Secret Edinburgh: Stephen Carlin recommends an attraction that terrorism has shut down

When I was just a kid my Dad would take me and my brothers to see the aeroplanes at Edinburgh Airport. What can I say? I was a cheap date.

 

In those days there was a viewing gallery to watch the planes and, for an extra five pence, you could operate a pair of binoculars that gave no better view than your own eyes. Thanks to the new fangled invention of international terrorism the viewing gallery has long since closed down. (Personally I am starting to think this international terrorism ain’t such a good thing. I mean when you start pissing on my childhood memories Al Qaeda, you have gone too far!)

 

I suppose if I genuinely wanted respite from the madness of the Fringe I would try and recreate my childhood and visit the viewing gallery. Sadly that option no longer exists. So the best I can do is lie in the Meadows on a clear sunny day (I think you may already have spotted the flaw in my plan) and gaze at the aeroplane’s far above and wonder ‘With the biggest arts festival in the world in Edinburgh, why are these losers flying abroad?”