Here's my massive dorkiness for Harry Potter coming out.
I had an interesting thought last week, as I was accidentally riding the wrong bus for an hour and a half. I was riding the number 29, and I kept riding past shop names and street signs that reminded me of Harry Potter, and I still wonder whether it was purely coincidence. I started writing them down, and here's the result:
Pettigrew's Close (a close is the Scottish word for an alleyway or narrow street)
The Hog's Head (may have been a costume shop?)
a town called Peebles
Dobbie's Gardenworld
Dumbiedykes Road
and of course, the famous Potterow, the student union of the university. Could JK Rowling have haunted my very bus route?
After reading the entire biography of Ms. Rowling on Wikipedia, it turns out that she could very well have. She lived in Edinburgh during much of her early Potter-writing years, and frequented cafes near the university, inluding the Elephant House, which I later went to. Plus, Saint Mungo is the patron saint of Glasgow, and Edinburgh Castle and Teviot (the student union building) are said to be the inspiration for Hogwarts. This is all fascinating. Edinburgh is full of history (real or imagined), hidden staircases and obscure, off-the-beaten-path gems (not to mention mysterious unicorns and lions all over). It's not hard to think of it as the place that inspired JK Rowling. My next question is, was her decision to use the names of her surroundings a conscious one, or did each name just float around in her subconscious until it surfaced for the right character?
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