The deer emerged from a vennel twixt the modern flats just opposite Plumbase. Maybe it was a sign. No, it was a deer. Besides, we have enough signs near Sandport Bridge as it stands. A forest of red, yellow and black – they grow prodigiously round nascent cycle paths and other works. That said, the latter has taken so long to finish, they could be considered an ancient urban forest. So, the errant ungulate was most likely confused.

(Ungulate. Cue flickery hand gestures under chin etc.) Yeah, a bit unnecessary that.

But similarly fancy schmancy moves were to follow from the deer. It bounded out past a guy in a mini-digger, oblivious, reading his redtop. Fitting. I suspect a wild deer hoofing aboot the heart of Leith would have had the tabloid headline-writers salivating; and many a pun flashed briefly into my mind, as the beast disappeared into the car park. I stopped. Then shouted to digger man: “Did you see that deer?”. Not ‘dear’. He was incredulous. Then, my vindication arrived, galloping back in our direction. At speed.

It emerged from the row of parked cars like a big-boned Bambi on uppers. As I turned, in readiness to play matador – I kid you not, I suspected I’d be on the end of a cloven beat-down – so did the workie in the cab of the digger. The deer swerved between us, zig-zagging in that panicky way only confused wild animals can, and clopped into the car park of the flats, where I lost sight of it behind a bike shed. I looked back at the workie, and he gave me a thumbs-up with a grin that said: “A FUCKING DEER, THAT’S MENTAL!”

When I walked around the corner, the deer was nowhere to be seen. And I wasn’t going to play Attenborough. For one thing, I was running late for work; and for another, I’d left my best tranquilizer dart rifle at home (always the way, eh?). So, I went on my way. But the deer stayed with me afterwards. Not in an overly-sentimental way – I have it on good authority that it’s not unusual to see deer in close proximity to wooded areas that skirt urban landscapes. More in that way of being jolted from your waking coma.

By which I mean, when all around is increasingly an ugly human zoo, encountering an uncaged bestial presence - where least expected – is really quite the thing; it has a strange and wonderful incongruity that punctures your festering consciousness like a hot needle lancing a boil. Instant, arresting and, dare I say it, joyous. Like the first time you ever found a banknote in the gutter. Or perhaps – to lower the tone – finding a pristine porno mag abandoned in the woods, when a sweaty young adolescent.

It made me yearn for more such animal magic round these parts. To maybe find a giraffe lumbering through the Kirkgate. Zebras on Leith Links. Maybe a big cat even - not the black panther kept in a cage at Fairley’s on the Shore back in the day (which was forcibly removed after supposedly mauling a punter). Then I realised, we have enough menageries. Because, the world is full of animals. Increasingly so, you might say. Yet, sadly, their wildness is without the dignity of that beautiful deer cutting about down the Sandport Street area, one early August morning.

We have the Trumpian chatter of the chimp-in-chief and his coterie over the Atlantic. We have vultures circling the catastrophe of Middle East, daily. We have the Russian bear rampaging, unchecked. And now, we have pig-ignorant racism hiding behind ‘three lions’ rhetoric about pride, nationhood and belonging. Oh, and let’s not even start on the ostrich syndrome that blights so many on the progressive left as to how to address all of this – Christ, they can’t even share the same building as people they disagree with.

It makes me wonder aloud if we shouldn’t just bite the bullet and abandon it all to nature once more. To go full ‘I Am Legend’ on its ass, say cheerio, and clear out. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all. Then our deer friend (pun intended) could roam until its heart’s content around the fields of Plumbase, unmolested by your correspondent or others.

It could even use what was left of the cycle path. Should they ever get around to finishing it. I won’t live to see it.

But one day maybe, one day.