There’s an art to the promenade. Promenade as verb not noun.[1] You can tell the class of a person by their use of a word. Non-creative types just call it a walk. Old fashioned sorts go for a stroll.[2] Auntie Vera was very fond of a saunter. Uncle George grumped a march. And Wee Ed the Heid, who delivered muckle great piles of hand-caught mackerel in his shifty wee red wheelbarrow until he was well into his seventies, well he just called a stride a stride.
Do you need a promenade to take a promenade? Not necessarily. You could, with a low-hipped swagger and a lean-right-back on your built-up yellow cork wedgies, sashay down Edinburgh’s Leith Walk. But Leith Walk, the one with the tram works that recently turned up in a transport conference in Stuttgart in a side event on Brass-Necked Incompetence and National Beyond-the-Pail Embarrassments, is a discomfiting digression that is best left for another time. Stick to the Promenade for your promenading.
What to wear. December, Edinburgh. You’ll need winter beach attire, accessorised by a small pinch-nosed pooch in a pink puffa jacket with strychnine breath and a hissing Bauhaus smile.[3] The pooch is essential, as is the pompom at the far end of your very bright hat. The pompom, large, and heavy enough to lopside your gait, may be acrylic or uranium but must have a heft of glitter and a hove of spangle. If you can carry it off (and not everyone can), you should ensure the colour of the pompom matches the pinch-nosed pooch’s diamante satin (with nylon reinforcement) infinity lead.
What to bring. Bring a life. Bring a job. Bring a career. Bring a family. Bring a fucking big television. Bring washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. And then bring money. Bring loose change. Bring notes. Bring a plate for the dog liver cake, sold out of a Tupperware box at the bratwurst van by a French tart and his Belgian lover, Frite. Bring a plastic bag bright enough to be very seen to throw into the nearest naked tree once you’ve picked up the pooch’s shit (for it will shit, it is guaranteed to shit after that deep and intense shit-brown liver cake).
What to drink. Once you’ve packed your pompom, your pinch-nosed pooch and the coins for the dog’s liver cake, remember your hipster-right-on-recycled-reconditioned-reconsidered-redacted-restructured-subcultured-keeps-all-drinks-piping-hot-easy-grip thermos flask. There’s a choice of refreshments on the Promenade although I recommend you avoid the Coconut Psalm Scratch House what with the furore over #BaconButtiegate (£7.50 – are you having a bloody laugh, mate?) and the inability of the queue to stop snaking around the corner and coiling and curling all over the bike stands. If you insist on the Coconut Psalm Scratch House, for the grand price of £3.50 they’ll drop a tea bag into your hipster-right-on-recycled-reconditioned-reconsidered-redacted-restructured-subcultured-keeps-all-drinks-piping-hot-easy-grip thermos flask and splash some boiled water onto it. Feel free to bring your own beverage.
How to stand when buying stuff. During these testing times of covid, you will notice many stickers beneath your feet. These apparently random lines of police tape do not generally denote scenes of terrible violence, even where they are splashed with blood. Stand on said tape and wait for your turn. An even temperament is required for this task. Turn the other cheek to avoid being smacked in the face by the unmarked virus stewards whose reinforced petri dish eyes can spot a hip over the line from seventy paces. It is not considered polite to let your pinch-nosed pink puffa-jacketed pooch piss on the social-distancing ticker tape so if it does happen for Christ’s sake be discrete. Step onto the piss and distract the person in front of you with exaggerated exclamations of how exquisite their sawn-off legged cork-screw tailed dachshund is what a lovely baby blue coat it’s wearing did you crochet that yourself? Be careful, though. You don’t need a new best friend for life, especially not one that crochets for he who crotchets may well macramé and he who macramés may well have been in prison.[4]
How to wild swim. Don’t. Be ready with excuses. Arm yourself. Make a list and have it at the ready. Stick a couple of arguments in the pocket of the pinch-nosed pooch’s pink puffa jacket. Just in case. No, you’ll never get used to it. No, you don’t need a snake oil cure for your crippling arthritis. No, it absolutely won’t be lovely once you’re in. No, your endorphins don’t need a rush, they never need to rush, they’re just not that sort of polypeptide. No, wood smoke is not hygge, it’s dangerous particulate matter that skewers your bronchioles and gouges your tinted contact lenses and the smell will destroy your vintage almost porous patina sheepskin flying jacket that you got in the sale at Harvey Nichols the day you couldn’t stop crying and so you spent six hundred pounds that you didn’t have and god that felt good that felt really good.
Where to park. DON’T BRING YOUR BLOODY CAR. There’s a climate emergency you bawbags.
[1] In Havana, the promenade, the noun not the verb, is called the Malecón. Reminds me of the word maleficence.
[2] Stroll is an ugly word. And stroller is even uglier. I prefer buggy. More friendly, bug-like. Like Auntie Vera’s eyes when she saw her husband Alistair, aged fifty-nine, snort his first line in the downstairs guest toilet on the pretext that he was just popping in to change the peach hand towels for the lemon ones, they went so much better with the new Axminster.
[3] This whole thing about breeding dogs to prevent them breathing really gets on my wick. I look at people with these dogs and I half close my eyes and I put my hands around their throats, press my fingers sharp into their tracheas, watch their pale brown watery eyes bulge until they pop, then slowly release my fingers. It’s a fantasy I have on each one of my promenades. One day I fear I may mess up my fantasy and I will leave the Promenade strewn with my idiot victims, their dogs released from their infinity leads to ponder and puff and pant and postulate their way across the sand, their owners gasping their last.
[4] Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with prison. Nothing at all. I’m a firm believer in rehabilitation. It’s the baby blue crotchet coat on a dog with no legs that’s waving the red flag here.
SANDERLINGS 