Persistence
It has been pouring with rain. The Professor and I went into the university — there was a statue being unveiled, with suitable hoopla, in which he played a part, and I, meanwhile, needed to get to the library. The cobbled high street was streaming with water, and as I scuttled up towards the side road which leads to the history department, I was unsurprised to observe a gigantic puddle almost blocking the way, because as I know of old, it’s no ordinary puddle. It is, in fact, the Powis Burn, Old Aberdeen’s indigenous water supply. It was suppressed and caused to flow through a pipe about two hundred years ago, but really heavy rain always causes it to back-up and reappear on the surface. Inconvenient though it may be, I have a sneaking respect for it, for its quiet determination to go on being a burn whether we, the University, like it or not.