AS exclusively trailed in last week’s bombshell column, I am back in the city. I am also in the matrix. On the five-and-a-half hour drive, I experienced ten different seasons – sun, snow, hail, rain and so forth – but, as I approached the outskirts of Edinburgh, a luscious wash of post-rain sunshine coated the suburbs and made them look magical.

I knew this would happen. I knew I was in the matrix. These things happen for a reason, which is basically that my life is being directed by beings from ooter space. Or maybe by a deity. Or maybe it’s just the cooncil.

I knew the unaffordable suburbs would look beautiful. I’ve experienced it so often on returning in spring: the verdurous hedgerows; the flowering cherry trees. As I passed through the suburbs and into sunny Leith, a rainbow appeared over the hotel. Come on, what are the chances? We were in the matrix, bro.

Things got odder. In my room, I’d just poured myself a gin and tonic when a loud alarm went off. I thought I’d triggered an anti-booze sensor. Whatever it was, the whole hotel had to be evacuated.

Shortly beforehand, I’d ordered fish and chips to be collected at a certain time but, at the chippie, I found a mob of 40 folk milling about outside. “They’re running half an hour behind,” one of them told me.

I was shocked by the lack of social distancing. People would stand right next to you, breathing and stuff. You had to wait till your name was called then step forward self-consciously and collect your haddock. So surreal. The only blessing was that I hadn’t done as I often do on websites and given myself a daft name. Imagine, in front of 40 people, you had to step forward when they shouted “Humphrey” or “Dolores”.

I’d arranged to meet a mate for a pint, but three pubs we tried were all shutting at 8. What was that about? We thought they had till 10.

We’d been laughing earlier at the thought of having a drink in the Brewers Fayre. So that’s where we ended up. We didn’t know what to do so asked a barman/waiter and he said we had to sit ootside, point our mobiles at a symbol on a table and order through that. Oh, and they were closing at 9. It was 10 minutes to 9.

My mate went through this rigmarole on his phone. After taking a couple of pictures of his own nose, he entered his name, age, sexual preference, email address, phone number and shoe size but mucked something up and had to start again. And again.

We put our hands up like children to get help, but the staff understandably ignored us, so two seasoned hacks missed another deadline, even though the plan to order six pints two minutes to closing time was probably a non-starter.

So we went to Asda, bought some cans and sat on the nearby pier necking them as darkness fell. He’s quite a famous journalist, so we thought people might see us and say: “Look at them. Used to be at the top of their profession [work with me on this]. Now sitting on the cobbles with some cans. Pair of jakeys.”

But we had a right old laugh as dusk gathered and the arty illumination from an old lighthouse nearby changed colour from blue to pink to green. We were in the matrix, I tell you.

Suburban cowboy

I ALSO knew from experience that, out in the sticks, I would miss my evening suburban walks (not possible boskyside). So I hied myself round my old stamping ground of Trinity and felt like a ghost, or as if I were in heaven.

Clematis draped itself around luscious gardens, sometimes glimpsed through gates in tall walls of red brick or honeyed stone.

The characterful old houses were a joy to behold, including huge mansions with neo-classical frontages and tall towers (for sea captains to watch the ships by telescope). Doubtless, you memorised the fact, revealed here recently, that whenever I hear Natsu No Niwa Suite by Odair and Sérgio Assad, or Ravel’s String Quartet in F major, it reminds me of this suburb and my evening walks when I’d listen to them on an iPod.

Revisiting these streets now, while I hadn’t a musical device on my person, I played the tunes in my head and don’t mind admitting I got teary-eyed. To cheer myself up, I mangled the tunes together in my mind.

On the second night, I discovered I could get Amazon Music on my Lidl executive-style mobile phone and so could listen to the Ravel at least as I passed the Number 23 bus sitting at its terminus by the tennis courts. It was always my favourite bus, running from Morningside to Trinity and famously featuring in Aileen Paterson’s lovely Maisie books for children.

I passed the front door of my garden flat in the cheap seats and remembered that, as ever, noise had driven me to pastures new. Which always turn out to be noisier.