Built on the grounds of a disused shipyard on the border between the ports of Newhaven and Leith, Ocean Terminal is an incongruous structure. While other buildings in the area are made primarily of brick and stone, Ocean Terminal is an immense and low-slung edifice of metal and plastic. One outcropping of the structure shimmers with tens of thousands of metal leaves which jingle and vibrate in the breeze.
Most will be quick to dismiss Ocean Terminal as a mediocre shopping centre. The majority of its outlets are chain stores. Even the Royal Yacht Britannia – entrance to which can be had for £16.50 from the upper floor of the mall – is generally regarded as one of Edinburgh’s most overrated tourist traps.
But within this rampantly commercial space there are still glimpses of the human. Traces of improvisation. Phenomena worth observing, recording, musing on. If you’re in Edinburgh, you can take a trip to Ocean Terminal at almost any time of the day or night. Late night showings in the Vue Cinema and the 24-hour PureGym mean that it is almost always open, almost always waiting to be explored.
1. The Reserved Bench
Begin outside. Note this bench, visible from but not adjacent to the bus stops, isolated from any other, set aside on its own slab of concrete. It looks out towards… nothing: a tract of muddy land surrounded by hoardings. And yet it feels markedly significant. Here it is, alone (illuminated, even, during night time hours), serving no discernible purpose. An incidental piece of non-commercialised space.
2. The Discovery Garden
Directly behind the bench, this unremarkable-looking garden pays tribute to the Scottish explorers who ventured around the world to discover new plants and trees. It is used almost exclusively by smokers. Note the spiky balls of Christmas lights lodged in the crooks of the trees; they resemble the nests of birds almost as much as the actual birds’ nests they sit alongside.
3. An Unintended Entryway
Approach from the land and this low, ominous entrance represents your first opportunity to access Ocean Terminal. Despite multiple deterrent signs, hundreds use it each and every day, preferring to forgo the trek to the much grander main entrance. However you design a space, humans will use it in the way that suits them best. An invisible desire pathway runs inwards through this foreboding concrete mouth.
4. Landside Rooftop
The upper levels of the landside car park is almost always devoid of vehicles. From here you can look back towards the city of Edinburgh and see the pre-historic, volcanic shape of the land beneath the city: Arthur’s Seat and Calton Hill are visible even on dim days.
Look to the east and you’ll see the muddy building site that will one day house residents. For these future homeowners Ocean Terminal will be the site of their nearest convenient grocery story – the place they pop across to in their pyjamas to buy a pint of milk before breakfast.
5. Inside
Ocean Terminal is a single, straight boulevard on three levels. Enter on the topmost one and you’ll find that you can look down through a series of staggered cutaways to the floors below. From here you can watch people dine, shuffle back and forth, pause to look into windows. Teenagers linger, colonising whatever spaces are available to them. Listen and you’ll hear the rumble of skates on the roller rink two floors below.
6. Art
Why does Ocean Terminal make efforts to accommodate art? Perhaps to make the space look less empty. Perhaps to demonstrate virtue. Perhaps because the humans in charge of delimiting the use of the space available like art. Whatever the reason, you’ll find a pocket gallery and a constantly-changing series of works mounted on pillars or displayed in empty retail units throughout the mall.
7. History
Dip down to the middle floor of the centre before you reach the vast, bright edifice of Debenhams and you’ll pass The Living Memory Association. A small museum filled with items from decades past, all of which you are allowed (encouraged) to handle, touch, smell. It is distinctly out of place in the vast, glossy shell of Ocean Terminal, and yet it persists, quietly welcoming, recognisable in all the ways that shopping centres are not.
Look also for the small, isolated display about the history of dazzle camouflage, found in between the Ocean Play “soft play experience” and the PureGym. And for the plaques mounted at the base of light fittings throughout the mall; significant events from the history of Edinburgh are memorialised here. Although no shoppers ever look at them, each plate is cleaned assidiously on a daily basis by Ocean Terminal cleaners.
8. Shopping
Clothes. Shoes. Handmade crafts. Imagine yourself stranded here during an apocalyptic disaster. This shell contains so much of value, but does it contain enough for you to live? Yes, there is food. But the food would run out long before the designer-brand clothes, the ornaments, the unique and quirky wall decorations.
On the ground floor you’ll find a Waterstones. Also of note: a Kodak Express, almost unchanged since the 1990s, still patiently developing rolls of film. A design shop on the top floor is stocked with so few products that it looks, at first glance, like a museum.
A tiny kiosk stands at the main entrance to the mall, with a hand-written sign boasting that it stocks the cheapest milk in Ocean Terminal. In total there are two places in the building where it is possible to purchase milk.
9. Relief (Temporary)
Notice this: the toilets are huge and well-appointed. You will not need to wait for a cubicle, nor a sink. And when you’re done, and emerge into the small side-corridor which houses them, you will be guided back towards the main thoroughfare of Ocean Terminal by animated arrows which light up every few seconds, beckoning you back to shop more, spend more, to not linger here in this necessary but unglamorous space.
10. This is What the Future Looks Like
As you reach the end of your walk you’ll pass the PureGym on the top floor. Pause a moment. Watch the gym-goers enter and exit through a pair of plastiglass tubes. Even twenty years ago this would have seemed impossibly futuristic. Now it is mundane. Standard. A minor inconvenience. Try to imagine what the future might feel like, if it ever feels different from today.
11. Waterside Rooftop
Emerge onto the far rooftop. You will see: water, big ships, a broken pier. At the end of the pier a lone figure stands atop a concrete pile. Isolated. Human. Impossible to reach. He stares out across the port to the low bulk of an abandoned lighthouse on the opposite shore. His presence is quiet, otherworldly. Few visitors even notice he is there.
Krishan Coupland is a graduate from the University of East Anglia MA Creative Writing programme. His debut chapbook When You Lived Inside The Walls is available from Stonewood Press, and his short fiction appears in Ambit, Aesthetica and Litro. He has won the Manchester Fiction Prize, and the Bare Fiction Prize. He runs and edits Neon Literary Magazine. He is unduly pre-occupied with theme parks. His website is www.krishancoupland.co.uk.