ve always had a nose for herrings – red (or any other colour), kippers (we get those now, once a month) and salmon (don’t be ridiculous). In this case everything came down to heads and hearts. Fish have them. I’m not so sure about the people wielding power in the country where I was born and raised; born, as it happens, in 1984.