Bloody Marys in Leith

We start the day off with the now-traditional Globe cafe breakfast goodies, and lots of tea. The Blonde, The Geordie and myself had decided that we'd spend the day exploring in Leith. Despite the fact that I live in London and they live in Edinburgh; I'd been to Leith and they hadn't. The Blonde and I were going to hold day two of Edinburgh Camera Club, but since it was raining, I left my camera back at the flat and admitted that we'd probably just spend the day in the fine drinking establishments of Leith. It happened to be Valentine's Day and I received a card from The Blonde's small Beanie Baby hippo Hannibal, with a message saying "I love you, come back soon" and a photo of the small grey creature covered in cut-out paper hearts. Bit creepy, no?

The Blonde has criteria for pubs. She won't happily go into any rough local. When someone suggests a place to go that she's not been before, she asks if it's 'Blonde-friendly'. She stated categorically that she "wouldn't be going in any interesting-looking pubs" today.

After waiting for the bus forever in the rain, (the Edinburgh buses delight me with their tartan seat upholstery - tartan!) we went down to The Shore and found a swanky-looking bar, Bond No 9. We sat ourselves in the conservatory area, ordered Bloody Marys (brilliantly spicy) and made quite a lot of noise that was clearly disturbing the Valentine's couples who were trying to have a nice romantic moment, drinking tea and sharing a chocolate tart. Grumpy Scot came to join us, and we popped outside for a cigarette. Somehow, we began to talk about the fact that The Geordie has an addiction to sugar-free Polo mints, escalating to him being in possession of more than one pack at a time over the weekend. We suggested that merely eating them would not be enough of a minty hit, and soon enough he'd be grinding them up and 'chasing the minty dragon.'

Back in the conservatory, with The Blonde elegantly chasing her paracetamol with Bloody Mary, we discussed anti-Valentine's day tunes in light of the shockingly bad funk-love-disco the bar insisted on playing. I think The Geordie won, with his suggestion of,

"Smack My Bitch Up?"

We had to leave the poncy bar at this point because none of us could take the music any longer. We went off by Leith Water to find a 'proper pub'. And that we did. The King's Wark is a lovely old building with a cosy atmosphere, nice staff and really good crisps. We settled into a nice corner table by the fire and proceeded to chat about crap. At one point, the boys had gone off somewhere and The Blonde and I are discussing something groundbreaking like how much she 'loves clouds', when she tells me to look out of the window.

As I do, I see the nice lady who'd dropped the bracelet at the Hot Chip gig walk past the window. How bizarre. I think we have some unfinished business.

Later on, the conversation turned to Kanye West, Taylor Swift and Jay-Z. The Geordie declares he has a particular issue with Jay-Z,

"I still get alarmed by the size of his face."

What do you say to that?

We round off the weekend with a classy Chinese buffet at Jimmy Chung's, a place that The Blonde and The Geordie hold dear in their hearts; and had visited just a couple of days before. I had that thing where you're really hungry but then get full really quickly. We did however assault the desserts. I'd previously had a text from The Blonde last time they were there, saying,

"In Chinese buffet - The Geordie goes 'the puddings are pre-portioned but that's ok. I can get round that, I'll just get lots of portions.' "

Despite my declarations of being full and not wanting to eat anymore, I promptly managed to work my way through three bowls of cheap ice cream. It's rude not to at a buffet.

I passed Jimmy Chung's again the next morning as I went to the station to depart for London and felt mildly nauseous...