I had drawn a large picture of the tenements of the old town, as seen from the statue of David Livingstone beside the Scott Monument. It was quite brilliant, I thought, and packed full of detail and incident. My subeditor, Janet, handed it back with three errors noted. I can't remember the first one. The second was that I had not drawn the teeth that had been kicked out of the mouth of the person who was being mugged at the far end of Waverley bridge; they should have been lying in the pool of blood on the pavement. Thirdly, in a window of a pub beside the station, I should have drawn Pete Doherty, of the Libertines and Babyshambles, urinating into a pint glass, to the great amusement of his friends.
These all seemed reasonable things to have pointed out, and I went off to amend the picture.
Notes for Freudian Analysis
After my great success last year with an etching of a view that included hundreds and hundreds of little windows, I've been thinking of doing one with hundreds more windows. Such is the extent of my artistic vision. The day I had the dream, I'd taken some photographs of the old town from Princes Street, to see if that would work. I reckon that, between North Bridge and St Giles' there are all the windows my glazing-hungry public could ever want.
Obviously, the sub-editors check my copy at work, not my drawings. However, Janet is one of two sub-editors who have asked me to draw something for them (a drawing of her dead dog, pre-death).
I am mystified by the unheralded appearance of Pete Doherty, who is not a person I would have thought had much space in my head. I don't think I've heard anything by the Libertines or Babyshambles. I know that he's a chaotic sort of person because he's often on the front pages of the tabloids that are arranged beside the coffee counter in the Parliament lobby. Perhaps that has some significance.