Beat the road works – let’s pop the whole city up on giant jacks

They’re digging up Great Junction Street again. Well, of course they are. Needs must, of course. Men have been looking into a series of ever deeper holes in the ground with an air of sombre reflection.

I overheard a Man in Charge wearily say something like “We’ll have to check all the SP03456’s now”. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound good.

Edinburgh and her little sister Leith are old ladies. We all get creaky with the advancing years, and these two gals are no different. The sewage system is not as efficient as it was. Believe me, I can relate. But in my case, even if surgery is needed, it doesn’t cause long tailbacks on Leith Walk.

In the Republic of Leith rumour has it that we’re having gas trouble down here. Let's be honest, who among us with grey hair isn’t the same?

There are miles and miles of cables, wires and drains under this city. It's like a sort of nervous system and it's full of wear and tear.

There isn’t much we can do about it, unless we consider my revolutionary idea.

Let’s pop the whole city up on giant jacks. Raise the entire shebang up a couple of feet. Fix everything in a oner. Lower back down. Bingo.

Yes, I see the problem with getting into the city, the castle and the Old Town, but I figure we can wallop in some escalators.

In fact, we could slap a few turnstiles at the top and charge people to get in. Venice is doing it, why not us?

Obviously, it could make the Fringe difficult. The weight increases during August, you see, with all those unicyclists and mime versions of Oklahoma. Not a problem. You have to audition for a smaller ‘Fringe in the City’, and we set up a ‘Fringe at Ingliston’.

People could fall off the edge, but a couple of miles of fencing would do the trick, especially if we let unicyclists into ‘Fringe in the City’. Don’t want them hurtling off into space. Oh, I dunno, though.

It's just a pipedream, but it could give us dream pipes.