Thursday, 31 December 2009

Edinburgh's Silver Man: why he goes into Room 101

Princes Street. Edinburgh. The most magnificent major shopping street in the world? Maybe, if you keep your neck turned so you constantly face southwards. Snow-covered volcanic rock with a castle growing out of the top, with anorexic faux-medieval buildings in support, all overlooking a green valley? Superb. Then someone shouts "watchwhiryirgawn" as, not looking where you're going, you crash into the crowd whiling away their time watching The Silver Man.

Edinburgh folks will know what I'm on about. The Silver Man is cut from the same stock as the human statues and squeakers that infest tourist traps the world over. But he decides to set himself up on the single pavement on Edinburgh's busiest street, and single-handedly create a bottleneck.

It's not his awful bleep-techno-lite CD soundtrack played from his stereo (it's better than the atrocious bagpipe music blasted out from the Sikh-run tartan "buy William Wallace's actual claymore here" shops that are the only places who can afford Princes street rents these days. It's not his once-you've-seen-two-minutes-you've-seen-it-all moonwalking writhing (c'mon, I'd outdance him in a heartbeat). It's the sad, patheric faces of tourists and pasty-faced besprogged teenagers alike, who think they're being entertained. So sorry, Silver Man, you get my bullet.

Oh, and did I mention the fact that it clogs up the bloody pavement?

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