The house had been on the market for months with no sign of a buyer, so I consulted a witch.
‘Please give me a spell to sell my house,’ I asked her. ‘The divorce will be through in a week and I’m desperate to move back to Scotland.’
She nodded kindly and told me a spell. So once I got home, I chose a light, airy space – the windowsill in my kitchen – covered it with a golden cloth and placed a leafy plant and a candlestick at each end. Then I hunted around for the final ingredient – something to put in the centre of the magical space to represent my dream of the future.
Unfortunately, most of my stuff was already packed into boxes for the removal people and the best I could do was a jigsaw with a picture on the front of a collie frolicking on a mountainside. I propped the box up against the window and prepared to light the candles, empty my mind of troubles, gaze into the special space and think positive thoughts…
I stood there, trying hard, but it was no good. I couldn’t bring myself to get all mystic over a jigsaw box. I didn’t even know if it was a Scottish collie.
Time went by. I soon had to leave the country for a couple of weeks’ work in the Far East. And, house sale or no, I didn’t want to return to Cornwall and all the misery surrounding divorce. So I finished packing and phoned my Cornish friends asking each of them to take me on a favourite walk to say goodbye. It turned out to be a lovely way to bid farewell to them and the county. And on the very last walk, as we scrambled over the crest of a hill, I saw a host of purple thistles, dancing in the breeze...
Back in my kitchen, I strewed thistles around the jigsaw, lit the candles, took a deep breath, emptied my mind of troubles and thought of Edinburgh on a spring morning, with the Castle, Ramsay Gardens, the Assembly Hall and all those other glorious buildings banking up into the sky. At which point…
Ding dong! A young couple stood on the doorstep asking if they could see round the house. Within a fortnight we’d completed the sale.
Yes, there really is magic!
Soon the packing cases were all in storage, the car was crammed with everything I’d need to survive until I found a new home, and all the remaining furniture was sold. As I left for the airport. I noticed the thistles still lying on the windowsill. So I took them out to the car and tossed them on the dashboard.
The Far East was exciting, especially since I returned to a hotel room every evening to find email bulletins from my daughter. She’d been reared on stories of Scotland and was utterly besotted with the place, so she’d decided to leave her job and move north with me. She’d already gone up to Edinburgh to stay with a friend and was hunting for a two-bedroomed flat in the city centre. On the day she found one, I was in Hong Kong.
‘It’s on the third floor but it doesn’t feel that high up and it costs a bit more than you said but it’s absolutely beautiful, Mum. There are three bedrooms so we can make one into an office. It’s really perfect and we must buy it. It’s a “fixed price” and bids go in first thing tomorrow. PLEASE, Mum, let me bid!’
Oh well, I thought, why not let your twenty-year-old child spend your every last penny on something you’ve never seen? I typed ‘Yes’ and went to bed.
Of course she managed to be first bidder and, after sorting a money transfer, I left Hong Kong as the owner of a Scottish tenement flat. Over the next couple of weeks, my daughter – bless her – sorted all the legal stuff and bureaucracy, arranged phone, internet and TV, got the packing cases brought up from Cornwall and furnished our new home. When I returned from the East I had a few days’ work to finish in England but as soon as possible I hurtled up the A1.
Oh, the joy of roaring past the Failte Gu Alba sign in the right direction! The Firth of Forth and Bass Rock. Torness power station. Arthur’s Seat hoving into view…
In the city centre, I turned off Hanover Street onto cobbles and drew up outside the small blue door I’d seen in the photos. My daughter was already installed up there – all I had to do was press the buzzer.
With a muttered thankyou to the witch, I opened the car door – then noticed the dried up thistles lying on the dashboard.
‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘This is Thistle Street!’
Yes, there is magic. Every word is true. And as I write this story I’m celebrating my fifteenth year in this lovely place.