Bartimaeus

The day after St David's Day was my university friend's birthday. Us three friends have gone on trips away most years since the year we all turned 50. The pandemic interrupted the annual trips and all our meets were on line for a bit. Marion is always the first to have her birthday in early March. I had sent her card with a picture that had reminded me of the views in Amsterdam with high colourful water side buildings and a small arched metal bridge over a water channel. Marion had liked the Amsterdam architecture. The picture wasn't of Amsterdam though, it was of Leith, and I suggested that perhaps one of our meetings could be back in Edinburgh where we could relive old student haunts or explore the parts of Edinburgh, like Leith and Portobello that we hadn't visited then. The student unions have changed a bit and we might not feel at home there any more though I have been at events in more recent years; a ceilidh in Teviot and Festival Fringe events in many other university buildings.

I had recently gone past some old buildings and enjoyed seeing them following refurbishment with a mix of old and modern. Teviot House has been behind hoardings for a while undergoing refurbishment of some kind. It looked open for business, but in fact was not due to reopen as a student union until 4th March.

Nearby to these buildings, just along from the medical school had been the old hospital. It has been knocked down in parts with a few buildings preserved and new housing put up and the old hospital is now home to Edinburgh University's Futures Institute.  I had done an on-line course earlier this year run by the Futures Institute. The topic was brain health: risk factors of dementia, research into early detection, causes and treatments or prevention of brain disease. As part of that I  had signed up to participate in relevant research. I had been contacted by one of the researchers at the Futures Institute about in person research comparing stress and mood levels of younger and older people, doing activities in pairs (paired as one under 30 and the other participant over 60) I had agreed to do it but told them I needed to do it reasonably soon as I didn't know how long I would be in Edinburgh. They asked if I knew anyone under 30. I was surprised that at a university they hadn't been awash with under thirty volunteers. I told them my son was under thirty and willing and they duly paired us up. 

On March 2nd, Nye and I had our first of two visits to the Futures Institute. I was slightly nervous, not knowing what was ahead. They were taking saliva samples, explaining the research and doing a questionnaire about mood, anxiety levels, health, social conditions and environmental attitudes. Throughout we were to wear head bands that monitored our temperature and heart rate. I was offered a laptop for the questionnaire while Nye volunteered to use his phone. I was happy not to be trying to log in to the university WiFi but found the laptop with a Spanish or Portuguese keyboard and a small pad with unfamiliar scroll and cursor controls -  no touch screen and no mouse available - presented minor problems so Nye was finished much faster than me. I wonder if my ineptitude with technology  was being noted as a sign of aging - it slightly raised my stress levels! Then we recorded ourselves talking about our current state of mind. I was relieved to hear that they were not asking us to wear forehead monitors for the next 24 hours. A Fitbit is subtly attached to your wrist. This was a black box with flashing lights in the middle or your forehead. When we took them off we had little depressions on the skin where the emotibit had been. I wished I had brought my hat as I walked back across the Meadows. I had just finished my red Melt The Ice hat the night before.

I had read that Minnesota has a large population of Norwegian descent and Minneapolis has the highest proportion of Norwegian descendants of any other place in the USA and also the highest concentration of Norwegian descendants outside of Norway. This made their connection to the red hats as Nazi resistance, highly resonant. I have very distant Norwegian roots, evident mainly in my surname, meaning "Son of Olaf", dating back possibly to the 10th century. The Kingdom of the Isles was a Norse-Gaelic kingdom of the west coast (now Scottish) islands and the Isle of Man, while Orkney and Shetland were a separate Norse group. My dad's looks could easily have passed for a Viking! At any rate I am also in the Viking genes research and am happy to join in with an antifascist knitting based on a Norwegian hat.

The next morning I put it on to go to the Futures Institute. The researcher had worn a beanie hat throughout yesterday, so I shouldn't look too out of place. I wore Celtic pattern earrings - this day was about a Scottish heritage site exhibition and our response to it.

We enjoyed the exhibits on the topic of the Calanais standing stones in Lewis. I had heard of them but not seen them. They reminded me of ancient burial mounds I had seen in North Uist. The landscape was similar with rocks, peat bog and sea lochs. I talked to Nye about being in the Hebrides on holiday as a teenager. Nye is interested in history and stone, so was soon saying he would like to go there too. Our conversation was recorded. I remarked to her that since we were related our old/young partnership was possibly different as we were talking about his grandparents and joint heritage. She said it was very common for the older person to talk about their youth with the young person so it wasn't so different. The small exhibition is open to the public too, free of charge Mondays to Fridays for the rest of March on the ground floor of the building.

This time I used my phone and was finished a bit quicker with the questionnaire, and we had both enjoyed the experience altogether. I had my hat to cover my emotibit impression on the way home.   The Futures Institute building is an interesting mix of original hospital and modern corridors with students on tablets and laptops in booths lining the corridors.

In the afternoon Shane and I were walking round the Meadows and I stopped to admire a pillar. It is a sort of sundial with quotes about time inscribed around it, like "Tak tent of time ere time be tint" (Take care of time before time is done). It has been there since 1886 apparently but I don't remember seeing it as a student walking up North Meadow Walk regularly on my way to University in the early 1980s.