The first day after an 8-hour time jump feels a lot like being on another planet. You wander about in a fugue state, answering the questions of bartenders and cashiers with a dumbfounded stare. Words once common to your vocabulary are suddenly nowhere to be found: “That thing, you know, the thing that you… put in your mouth, that wakes you up?”
“Tea?”
“No… the other one.”
We arrive in Edinburgh the day after the summer solstice, and the endless bright just heightens this sensation that we are strangers in a strange land—where the sun never descends, where scotch is whisky, where soccer is football and also a big fucking deal.
After a night of profound confusion, I drive to the airport to pick up my parents, who fly in the morning after Elena and I.
I’m not concerned about driving on the wrong side of the car or the wrong side of the road so much as I am about driving my parents around for the next two weeks. Neither have driven a car since the 20th Century, but both have strong opinions about how one ought to drive—opinions that are radically different… and entirely wrong.
With minimal screaming, we get to the Airbnb and park the car outside. It’s hours before check-in, so we walk in a daze down the Water of Leith Walkway, where we see two ducks riding a duck. “This,” says my father, “is a very strange place.”
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