James Cairns

In Edinburgh some years ago, I went for a run with a friend. We had a show on the Fringe and were in need of some restorative exercise. We started out in Stockbridge and followed the path along the river the bridge crosses. Seemed like a gently, easy course so we stuck to it. 

Thing is, in a port city when you follow a river, sooner or later you are going to hit the sea, which we did — at the port of Leith. The harbour area was good enough, we had a look and headed back up a road that seemed to go up towards the New Town, as they call the Georgian part of town from where we knew the way back to Stockbridge. 

As we went, the quality of the area we ran through dipped somewhat. Now, coming from Johannesburg, we are no slouches when it comes to a bit of urban decay so it wasn’t that it turned our stomachs, but a certain tone set in: things looked dodgy. Looked like if you wanted to score, this would be the place to do it. 

As we went, I put two and two together and realised we were on the Walk of Leith and these were the streets upon which Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting characters — Renton, Begbie, Spud, Sick Boy and their supporting cast lived their literary lives. I mentioned this to my companion, also a staunch Welsh fan and we stopped to take it in. Was also quite a hill so the opportunity for a breather did us good.

The significance of the moment, was not some iconic interaction that cemented the authenticity of Trainspotting’s location. It was the fact that the two of us were there at all. Standing on that curb, the Trainspotting in our minds expanded exponentially. Every book we’ve ever read sits there in our memories — some more-so than others. Given a prompt, sometimes they come flooding back and in this instance on The Walk of Leith just that took place and lo, it pleased us for not often did we know this experience.

See, we’d grown up in South Africa and as such, the only locations we could read about in English fiction where we could go or had been were limited. It wasn’t often we had the privilege of walking the ground, so to speak, of the novels we loved. Firstly because there were so few to love and secondly, because South Africa didn’t (and still doesn’t) feature in a lot of what we read. 

Now, I hear the criticism straight away. You just weren’t reading the right stuff. But, dear reader, we weren’t selecting for South Africa first. That was never our aim. We first went for quality and then location came as an aside. We read it all and nowhere could we get the immediacy, nor the perfect pitch of Welsh’s work. Closest I’ve come written by a South African would be the late K. Sello Duiker. If you know of more, pop it into the comments and let’s give them a spin.

It doesn’t have to stuff as edgy as Trainspotting either. It can be the Rebus detective series, which I’ve read subsequent to visiting Edinburgh and Scotland — same thing is true. I know those places. I’ve walked those streets, felt the breeze, smelled the smells and heard the voices. It makes the experience of reading the books that much more compelling.

Point is — there we were on those streets. That didn’t happen a lot in South Africa and this is what I want to put in my work. I want to use places like Kowie Brake and Clutch in Port Alfred, The Edenglen Spar in Edenvale, the Ultra Liquors on Louis Botha, The Groot Brak Pick’n’Pay, The Rendezvous Heights hourly rentals in Mossel Bay — the kind of places I go. And need I say, the kind of places ‘we’ go. And by ‘we’ I mean the people who read my books.

If I say ‘Fish Hoek Main Road” and you’ve never been there, it stays a geographical location, but if you’ve been there, you bring your visits to the place with you. When you read a description and you match it from experience and your response is, that’s true — I agree with you. It helps you believe as a reader.

And there are literary places like Cape Town’s City Bowl and Joburg’s Rosebank and small trendy towns in the Karoo that make it into the books, but there are places like Kowie Brake and Clutch that are screaming to get a place in a story, but never do. 

And who am I to turn down a good location like Kowie Brake and Clutch? 

If you have a location you’d like to see written about, please also pop it into the comments.