There’s a slogan that Glaswegians use when talking about Edinburgh’s world-famous joie de vivre, which is ‘Edinburgh! A castle, a smile and a song – one out of three isn’t bad.’ There is another faux (or foe) slogan: ‘Edinburgh! It’s Shooting Up’, which conveys a little of how far a Weegie might be prepared to go to insult an Edinbugger. Or how about ‘Edinburgh! Salt, Sauce and Saunas!’
Within you will find the reasons why a Weegie would rather take Osama bin Laden home for tea than a Edinbugger.
And of course, traditionally there is no invitation to tea in Edinburgh, more of a statement delivered without a question mark, as in ‘You’ll be driving.’
There’s nothing rational about it. Weegies know that all Edinbuggers are just poncing about all day pretending to be flowers and waiting for dark to get up Calton Hill because, without exception, they like their vice versa, and that people from Edinburgh equate breeding with good form, whereas in Glasgow they accept it as good fun.
There is a fairly prevalent paranoid myth among Edinbuggers that all Weegies want to move to Edinburgh and drive down property values, just out of badness. One Weegie woman summed up her feelings succinctly: ‘I wouldn’t want to move to a place where you have to put on matching clothing to pick up the milk from the doorstep’.
These are hard hits and sneaky bits from the West side, sharp jibes and bludgeoning diatribes, but it’s just friendly rivalry really. To use the double positive negative, a figure of speech unique to Scotland: Aye, right.
A humorous read by Ian Black.