Ch-ch-ch-changes

Eagle-eyed readers will clock the fact that there were no blog entries in July. No! None whatsoever. Is this down to a life of endless socialising in my new city? A lack of time due to hunting down the best haggis and munching on deep-fried Mars Bars? Of turning down handsome, kilt-wearing swains with a polite, 'Thank you, kind sir, but I am new in town and a lady must protect her reputation'? No, of course it's not - it's the usual idleness, combined with being a bit knackered, what with having a new job an' all.

So, to catch up, here's a run-down of What's New at Purple Towers (now with added tartan):
1/ I took my vow that I was going to 'walk everywhere' when I moved rather too literally in the first week, when I wasn't working. I think I averaged at least four hours a day. I somewhat regretted giving my trainers to the second-hand shop before I left London.
2/ As a result, I am now the proud owner of new, go-faster-and-tone-while-you're-at-it trainers which have 'unstable' soles which are supposed to... oh, I don't know, somehow make you use muscles that have lain dormant for years to counteract this wibbly-wobbliness. Shove in a cobbled street every five minutes and I'd imagine that the effect is trebled at the very least. They make you bounce along like Tigger, so even if the weather's not exactly matching up to the summer that everyone else in the country appears to be having, it's hard not to feel jaunty.
3/ I'm now walking 40 minutes to work, and 40 minutes back again. Yes, every day, even, one day, in a massive downpour. I have to carry a backpack (again, newly bought) to carry my 'proper' shoes in. Tackling steep, long hills in heels is not to be advised. I now blend in with the locals, all of whom have backpacks with 'walking to work' shoes and 'being at work' shoe options contained within. It's the first step on a slippery slope that ends up with me clad in Goretex coats and with a pair of sturdy walking boots. The other day, I caught myself looking in the window of an outdoors shop and thinking, 'Hmm, that Northface jacket looks rather appealing'.
4/ All of this, however, is not sufficient exercise for the brand new me. No indeed, not only have I joined the gym, and am actually going because I pass it on the way home, and my only other evening option is watching TV, but I have also signed up with a PERSONAL TRAINER. A personal trainer! Me, the girl who was always picked last for teams at school! Who didn't even achieve BAGA 4 (seriously, could my PE teachers not have tried a bit harder to salvage my self-esteem by just giving me that? It's not like they would've been struck off the register or anything).
Yes, James from Belfast is being paid, at great personal expense, for ten hours of his time in one-hour chunks, to transform me from a sofa slug into Linda Hamilton in the Terminator films. I'm not sure he knows that's quite what he's supposed to be doing; I think he'd settle for me not laughing every time he tells me how to do something because the idea of me doing actual, proper, presided-over exercise, is so ludicrous. But so far a/ I'm not hating it (which is a major result) and b/ by dint of doing tricep dips and push-ups on a Power Plate, I can at least get the lids off jam jars. I'm sure there will be more about my Damascus-style conversion to exercise soon.
5/ Yup, the weather is rubbish. On any given day, if it's less than six degrees cooler than London, I find myself a tad disappointed. It is grey, it is drizzly, there is staggering pea-souper mist last seen in Dickensian times. Then it will suddenly be REALLY HOT AND SUNNY for twenty minutes (confusion reigns) before going back to being drizzly and grey again. Apparently, they have summer in Edinburgh in June, and then that's your lot. However, as has been noted previously, this is fine by me. Having just spent two days using the Tube on a trip to London, in not spectacularly hot weather, if I'd stayed put till July 5th, I'd have gone mental and done something murderous, so utterly unbalanced would the heat and humidity have made me.
6/ My office is surrounded by a quantity of tartan shops that is, frankly, comedic.
7/ Visits to London will partly be treasured because of their lack of bagpipe music. There is a shop I pass twice daily which pumps out a tinny bagpipe version of 80s classic 'You're the Voice' which will erode my sanity very quickly indeed.
8/ I miss the variety of London architecture. Everything in Edinburgh kind of looks the same - it's like they took a look at the average day and went, 'How can we make it look as though the sky and the earth are as one? I know! Build everything out of dark grey stone!' I'll get used to it, but it's weird when you come from a city that looks as though it's been assembled by a mad student who wants to try out everything they learned at architecture school, all in one street.
9/ I have not had haggis yet, or tried deep-fried Mars Bars. I do, however, pass a flashing neon sign every day advertising the latter, should I feel the need to indulge.
10/ NO-ONE has called me 'Hen' yet. Why not?! This is an outrage. Everyone is, however, very friendly, apart, ironically, from the man who teaches the yoga class I go to on a Sunday morning. He seems to be very angry about having to teach us, gives the impression that everyone in his class is doing everything wrong and is, in short, extremely unrelaxing. I miss my Streatham yoga teacher, who was awesome.
11/ My favourite Edinburgh firm so far is a lawyers' outfit called McSporrans.
12/ I'm trying to blend in by eating porridge for breakfast every day. I'm making it in a microwave, but I'm sure it still counts. No desire to drink whisky just yet, though.
13/ Having 'Scottish' telly is still confusing me. Ergo, I've gone into default mode, and am watching re-runs of Friends for the 808th time. The irony of not really having any actual friends here yet is not lost on me. I also had to suffer the episode the other day where Rachel Freaks Out Because She's 30. Try turning 40, love, I thought darkly.
14/ I'm looking forward to complaining about all the horrid Festival People cluttering up the city now that I'm no longer one of Them and am instead (almost) one of Us. I love a good moan.
15/ I have found the best lunch known to man - and all for £2.50. There's a cafe across the road from the office which is populated entirely by old people and students. It serves soup and the fluffiest, most divine cheese scone you will ever have encountered, for less than the cost of a f*cking Starbucks Frappuccino. It is apparently a Christian cafe and I think God has blessed the cheese scones especially. I know, cheese scones + paying for a personal trainer = doolally madness, but I don't care.

So, after a month, I reckon I'm doing OK; I have waged a daily battle with my bed, ('Not on the bed!' still rings in my ears) and I'm trying to think of myself as A Person Who Does Exercise. I even went to the gym on my day off in London, and somehow managed to wangle a free session with a Personal Trainer. Albeit one who, when I said I'd been a member for a number of years, asked, with admirable bluntness, why he'd never seen me before, given he'd been working there since it opened. 'Because I didn't use to come very often!' I trilled gaily, to a look of utter confusion. PTs don't seem to understand that you can pay staggering amounts to remain a member of a gym, whilst doing one yoga class a week and occasionally using the steam room. Fools! Everyone knows that's how gyms make their money. Especially my new gym, which is the size of a football pitch, with gleaming machines as far as the eye can see and exercise studios which are twice the size of my old flat. It's sort of daunting, but at least you don't feel like people are looking at you when you're quarter of a mile away from the nearest person. Next up: booking Festival festivities and establishing good/cheap/good and cheap bars and restaurants to show off my local knowledge when friends come to visit. And making some new chums to replace my Friends.