The Royal Observatory.

Apart from the run that I led in January, today was my first cycle ride for three months; and, again, I was leading it. You could tell that I was excited about it as, thinking that I had overslept, I arrived at the start an hour early. I didn’t bother to tell anybody though they did notice that I arrived from the wrong direction. I had noticed some time ago that Braid Hills Drive had Blipping opportunities, so I moseyed on down there to kill some time and to do my daily duty.
 
The Royal Observatory, situated on Blackford Hill is ideally placed to observe the Forth, the Kingdom of Fife and Arthur’s Seat, and achieved its fifteen minutes of fame twenty four years ago when the magazine, New Scientist, introduced the World to “nominative determinism,” a phenomenon by which people tend to gravitate towards professions suggested by their names. One of the first instances quoted by that august journal was an acquaintance of mine, a certain Mr. Heavens, who was an astronomer working there. I have been aware of the trend since childhood; who for example, could forget that Sigmund Freud, whose initial area of research was into the subject of pleasure, has a surname that, in his native tongue, means “joy”; or that Thomas Crapper was a purveyor of luxury, sanitary plumbing; though, perhaps, pride of place should go to the Beanotown optician who traded under the name of Seymour Clearly.
 
The Forth, just visible between the hills, nearly a thousand years ago, bore Princess Thanea in a paddleless coracle up and down on its tide for several days until, eventually, she was rescued by Saint Serf and cared for at a monastery on an island in Loch Leven. Thanea had committed the crime of refusing to marry the Lord selected for her by her father, King Loth, for which she was sentenced to death by being pushed over a cliff on Traprain Law. Having survived the experience, she was exiled to an isolated valley in The Borders where she was raped by her chosen husband. Her punishment for fornication was the setting adrift on the tide. Her injuries seriously shortened her life, but not before she had given birth to, and raised her son Kentigern, also known as Saint Mungo.
 
Salisbury Crags, in the far middle ground of the Blip also had its moment of fame; within a few days of me taking up residence in Mbra, a Teutonic man, on his wedding night, pushed his bride over the edge. He was presumably under the impression that the Scots were a Pagan race who still considered uxuricide to be an acceptable pastime; however, fifteen good Scots and true disagreed and he served a lengthy, but still inadequate, sentence. The man was a cad, a gentleman would at least have had the decency to wait until morning.