You see some funny things in Leith. My favourite sighting to date was a man, dressed as a tourist with the trademark heavy backpack, pausing to look out over the water on the Bernard Street bridge over the Water of Leith.
When I walked past him, I noticed that what looked for all the world like a backpack containing his worldy possessions, was actually a backpack containing, of all things, a parrot. It was sitting quite happily on its perch inside the rucksack, watching the world go by. Fairly surreal as sightings go. Needless to say, I didn't have my camera to hand.
But I think even this sight of strangeness was excelled a couple of weeks ago when 1,500 rubber ducks floated carefree down the Water of Leith to the astonishment of onlookers one slightly hazy Sunday afternoon.
Stockbridge has an annual rubber duck race on their stretch of the Water of Leith. But once the winning duck has passed the finishing line, the race organisers gather downstream scooping the losing ducks up into huge nets.
This year, dramatically, disaster struck. The nets burst with the weight of the oncoming ducks so they drifted on, all 1,500 of them, unencumbered all the way through Leith and out to sea.
I wish desperately I had been sitting slightly hungover outside one of the lovely shoreside pubs as the sea of ducks swept past. I'll have to mark the date in my diary next year. Just in case. And maybe I'll manage to carry my camera with me then too.