We left the Grassmarket in Edinburgh this Thursday. Swapping it for the Tesco car park in Colinton just down the road.
Ross and Diane were heading down from Inverness after a week away from the bus. The maintenance guy at Tesco introduced himself as Duncan but had William written on his lanyard. He talked about Rhodesia and his time in the war back in South Africa.
“We had a guy jump straight out of a chopper. We found him later. He had landed in the fork of a tree and split the thing all the way through.”
The man in question had been caught stealing from another solider and was about to get sentenced to 50 days in some camp. Everyone has a war story when it comes to suicide, even in Colinton Tesco Car Park.
Later on I tried my hardest to teach a 6 year old Sebastian Chess. His mum bought me coffee and a cake from Costa so we both persevered. Clever kid.
While we played a woman called Kerry came over and invited us to a suicide awareness event in the town. I agreed to go. It’s funny just how many places we have been on this tour with absolutely no plan to.
I didn’t plan on the weather being so good either. Blue skies all day. At around 2pm Nobil wandered over. A Ghurka in the Army, he was in town learning the bagpipes on a 6 month court. We spoke a lot about Nepal, the Army and pretty much everything in between. He bought a 5asideChess set and promised to record his 20 games and share the message.
Two people signed the bus. Both lost brothers. Then Hannah arrived. She works at a local school.
“The school just got rid of the counsellor because of funding issues. Less money so the first thing to go was the support fro the kids.”
It’s another common story. She took a leaflet and I hope we can do something with 5asideCHESS, getting the students to interact with each other, especially with people they don’t normally talk with. The benefits can be huge, especially when your school can’t even afford ONE counsellor.
The last group to show up were five 17 and 18 year old boys. “I didn’t expect to be sat playing chess with the boys today,” one of them said, laughing.
They played for about 30 minutes. None of them were ever on their phones for more than a glance. A few minutes after they left, Ross and Diane arrived for a catch up after their trip. They went to say goodbye to the security team that have been so helpful over in Edinburgh. I went and found a place to park the bus.