Tatty memories

I'm not at all sure if something counts as a Proustian moment if it is a premeditated act; in fact I'm sure it does not, so in that case I had a Galloisian moment in Edinburgh, where I set out to eat foods that would allow memories of my time in Scotland to flood back. I arrived at lunchtime and had a bit of time to kill before catching a train to Dundee, so I went into the Prince's Mall, nee Waverley Market, and thought I'd have a baked potato from Spud U Like. My reasoning here was twofold: 1) I had already had a kind of lunch on the plane, in the shape of a cream cheese and roasted vegetable sandwich, so I couldn't be too greedy, and 2) the first meal that I remember having when we moved to Scotland was a baked potato with cheese and onion in a shopping mall. I'm not quite sure why but that potato really marked a new beginning for me and convinced me that Scotland was going to be just fine. The potato itself was huge, and atop the potato and butter was a mound of bright orange Scottish cheddar and rings of raw onion. Wow! did I like Scotland from that point on (I'd had a similar experience when we moved to Exeter for the first time and I well remember the excellent sausage rolls which we had in our new garden).

Anyhow, suffice it to say that present-day Spud U Like is a pretty miserable experience. The cheddar was yellow, which seemed a real shame because one of the distinctive things about Scottish cheese in tatties was its orangeness. Now I know that this orange was simply a food dye and the kind of thing one should now look down on, but what has become of a Scotland where its cheddar is no longer orange? Are you to tell me that lemonade is no longer blue? So I went for a 'Lite Bite' deal, whicch got me a measly potato, some cottage cheese, some chives, apparently, and a titchy Diet Pepsi. Wicked.

Fast forward two days and I am again transiting through Edinburgh, with a bit of time to spare and a belly hungry for foods from my past. So I wandered up Cockburn Street, pleased to see that Fopp was still there, as well as the shops where I bought my Sisters of Mercy shirt and had my nose pierced, and then, what's that smell? My whole body was filled with a deep, rich potatoey smell, so I wandered up the street and was delighted to see that The Baked Potato Shop was still there. I'm not actually sure if I ever had a potato there in the past but I must have smelt those wafts on scores of occasions. This time the reality was as good as the memories I may or may not have had: a giant potato, loads of butter, and pile upon pile of orange cheddar and coleslaw. The bag containing the potato was one of the heaviest single meals I have ever held in my hands. It was truly delicious and the guy in the shop was a really decent bloke, so it was nice to leave Edinburgh with such a good experience.