I had lived in Glasgow for 17 years before I really got to know its neighbour and rival. Until four years ago, the word 'Edinburgh' conjured up just one picture for me: of Charlotte Square in the last two weeks of August. This is when the elegant Georgian square is transformed into a village of canvas theatres, bookshops and bars, where book-lovers queue amiably or picnic on the grass beneath the green Prince Albert on horseback, who presides over it all.
There are hundreds of author talks, for adults and children, though 'talk' is perhaps too sedate a word for the children's events, which can be quite theatrical. Every year I arrive with a boot-load of books, props and costumes, and a cast made up of family and publishers plus one professional actor, prepared to entertain about 600 children. When September comes, the tents are dismantled and, for the rest of the year, Charlotte Square looks sad and naked to me.
My own personal Edinburgh expanded when we took a sudden decision to buy a flat there. The reason was that I had devised a theatrical show called The Gruffalo and Friends, which I was booked to perform every single day in August — not at the Book Festival but round the corner at the Assembly Rooms in George Street, as part of the Edinburgh Fringe.
The Fringe, instead of being self-contained like the Book Festival, spreads its tentacles throughout the city. I love the way it takes over, turning every available hall, room or nook into a theatre, hosting entertainments from Korean acrobatics to Victorian melodrama. The best perk of participating in a Fringe show is the free pass. During that month I saw more than 20 plays, some poetic, some political, some pointless, and about ten stand-up comics (religiously avoiding the front row).
I fell in love with the first flat I saw, in Randolph Crescent, which like Charlotte Square and George Street is in Edinburgh's 'New Town'. ('New' indicating that it was built as recently as the 18th century.) The stone houses with their ceiling-to-floor windows and iron balconies are beautifully proportioned, but for me the real draw was the view at the back. I hadn't realised that Randolph Crescent was built on a cliff, so that looking out of the bedroom window you could be nine floors up instead of just one. You can see right across the Firth of Forth, and under the dramatic tall arches of the Dean Bridge flows the lovely Water of Leith.
The path along the Water of Leith is now my favourite walks in Edinburgh. In one direction, you can go via pretty Dean Village (watching out for kingfishers) to the Dean Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art and, in the other direction, you can reach the sea — well, the docks of Leith, anyway. A good time to do this is at six in the evening, building up a good appetite; Leith is full of cafés, pubs and restaurants. Also in Leith is the cavernous headquarters of The Puppet Lab, which puts on wonderful puppet shows — last year they took a 24ft giant puppet all round Scotland.
What I love about Edinburgh is that I can walk just about anywhere — up Lothian Road to see a film at the Filmhouse or the Cameo, along cobbled Thistle Street to eat at the Café St Honoré or the Café Marlayne, or up to the Royal Mile to find out about Robert Louis Stevenson (who used to live in the New Town) in the Writers' Museum. When friends come we drag the energetic ones up Arthur's Seat; the more faint-hearted content themselves with Calton Hill, with its half-finished replica of the Parthenon.
Another place I like to explore is villagey Stockbridge. Its food shops include one full of hundreds of pungent cheeses, and a treasure trove called Galerie Mirages, selling antique and modern jewellery from India and Africa. But my real weakness is the charity shops because I'm usually in search of props for my shows: a fluffy rabbit, a bright pink belt and a knight's breastplate are among the items that I have successful unearthed.
JK Rowling famously wrote the Harry Potter books in various Edinburgh cafés. My own books are a lot shorter than hers, and I tend to write them in my head as I walk about, muttering rhymes and trying out various alternatives on my long-suffering husband as we stride up the Salisbury Crags, or stroll by the sea at Cramond. And if I'm not writing something I'm usually working out how to stage it at the Book Festival. The next challenge is going to be Zog, which features a school for dragons. Will I ask the Puppet Lab to make my dragons, or might I unearth them in the Stockbridge charity shops? I have no doubt that Edinburgh will come up trumps.
Cave Baby (£10.99) and Freddie and the Fairy (£5.99), by Julia Donaldson, are published by Macmillan.
BUY THEM HERE: Cave Baby
Freddie & the Fairy
