Train to Edinburgh, January 30th

I'm sitting in the quiet coach on the way to Edinburgh, drinking a Stella and listening to Kate Bush. May is drinking an Irn Bru, which is apparently the hangover cure of choice in Scottish Literature. I think about what I have read, endless Chrisopher Brookmyre and one Irvine Welsh. I didn't know anything about the orangey can of sugary crack. I do know a few things though. The first thing I know is that I love trains. The second thing I know is that at one pm every day a cannon is let off in Edinburgh. I know that this is the first time in over a week that I've looked in the sky and haven't seen tracers of the jumbo jets making their way to the USA. Just as I write that one appears, the first one, when usually the sky is crossed with them. In a few days time my godfather will tell me that whilst from where we stand the tracers are fluffy and white, in reality they are the blackest of exhaust fumes. We came here on one of those. Another addition to the list of the destructiveness you are willing to participate in.

*small side note*
I don't know if people know this or not, but SNAFU's play this year is going to be about the Second World War. I know stuff about it that I'm surprised others don't, I think about it more than others do. I don't know why this is. I'm an existential atheist feminist, not a godly chauvinist warmonger. Because we are in Europe-land, and most of these entries are transcribed after the fact, I am going to try and remain faithful to my thoughts while drinking beer on a train. You can make fun of it if you want.
*end small side not*

I'm not used to all these tracings of aeroplanes in the sky. Even in the vast Derbyshire countryside they were all-pervasive. You wonder if during the war there was a constant presence like this, a constant low murmur of machinery, with so much needed in such a confined space. This play will be difficult, because what you're aiming for, or what inevitably happens in the discussion of war is the need for a grand narrative or lesson to emerge from it. Even though at the time, and even now we all know it's impossible to put even the most significant events into a simple narrative structure. All you get are inadequete impressions.

There are more people in Britain in greater concentration than in Australia. You get the same trends raised to the surface because they are unable to hide. The difference between a self-sufficient, poverty stricken and resourceful wartime Britain, and the grand consumerism of it now is obvious as nostalgia has long overtaken reality. Every family had a vegetable garden, everyone learnt self-defense, everyone forfeited themselves or part thereof. Today the pre requisite for engagement in conflict is that it not happen anywhere near your own turf. The sun never sets on the Western Empire. The only necessary thing for home is creating the proper face of evil to spread over every media outlet.

Playing Trivial Pursuit in the hostel at Edinburgh was a little less heavy from that previous rant. The game, which I won by the way, beating Andy, and that's the important thing, mostly consisted of us replacing as many words as possible with 'Gay', as well as this interesting question:

Q: What do monotremes, such as Mrs. Platypus, produce that marsupials, such as Mrs. Wombat, don't?

I tell you, the state of inane trivia is going down the toilet.