Edinburgh sober

Was never an option

Up an eternity of steps

Jinglin’ Geordies, Halfway House

Evening News or Scotsman 

That Gormenghast of stone and paper

Tottering on the rumbling presses

Typewriter graveyards

The rotting files of memory

Deadlined and alone of an afternoon

Always he would call me

Sidney James Van Rijn

Tiny and ruthless

The ruined face

A warning for the future

In its droll, glowing perfection 

Now the great machines

Of News are gone

Cool cocktails chuckle

Stirred not shaken

Where hot metal held sway

And broadsheets tumbled

Were bound and despatched

For old times’ sake

We stare each other out again

Sidney. Me

Me and Sid

Harmenszoon

And a recovering hack

Swaying sardonically 

Breathing Laphroaig

And Genever

At each other

He’s aged better than me

But then, he’s only 51

No age at all

The Scotsman. It was once Scotland’s national broadsheet newspaper; printed, published, written, edited in the great towering edifice entered from North Bridge, Edinburgh. The building is now a luxury hotel. I was on staff as the paper’s Inverness-based Highland Reporter for four years, columnist for a decade. On trips to the capital, always involving copious imbibing, I never failed to visit Rembrandt’s late-life self-portrait in the National Gallery.