The audience at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall danced down the aisles at the end of the opening night of the International Festival this August. It’s not usually like that, I don’t think. The event is rather a grand affair, and the venue is the sort of place where the great and the good of the city are seen—I spotted Alexander McCall Smith and a few familiar faces from BBC Scotland.
Initially, the audience seemed unsure of how to react to the jazz being performed. Does one clap after a movement? Or is that sacrilege? The crowd appeared split. Still, it didn’t take long for the musicians of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Festival Chorus, Jason Max Ferdinand Singers and above all the wondrous Lincoln Center Orchestra—led by Pulitzer-winning trumpeter Wynton Marsalis—to shake them up. And afterwards, the Scottish youth jazz orchestra kept the party going on the steps outside.
This was the last time that Marsalis would play All Rise—his symphony first premiered in 1991, and from which this year’s festival takes its theme—as musical director of the Lincoln Center. There were virtuosic solos (the crowd loved the trombone) and the 200-strong cast of performers together made an impressive sound. The energy was undeniable. Nicola Benedetti, the festival’s director (and Marsalis’s wife), must have been proud. So was I: my dad was in the choir.
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I’ll soon become a parent myself. I’m expecting a baby this autumn, and so have been going to all the necessary antenatal appointments. These mostly consist of being rushed through a couple of questions by a nurse, having your blood pressure taken and being asked to blow into a straw attached to a machine. The machine measures the carbon monoxide in your breath and, usually, my levels are in the green. This week, though, I blew into the straw and the level showed up red. Danger.
The reason for this was frighteningly mundane. Rather than walking to the appointment from my flat, as I had on previous occasions, I had rushed from work in central London. Apparently, jumping on the Victoria line for half an hour is enough to make it look like you’re a smoker. Though the midwife wasn’t worried, I’ll have to repeat the test at my next appointment, and if the reading looks the same, they’ll refer me to a programme about quitting cigarettes. I’ve never been a smoker, so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to learn—or why that is a good use of NHS resources. But the red reading is making me rethink the cost of my daily commute through the bowels of the Underground.
I’ve since learned that the first study into the effects of traffic pollution on babies whose mothers were pregnant in London was only published this year (by researchers based at King’s College London). It found that exposure to pollution in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy was linked to worse language skills, with effects seen even more strongly among babies born pre-term. Their motor skills were worse, too. Exposure in later pregnancy didn’t have the same association, and scientists are yet to figure out if the children affected catch up in later life. I knew the air quality down there was bad—but do we really have to accept that breathing in such bad stuff is just part of urban living?
Apart from that, I’ve mostly really enjoyed being pregnant, but; the temperature in the city this summer has been a challenge. In the streets, I can feel apartment blocks radiating heat as I walk by. Our own shady, ground-floor flat has spared us from the worst, but London bricks seem to store energy, and after a few heatwave days, we’re sweltering too.
The worst bit is—again—the tube, where I sit in around 35 degrees with a fan pitifully blowing hot air on my face. Other commuters are, for the most part generous, and when I’ve asked for a seat, I have been given one. But on public transport the line of civilisation is thin: as soon as there are severe delays on the line, everyone is hustling and bustling, and they’ll look right through you.
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There are always moments, though, where Londoners connect. For about two days, the city was obsessed with the eclipse. There wouldn’t be another this good until 2081, which is far too distant a date for any of us to be blasé about this one.
Unable to source any specs (briefly, a must-have accessory) but keen for us to share in this collective experience without burning our eyes out, my husband fashioned a pinhole projector out of a box from Boots, and we took our makeshift science experiment to a rooftop.
I saw the last eclipse, in 1999, in a very different setting in Highland Perthshire, where my brothers and I grew up. I don’t remember much about it, except the eerie feeling that came with untimely darkness and a sudden quietening of the birds. My mother tells me the midges went wild.
This time, there was a sense of human camaraderie—glasses were passed around, and everyone wanted a go with our box. But the creatures of zone 1 won’t be quietened for anyone. The city paused as the moon crossed the path of the sun, and then life continued.
