I was convinced I had stumbled into the departure lounge of Hell

I WOULD not say my religious upbringing was strict, but when I read Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit with a view to adapting it for the stage, I found it hard to identify with the travails of the heroine.

I thought about Uncle Herman the other day after a disastrous visit to Edinburgh, during which I attempted to invest the profits from the Peebles Showboaters’ sell-out run of South Pacific in a painting from the degree show at the Edinburgh College of Art. I am not a connoisseur of the visual arts, but I know what I don’t like, and what I don’t like seemed to be all that was on display. My task was made no easier by the fact that the Showboaters’ artistic secretary, Lady Weill-Poshlusten, of the Hanover Weill-Poshlustens, is much taken by the work of boudoir fantasist, Mr Jack Vettriano, for reasons that would be best explained by her marital therapist.

Sensing my dismay, a college warden directed me to the Fruitmarket Gallery, where, he said, I would be able to see films which, and I quote, "located profundity in the contextless poetry of the mundane". I was not sure what this meant, and I was troubled by the memory of my last visit to the Fruitmarket, where I witnessed an exhibit involving drugged pigs in pinstripe suits ascending a floodlit staircase. Still, I was reassured by the knowledge that the Fruitmarket has a cafeteria with glacial waitresses. Setting off on foot, I found myself seeing the capital through strangers’ eyes.

My journey began on Lauriston Place, a street dominated by the haunted shell of the Infirmary, which has moved to a caravan park in Little France. Ambulances prowl the boulevard no more, but the air smells of Dettol, and the road is congested with morbid cabs, taxiing school children to the cemetery rows of the New Town, or out to the rugby suburbs of Murrayfield. In Forrest Road, at the Bedlam corner, the eye has a choice. It may look down past the statue of a mythical dog, to Candlemaker Row, where candles are not made, but rows are frequent; or up at the Museum of Scotland, to observe the black scarring on the building’s modernist skin, which should have been clad in stone, but found itself coated instead in a paste of cement, known in the architects’ manuals as "cathedral concrete".

From here, I pushed on, noting that the dental hospital has become a cocktail bar. All the other shops, it seems, have converted to the cult of sandwiches and Italian coffee, and the bookshops which used to line George IV Bridge have shrunk to invisibility. Turning right, the High Street remains a playground of ghouls, highwaymen, and MSPs (the latter being distinguishable by their sweeping cloaks and bags of swag).

Down I went, past muted bagpipes, into Cockburn Street, and from here, I alighted on Fleshmarket Close. Until recently, this grim vennel was a source of haircuts and bacon baps. It was also the back passage of this newspaper, so its high walls echoed to the sound of strangled ambitions. Now, it has slipped into such a state that I decided to approach Market Street from the tiled chasm by the entrance to the Scotsman Hotel.

Reader, I have seen many horrors, and smelt much vileness, but rarely have the two combined to such nasty effect as they did when I ventured on to the Scotsman Steps. By the time I saw the light through the steam of stale urine, I was convinced that I had stumbled into the departure lounge of Hell.

I fled without experiencing any art. As I ran past the Fruitmarket, I heard squealing.

Kirk Elder is a senior citizen from Peebles. He paints by numbers, and particularly enjoys 37s.