Ah, the trams. They did of course finally start running, and I was somehow persuaded to think it was a good idea to get up at five in the morning to go see the first one. One near-miraculous early rise later, off I went stumbling down the road to catch sight of it.
I'd apologise for my lateness in posting these, but given what you all know well enough it's quite fitting. (I should maybe wait another year or two or three for good measure.)
Anyway anyway, what a beautiful morning it was. Your photographer was almost delirious at this point through lack of sleep, mind you:
Just in time to see the first tram since the last one, if you ignore all the testing for months:
I was a bit late to get on the first one to leave Edinburgh (the actual first one headed into town from the Airport), but did see it swing by St Andrew Square packed to the gunwales with pleased-looking camera-toting early risers. I hung around and got on the historic third ever tram since the last one apart from the months of testing. Proud moment.
The experience was, of course, a perfect and complete anti-climax. It's a tram, and trams are quite nice (apart from the fiasco and all the money wasted and...). When you get on one - or at least when I did - it's just a pleasant mode of public transport, that trundles along and goes *ding* now and again. They're ok. They're quite good. (As well they bloody might be for all the, well, y'know.) I hope they work, which really means the silly two thirds line being completed to Newhaven, as the thought of that huge pot of money that can't after all be unspent just going to waste is awful. I'll not hold my breath, though.
The seats are nice:
And the rest of the insides are nice. It's a bloody tram:
You end up in the middle of nowhere though, if like me you go on it out of curiosity and don't want to pay the extra to get to the airport:
If you do that, you get the odd sight of this big multi-million pound urban monster trundling happily through fields. It should have been playing the theme from Black Beauty at this point:
And off you go, over the railway:
Through some more greenery:
And back into the city:
And that's that. Finally. For fuck's sake...
All the world seems in tune on a Spring afternoon, when we're poisoning pigeons in the park.