Three month Edinburgh adventure

Wordle, or summing up

2010-05-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

A Wordle seems an appropriate way of summing up, even though my blog became increasingly an album as the time went past, it was mainly about recording, and recording in words... But if you look at what I have written, it is nearly all about seeing, and looking, and being amazed. And this discovery makes this wordle very inspiring. See what you can read out of it; I can see this:

Just one time around Edinburgh. I rather like this place. It's made for looking, at people, along the river at birds, and for munching in restaurants. My eyes see far in this really nice place. Standing outside with Skinnytoes and friends in this amazing city, perhaps this is something good in the making.

The last one

2010-05-06T13:32:00.001-07:00

So this is it, the last post... the three month adventure is over, a new adventure begins. It was shockingly easy, settling back into pre-Edinburgh life, but there are many things that I miss. The beauty of the city, the closeness of the sea, and my lovely, sunny flat... Perhaps it could become my long term goal, to move up North, and live in this most European of all British cities. This is the first time I feel I have found a place where I would truly like to settle, and I will hang on to this sentiment until the right time comes, and the vision can materialise.

Ah, so many places I will miss! Skinnytoes came to help me move out on the last weekend in April, but before that I took a stroll along the Water of Leith, which has been such a feature of my stay. It has changed so much since I first came to Edinburgh in February, when it was still in the icy grip of winter.

The view down my street in February and in May.

Stockbridge, February and May.

Water of Leith under the Dean bridge in the two seasons.

And finally Murrayfield stadium, in the snow and in bloom.

I had a great time... Edinburgh, forget me not!

Oysters - there will be the most dearly missed!

Zoo therapy

2010-04-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been dragging. My project at work is practically finished, but it's difficult to get my mind around the PhD when I still have to be at the office for eight hours a day. So today instead of counting minutes and feeling frustrated I took my remaining half day off and, yes, went to the zoo. Full of apprehension mind you, because most of the zoo visits I can remember left me feeling a bit upset and a bit guilty. I lived next to the London zoo for a while, and it was a sad place of concrete and empty eyed creatures. It is different in Edinburgh though.

The view of Pentland Hills from just inside the zoo.

Sealion. Male. Asleep.

This is the first view you are faced with, a happy, massive sealion napping and being very, very relaxed. There is only a low wall, and, at one point, a pane of clear glass in one spot. No bars, no cage. The habitat looks well designed and well maintained, and the three sealions seem content. Well, that bode well.

The zoo was really well designed. Bird enclosures were large, with running water and vegetation growign wild, and they were not indiscriminately open - with some, you could only peek in at designated points.

Bird enclosure.

The safari section.

See the little wire bridge? That's for animals to cross from one enclosure to the other.
This zoo is like a little child's dream!

The zeebras and antelopes were kept at a big field with an overhead walkway, so that you could get close to the animals without disturbing them - and have a great view of the city too. Most of the enclosures had glass panes rather than mesh or bars, or even had no high wired protection at all - so refreshing and European in this Health and Safety crazed country! Good ideas, and good design in action. I felt less like a voyeur, and more like a visitor.

Whatever this was, it had the most terryfying call I've ever heard; this is what dinosaurs must have sounded like.

Not only did the enclosures not have high walls, but some of them were open to the air too. The one where these beautiful, graceful cranes lived had an ample pond where a very common pair of mallards decided to hang out. The cranes did not seem disturbed at all, perhaps they enjoyed the company - although seagulls would get the sharp end of the beak.

They were amazing, and somehow alien-looking things. They would come to the very edge of the fence to have a good look at me before walking off, seemingly satisfied with what they saw. I hope they approved.

Sharing their pond with mallards. If the mallards could come and go, I don't know what kept the cranes put - perhaps they were addicted to admiring stares.

The real reason I was curious to see Edinburgh zoo was a documentary I saw a few months before, about a PhD student working with chimpanzees. Betsy Herrelko is a behavioral scientist, and she was curious to see if Edinburgh chimps can understand the concept of an image. She gave the chimpanzees cameras, and her struggles with the project were made into a BBC documentary.

The chimps live in a newly built enclosure; they are free to go in and out as they please, and there are complex wood and rope structures everywhere for them to hang out on. Big windows provide good observation points for visitors, and I'm sure that there can be a lot to see. Today though napping seemed high on the agenda, and curled in my bay window, watching, I nearly fell asleep too.

Lazy afternoon.

The high point was meeting the hero of the documentary, Betsy herself; it felt like meeting a minor celebrity. She told me interesting things were on the horison for Edinburgh chimps, as a new group from Belgium was going to be introduced to the zoo, in the hopes of achieving breeding. Betsy explained there was a pan-European conservation project going on to maximise the genetic diversity of West African chimps in captivity, just in case. I hope it works out, and I'm quite jeleous of the work she gets to do... Perhaps I could do another degree? Once I have actually finished this one, I mean?

There was another place in the zoo I have heard of prior to visiting, from my manager at work. She told me of the penguin parade - every day at 2.15 pm at the penguin enclosure. She then did a little penguin dance, and how could I resist? I had to rush back from the chimpanzee house, and was worried for a moment I would not be able to find the penguins on time, but then I caughed a whiff of the air, and just followed my nose. I had no idea penguins stank like this. It's worse then fish, it's worse then chickens, it's something in between, intensified a number of times and then concentrated into a small concrete enclosure. Over a hundred penguins living in one place for years at a time produces a smell beyond description - you'd have to be there. And no, you did not get used to it; it came back more intense at every breath. But I did put up with it, for the sake of the parade - and because, in spite of the stench, the penguins were increadibly cute.

The parade.

2.15 sharp I was there, toeing the yellow line, and waiting for the penguins to come around. The parade is volountary - the gates are opened, and as many penguins as want to can join in a circular walk. They are not hearded, only assisted - they stop, investigate shoelaces and buggies, and move on eventually at their own wobbly pace.

King penguins.

I later found out from one of the keepers this is not the only parade that takes place. One of the king pengiuns is Nils Olaf the Third, grandson of Nils Olaf the First who was presented to the zoo by the Norwegan army. Nils Olaf the First was a private, but the military titles kept ammasing and finally Nils Olaf the Third was kighted in 2008. Every year the new cadets of the Norwegan army come to be inspected by this penguin who has proven to be 'a penguin in every way qualified'. This is so mad it hs to be true, for we are the strangest animal of all.

On the eggs.

Being hand-fed dead fish; unfortunately it's illegal to feed zoo animals live meals.

Some animals don't have it that good. The big cat enclosures, even though interesting and spatious, are clearly not big enough to contain a full grown tiger, or leopard.

They were pacing up and down, like prisoners, nearly rubbing their heads against the glass panes. They're eyes were crazed. I felt really sorry for them, but I think they are kept for conservation reasons.. A pretty pathetic argument, tading one sort of suffering for another really.

The lions were just sleepy. When they got into a marital grumble, their growling sounded exactly like someone igniting a Harley.

An unhappy looking monkey, lonely in its cage - it did not move from its perch all the time I was at the zoo.

The smaller mammals do much better. A pair of otters seemed to be having a time of their lives; but they do look insanely happy by default. Their enclosure, where there was no fence at all, only a low wall you could lean over to watch the two joyful things prance.

The prancing otters.

There were some rather big Australian mammals as well getting some proper attention, being hand-fed grapes by a gentle carer; it was heart-warming to watch, both the animals and the carer being extremely poilte and gentle, the rodens waiting for their turn, the carer distributing the grapes farily between the group.

Gentle relationship.

The rodents occupy an angle in an open aviery, sharwith an assortment of exotic pigeons, chickens, and, most notably, lorikeets. They are amazingly beautiful, but also head-splittingly noisy. The high-pitched schrieks they emanate left my ears literally ringing. The carers wear optional earplugs especially designed for dealing with their 'song'; in the end, as with many creatures, we forgive them for being annoying because they are so beautiful to look at, and will even come over and preen your hair for you, as I found out myself.

A pigeon, apparently. And a female too!

The cock adds to general confusion.
Lorikeets up close.

Closer..

And very close indeed. It was intrigued, and cooed at my camera, after which it took issue with my hairstyle (completely justified).

After all this I started making my way back to the exit, but kept being distracted by new discoveries. Such as the baboon enclosure, which was basically a big wide field with a number of trees and a rock. Around fifteen baboons of all shapes, sizes and ages were playing their social games, one group preening, the youngsters torturing one another with glee, and 'teenagers' hanging out at 'the cool tree'.

The cool crowd.

My last detour was a big enclosure for a pair of sea eagles. They were enormous, and nearly too good to be true, with cartoonish beaks and ruffled feathers. One of the keepers told me the enclosure they were in was originally a bear pit. The famous black bear Wojtek, who served in the Polish army, lived out his retirement there. The bear had been adopted by the soliders, and trained to carry heavy ammunition in the Seconf World War; there used to be a statue to him in the zoo, but it was donated in the end to the Polish community in Edinburgh.

Sea eagle.

The last view before I go - the places have changed, and the female is on top now. Marilyn Monroe of the sea lions.

The tiny place and the great sea, or St Andrews.

2010-04-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

St Andrews, or rather, its sea.

When my dad visited me in Scotland, he was amazed how detailed the weather forecast was, how every little cloud was religiously delineated through its various transformations and tracked until it dissipated. Thanks to this British obsession with cloud spotting I was confident that while Edinburgh will be soaking with rain, 50km further North will be just fine. So me and Chattytoes went to St Andrews.

The horison disappears. On the lovers' rock, pairs of seagulls coo and peck one another.

It really had much less to show for itself then I expected; in fact, we had to go back to the High Street twice because I refused to acknowledge the town was actually that tiny. Later in the day we looked back at it from a distance, stretched along the coast, surrounded by hills, and it really is tiny. I expected something more alike to Cambridge, perhaps because of the University's reputation. So it was cute, but tiny, and had a wind-beated, desolate feel to it, possibly because the 7000 students who normally occupy it were all locked in the libraries writing their dissertations (one can hope).

St Andrews in the distance: an perspective from the East and from the North.

The most interesting part was the beach. It stretches for miles between the sea and the river, and the receding tide uncovers a perfect playing ground. Creatures large and small come to enjoy themselves, and the beach becomes many things.

Seagull spa.

Heron hunting ground.

Racing field.

We were content just walking, and taking note. I was jealous of the people with the great big kites though - I was not convinced about the tricycles and skateboards, but I too would love to be lifted off my feet and dragged along the beach by the sheer force of the wind.

Pleasures of the sea: the air, the sun, and the fried fish.

What I forgot about doing a PhD

2010-04-26T10:13:00.000-07:00

I had some things to do Saturday, and I also really wanted the time to pass quicker, so I pretended it was another working day. My body seemed to buy into it, and woke up at seven thirty without prompting. I was at the office by nine; well, rather, I was in front of the building at nine. I took a moment for the security guard to stop disbelieving and actually open the door for me. According to the register I had to sign, there were five other people in the building at the time. Ah, sweet alienation.

I had considerable success in convincing myself it was a normal office day; I even had a tasteless ready-made plastic-packed pasta for lunch to complete the illusion. And when I got bored, or tired, I could always lie on the floor and stare outside the window for a while, or sit on my desk... and eventually put trainers on and leave, when I wanted.

The little pleasures.

It was a Saturday after all... so the rest of the working day was spent in Cafe Zanzero in Stockbridge, just me, a pot of tea, a laptop and, briefly, a blueberry cupcake... And so that day reminded me of the liberty and choice and paranoia which comes with PhDing - not exactly a trade off, but there are definite pluses.

Aah, my sweet cupcake...

Very Slow Polish Food

2010-04-24T11:45:00.001-07:00

There is apparently a strong Polish community in Edinburgh, and its presence is especially felt on Gorgie Road. It immediately struck me, as it was my usual route to work, how many Polish stores there were, and how varied and specialised they were too.

A typical corner store, only, with the strictly Polish assortment of products, it could just as well be on a corner ofone of the streets in my home town.

A Polish Delicatessen, specialising in cold cuts (mmm).

And finally, even a Polish hair salon! Considering the importance of small talk therapy in dealing with emigration stress, totally understandable.

I have never taken advantage of those Polish-ness opportunities, apart from a single dash when I was hard pressed for pickled herring and beer. However, the finishing of my internship has given other people an idea of tapping into the Polishness resource.

The leaving celebrations started early, and already six days before I am due to move back home from Edinburgh my colleagues organised a leaving lunch. Maximise the enjoyment potential I say! One of my collegues is of Polish descent, so it was his idea for us all to convene in a tiny Polish restaurant down Gorgie Road, Cafe Kleofas, which I have passed a thousand times, but never tried. Normally open onlyin the evenings, the kind cook and owner opened it for lunch especially for our eight-strong group. Everything was freshly done - apparently that morning. We barely fitted in the tiny space, but we were made to feel very special, and the food was gorgeous.

Chicken soup with thinly sliced pancakes, perfect and just so, peppery and warm, such a home dish I was instantly homesick.

Kubus, a carrot and fruit juice loved or at least well known by all Poles, but I had to explain the complex history of Bobofruty to my foreign friends.

My neighbours' dish - kopytka (a sort of gniocchi) with pork in a wild mushroom sauce. Again, a traditional favourite.

The wise ones had pierogi, which were beutifuly soft, I truly believe they were made on the same day.

No Polish dinner is complete without a massive slab of cake, and the cheescake did not dissapoint. At the end we could barely move, let alone squeeze out of the tiny interior; a civil service working lunch, it took as two hours on the dot.

And a very, very reasonable bill too!

Princes Street Gardens

2010-04-22T11:56:00.001-07:00

Evening walkers in Princes Street Gardens.

There was time to be killed, not much, but just enough, half an hour or so. The sun was still up, and the air was warm. It had just stopped raining a while ago, the air was clear, and, thanks to the volcano, the sky was clear and silent as well. I had my book. Princes Street Gardens are just perfect. Right in the middle of the city, but in a dip (they used to be the moat), so they are quiet, but with the trains passing through, they are lively. And so much colour, and so much space. Just perfect.

A view of the castle from my bench.

The benches were still wet, but I didn't mind so much. Perhaps I'm becoming Northernised. Until the sun hid behind the buildings and it got cold, I sat, read and watched, and all was good.

Busy evening.

Arts and Crafts with bird motifs

2010-04-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

The truth is, I cannot resist an open day, so after coffee and croissants me and Skinnytoes went to see a church with me. Well, technically it was the second thing we had done; the first was feeding swans in the park while the rain was pouring around us. The birds were so surprised, and it was fun.

Mansfield Traquair Centre

The main wall.

The Traquire Centre is only open a few days a year, and I was curious - the entire surface of the church had been decorated by a single person, Phoebe Anne Traquire, an artist in the Scottish Arts and Crafts movement. It took her eight years. And, while she was doing this, she was also raising children, and making a series of tapestries which now hang in the Scottish National Gallery. Hard working woman.

The wise and foolish virgins, and the angel that came to wake them.

The church was built by a community which strongly believed that the end of the world was coming, and soon, so many of the themes in the church have to do with being ready for the Second Coming, like the tale of the wise and foolish virgins.

There are scenes from the Old and New testament, and lots of angels and mythical creatures from the gealic and celtic mythologies. I liked that she placed the biblical figures in landscapes familiar to her, amongst green fields of Scotland. The wild flowers and plants on the paintings are also often very realistic depictions of Scotland's wild flowers.

The truth is the quality of the artwork is very variable. It is not that technically advanced, and at times looks just kitch. But I do love the idea of her coming into this church, every single day, and settling down to a day of painting; going through the moves, letting her mind wonder as her body works, which is perhaps why so many of the angels and cherubs have the faces of her chidren, and her friends. There was something naive and intimate about this, which touched me, maybe because it was so coarse and personal it really touched me.

We walked back along the Water of Leith, very slowly, as there were tons of birds around.

For a good ten minutes we watched a very funny couple, it seemed to be a parent and a young blackbird; the parent kept following at a distance, while the youngling, all puffy and bold, hopped around without a care in the world.

A still unindentified small bird.

We were nearly home, when the heron showed up. Aah, the heron! I remember seeing it for the first time, such a long time ago, when I had just come to Edinburgh! It was not doing very well as we watched it, no strikes, but it was looking stately as ever. I had a long discussion with a colleague at work about her; perhaps we should set up a fanclub.

That long black feather on the back of its head always makes me think of Chinese court officials.

There was one more bird to stalk and admire before we got home, a very bold grey wagtail.

It didn't seem too disturbed, and just kept preening.

We even caught him singing.

Spying on Edinburgers, part 2

2010-04-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

This friday is my 'leaving do' at work, which means I have one week left in Edinburgh. I've realised I have quite a backlog of unconnected people pictures, and it's time this collection saw the light of day, so here is the second part of my spying on the inhabitants of Edinburgh.

Girls posing for a photoshoot on a chilly day on Carlton Hill.

A musician at the Grassmarket.

The interior of a curious pub on Rose Street.

Fragmented man.

Stylish New Town pedestrian and bodyguard (?).

A sun-struck couple in front of the National Gallery on one of the first days of spring.

A girl in Princes Street gardens.

Fuelling up in a tourist pub on Royal Mile.

Punk not dead.

A dedicated bagpiper on the Royal Mile.

Painting a watercolour of the city, and smoking a pipe in Iverleith park.

Boat race at Inverleith park.

Favourite long saturdays, Botanical Gardens and modern art encounters.

2010-04-21T12:09:00.000-07:00

Spoiler alert: this day is not for vegetarians. This day may include distressing scenes of pointless modern art being in turn abusive and abused.

The day started well, botanically speaking. It was pleasant and nearly sunny, and with Skinnytoes we headed to the Botanical Gardens, to make the most of the weather before it turns. There were few people about, and I felt as if we had the place to ourselves. The other day a colleague at work had showed me how to work the macro setting on my new camera, and Skinnytoes unleashed its awesome powers on the orchids in one of the greenhouses.

I read somewhere their procreative technique is to look like a female of a certain insect. Is it just me, or can you imagine that too?

Rather scary for a flower.

I admit, I have enhanced these digitally a wee bit. It's Scotland, it's dark.

My favourite, so emphemeral.

A magnolia tree in bloom.

A sea of rhododendrons.

Curiously photogenic shrub.

So beautiful in their green, spiky way!

There were no cats to be pursued in the garden this time, but we did come accross a real cat street on the way to lunch: each door on the street had a cat sitting on it, all female, and all curiously bulging, as if pregnant. A cat harem possibly?

After having eaten a massive and surprisingly 'real' tasting pizza at Jolly on Elm Row, we found another Italian place for a very 'real' and extremely bitten espresso. It was an Italian kind of day, I guess, and we got extra big smiles from the very Italian, very complimentary waiter.

Espresso yourself everyone!

The weather was turning nasty, so we visited a few favourites at the National Gallery and then crossed over the square to see an exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy. Sadly, it turned out to be an exhiibition of first works by modern artists. What a waste of oxygen. The first work exhibited just as you entered the gallery was a set-up of three surveillance cameras and a plan of London. As Skinnytoes pointed out, this may have worked in the 70s as a prediction of an Orwellian future, but what kind of sense does this have in the modern world? Remember you're being watched? Oh please, how lazy!

In fact, lazy is a pretty good description of most of the 'works of art' on display there. The one that enraged me most was this pathetic excuse for the practice of taxidermy.

The blurb next to the display said it was 'a comment on the dangers of a GM future'. To quote Bernard from Black Books, 'Don't make me sick into my own scorn'. If you want to practice your disgusting and morally questionable taxidermy hobby, do it in the privacy of your own cellar, but don't put it on display and call it art. Oh for God's sake, I should have done art, I would have
ROCKED.

A screen in a tube, making an annoying noise. High art.

In a fit of rage, I attempt to eat what I assume is a sculptre. Now that is ART.

The only piece of work I found in any way interesting was a series of paintings on board by a female artist. She painted following the grain of the wood, using it as part of the composition, and actually engaging with her material and subject matter.

And it's not even that I am particularily close-minded. No. It's just that after having seen the world, I say - be botanists, be gardeners, do something that produces real beauty and changes peoples lives you pathetic excuses for artists! There, spleen vented.

Friday at the Firth

2010-04-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

It actually snowed today, and it's hard to believe when I look in the mirror and see my sunburnt neck. The sky looked so hazy when we set off for a day's walking along the Firth of Forth that sunburn was the last thing that came to my mind. I was in fact wondering if the Icelandic volcanic cloud may be keeping the sun so distant, and the sky so misty.

North Queensferry train station.

For the first time I crossed the Forth on the actual railway bridge. We got off at North Queensferry, a tiny cute town completely dominated by the bridge.

North Queensferry.

The Forth path starts at North Queensferry, and runs all the way to Tay Bridge, 150 km further along the coast. We only walked a small section, and the path is accessible by train only up to Kirkcaldy, so we had to be strategic.

For the first kilometre or so the path took us through a disused quarry, which now is a bird reserve. I had no luck bird spotting that day though - even the blackbird only posed for Skinnytoes!

Looking towards Incholm island.

The rather uninspiring looking town of Inverkeithing.

If I were smart and listened to my man, we would have gotten off the train at Inverkeithing and saved ourselves the long, dusty walk along the bay which the town surrounds. The bay is a working port, and a scrapyard, or perhaps even a foundry; not only were there piles of metal everywhere, and trucks going busily in an out, but the air itself tasted of metal, a weird, prickly, oily taste in the mouth and the nose, not completely unpleasant, but very alien.

A pile of scrapped cars at Inverkeithing bay.

The walk around the bay took ages - by the time we were done, the ship which was being loaded with scrap when we turned the corner was ready to take off with its load. It cost us 4km and a lot of time... But then the scenery picked up again, and birds returned.

An early dip.

Looking towards Inchcolm.

The path took us through the very nice, leafy and rich residential part of Dalgety, full of birds, children and people doing a spring clean, making me wonder how is it that they are not at work? Perhaps they too were celebrating the unique sunny day and called in sick.

Dalgety sailing club, and a tanker at the petrochemical terminal in the distance.

The early bird and its worm.

The next bay we came to was my favourite; the tide was low, and there were lots of birds foraging in the sand and on the rocks. I crept as close as I could, and spent a happy twenty minutes bird-stalking.

In flight.

A flock of sandpipers, and a few oystercatchers.

And they're off!

Flying oystercatchers with the backdrop of Edinburgh on the Southern shore.

Yaay, sandpipers.

Yaay, photogenic ducks and misty Edinburgh.

The path took us past the remains of a church, and then headed inland, which left us a bit confused.

St Bridget's Church

I later found out that that part of the coast is occupied by one of Exxon's petrochemical plants, and we could just see the tower of the tanker between the trees. We went along a flock of grazing sheep, and their smell, which I associate so strongly with Darbyshire, was completely out of place for me.

We were getting close to Arbedour, and on this section the path had been planted with thousands of daffodils.

For quite a while we walked along the amazingly picturesque golfing field, and Skinnytoes was giving me a crash course on the game.

Arbedour itself was very cute, and busy. The beach was full of people, and the port too full of activity.

Arbedour marina.

A look back to where we had walked from:

And that's how I got sunburnt on a hazy day.

Money

2010-04-15T13:21:00.000-07:00

That was quite a surprise when a perfectly ordinary cash mashine in Edinburgh discharged perfectly unusual money to me on my second day in Scotland. I was aware that there was such a thing as 'Scottish pounds', because Mrtoes gave me a Scottish fiver for good luck before I left; but it was still a shock to find out just how many kinds there were around. There are three banks which print money in Scotland: Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Scotland and Clydesdale Bank, and as far as I've seen Clysedale Bank's are the most adventurous and appealing. The collection below is not at all complete, but I will keep adding to it! Below, fellow geeks, are mainly examples from Bank of Scotland's Tercentary Series and one from the Bridges of Scotland by the same bank. Geeks unite! p.s. photographing money in public is a sure way of embarassing any Brits in the immediate vicinity.

A tribute to whisky!

Yup, it's the Harry Potter viaduct... But it was around before the unfortunate trend, and will stand when it's forgotten.

I like how many women there are on the Bank of Scotland banknotes!

Aah, personal favourite.

And some more from The Royal Bank of Scotland:

And from Clysedale Bank:

Evening Royal Botanical Gardens

2010-04-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

The sun stays up for so long now, by the time I'm home it still feels like it's only three o'clock. So I grab the camera and head outside again, a book in hand, in search of a sunny spot.

Sunny Water of Leith.

The river side is already getting shady, so I continue down Water of Leith towards the Botanical Gardens. A tree in full bloom stops me in my tracks, and I spy on the busy bumble bees, and breathe in the smell of white blossom.

The epitome of spring!

Too windy to sit on the large lawns... I stick to the river, and I am rewarded with another blooming tree, which turns out to be a hotspot for evening bird activity.

A female bullfinch, munching on the blossom.

A super-fortunate shot of a singng wren!

Perching briefly before disappearing into the undergrowth.

It gets cooler, so I cut my way home through the Botanical Gardens. It is quiet, there is me, the squirrels, and the wind.

Standing under this tree in the wind is like listening to a thousand tibetan prayer flags rustling over your head.

Takeoff.

And a delightful adventure appears - a cat, snoozing in the sun. It does not mind being bothered; quite the opposite, it is rejuvenated, and launches an attack on a ferocious twig.

'Mine, my own... my precioussss...'

The light does not disappear until eight nowadays... long, sunny, but chilly evenings in the North!

Sunday at the sea front

2010-04-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

I was going to spend this Sunday working, honestly. I got up reasonably early, had breakfast while watching politics, made myself a tea, sat down in front of a blank wall while the sunshine was streaming in through the windows... There was no wind, even... Damn...

The extent of excitement I was looking forward to - weird-shaped tea stains.

The street outside my flat, with sunshine streaming in.

I lasted three hours, not so bad, considering it was the first proper day of sunshine in which I could actually go outside and enjoy myself. So, I did. There will always be rainy, windy days for working - which is why I could never live in a 'proper' climate, no work would ever, ever get done. To make myself like I have done something useful with the day, I went to town to do some weekly shopping firsts. The streets were sunny and full of people who, in spite of the chilly air, were desperate to pretend it was already summer.

Edinburgh pretending to be 1000 miles further South.

An amazing display of daffodils on Castle Hill.

Over the Forth, a strange mist was brewing as if it were a steaming cauldron; you could nearly imagine the bay has become a mountain valley, and the cloud was just hanging in there as they do in the Alps. I am sure there is a perfectly good scientific explanation, especially as later in the afternoon the cloud had lifted and the air was clear.

I made my way to the sea slowly, via a cafe, a teapot and an hour's reading in the sun, a near-forgotten pleasure. The tea was lovely and amber, the sun warm and pleasant, and the air had an Alpine bite to keep me on my toes. The moment the shade had finished swallowing my table, I got up and went - still much too cold for that.

Tea moments.

To get to the sea, I took a bus to West Granton, the westernmost harbour in Edinburgh. Wiki tells me the area used to be the most deprived in the city, and, indeed, gentrification aside, it had the desolate industrial feel that reminds me so much of Polish cities - rusting steel, inhumanly proportioned buildings, long straight streets with mind-numbing concrete walls running along them, freezing in winter, choking hot in the summer, always completely soul-less. But I knew that West Granton was where the promenade running to Cramond started. In fact, the beginning of it bizzarely fitted the industrial air of Granton - a massive lawn, an artificial lake, a few swans and an metal structure, all made surreally crisp in the cold air and brilliant light.

West Granton, start of the seafront promenade.

I was not the only person to head for the sea today; there were lots of people around, especially parents letting their young ones run around on the mind-bogglingly huge lawns which stretched along the sea front. The panorama was enormous and boundless.

The enormous lawns along the shore.

It was not unifromly nice and friendly - perhaps not the place to hang around in at night.

This walk was quite refreshing really, and made me feel more as if I were in London than in Edinburgh. For the first time, I was in a place where all classess and all ethnicities were, if not mingling, than at least having fun alongside one another. Everyone was there: Polish families, yuppie runners, teenage mums, tweed-wearing bird-gazers, young and old, tourists and locals. It did not feel like a community, it felt, in fact, tense, but at least they were all there, in the same space, perhaps aided by how much space there actually was.

The young.

The fit.

The thirsty (Tea Room, so quaint!)

The foreign.

The happiest.

I was headed for Cramond island; I've had this idea for a long time that, at low tide, I will pursue birds with my new zoom lense around the island. I had it in my mind that the place will be crawling with unique bird-life; I was wrong, but I still had an adventure.

The way to get to the island is over a concrete walkway, which becomes uncovered as the tide recedes. There were more people at it than I imagined, which is perhaps why my attempts at bird-stalking were so unsuccessful ( I have to blame someone).

Not too cold for some!

The walkway, as seen from the island.

I waked around the rocky, Northern side of the island first, pursuing eider ducks and admiring the Forth bridges in the distance.

A gang of eider duck males.

Don't they look just like art-nouveu ergonomic tea pots?Forth Rail Bridge seen from the island.

The leafy (or soon-to-be-leafy) inside of the island.

Strange bunkers, looking quite modern, and facing the Firth.

I did catch a sight of a few oystercatchers, and one lonely sandpiper, but that was it. Every time I attempted to get close enough for a good shot, negotiating my way in knee-deep mud with a devotion of the truly stupid, the moment I got within twenty metres the birds would take off with an alarm call which in the end sounded like mocking laughter in my ears.

Getting stuck.

The elusive, yet extremely common oystercatchers.

A lonely sandpiper.

Caked.

After nearly an hour of slow progress I was so tired I had to give up; I was soaked to the knees, my muscles were aching, and it finally dawned on me that if I stepped into quicksand there would be no-one around to hear my calls; not to mention that, having proved thus my endless stupidity, I would be too embarassed to call out anyway. I went home feeling tired and defeated, but now that I look back at it the day was quite an adventure.

The swampy floor of the Firth of Forth at low tide, covered in mussels and sea-weed.

A day in history, 96 Poles die in a plane crash

2010-04-10T11:55:00.001-07:00

The sea was calm and flat this morning as I watched it from the windows of the train. Before leaving the house this morning I turned the BBC on and just before I left there was a mention of an accident in Russia - the plance carrying the Polish president had crashed near Smolensk. I walked out without thinking much about it. But on the train I got a text from a friend in Poland telling me all passangers and crew had died. Phone calls with my dad followed. It was quite unbelievable. The sea was white and flat and calm, and the ships seemed to be floating suspended in air, as if the world was holding its breath.

It turns out it was, before breaking into tears. The recent dead are remembered for the good things they did, and for a moment we withhold criticisms and wear the black ribbon on the sleeve, a nation united accross borders and seas in the face of what can only be called a tragedy. The plane was old, the weather was bad, they attempted to land four times and the question everyone is asking is why they had not given up and flown to another airport. All detail will be revailed in time, but there is no-one left alive to take the blame.

Now the sun is setting over the sea in a spectacle of gold and purple, as if in a tribute to this day. A mist lingers over the green fields of Scotland and tints them with grey. The time for holding of breath will pass soon, the sun will rise again, and the country will go on, but how? These will be interesting times for Poland. The main political figures of a widely popular but controversial conservative party have all disappeared from the scene in one go. Nature, and politics, does not tolerate a void. Temporarily the few competencies that the Polish president holds are in the hands of the speaker for the lower house of the parliament, but very soon, within the next 14 days, a presidential election will have to be announced. We have to ask what consequences this tragedy will have for the balance of power in the Polish government - will the conservatives gain more ground through sympathy votes; how will the pro-EU opposition defend its position? These questions will not be asked in the mainstream media for a few days yet, but one thing is sure, we are in for very dynamic times in Polish politics.

Amongst the people killed in the crash today were:

LECH KACZYŃSKI, president of Poland

MARIA KACZYŃSKA

RYSZARD KACZOROWSKI, the last Polish president on emigration

KRZYSZTOF PUTRA

KRYSTYNA BOCHENEK

JERZY SZMAJDZIŃSKI

WŁADYSŁAW STASIAK

ALEKSANDER SZCZYGŁO

PAWEŁ WYPYCH

STANISŁAW JERZY KOMOROWSKI

TOMASZ MERTA

MACIEJ PŁAŻYŃSKI

MARIUSZ KAZANA

GEN. FRANCISZEK GĄGOR

MARIUSZ HANDZLIK

ANDRZEJ KREMER

ANDRZEJ PRZEWOŹNIK

PIOTR NUROWSKI

JANUSZ KOCHANOWSKI

SŁAWOMIR SKRZYPEK

JANUSZ KURTYKA

JANUSZ KRUPSKI

GRZEGORZ DOLNIAK

LESZEK DEPTUŁA

GRAŻYNA GĘSICKA

PRZEMYSŁAW GOSIEWSKI

ZBIGNIEW WASSERMANN

SEBASTIAN KARPINIUK

IZABELA JARUGA-NOWACKA

ALEKSANDRA NATALLI-ŚWIAT

ARKADIUSZ RYBICKI

JOLANTA SZYMANEK-DERESZ

WIESŁAW WODA

EDWARD WOJTAS

JANINA FETLIŃSKA

STANISŁAW ZAJĄC

KS. BP GEN. DYWIZJI TADEUSZ PŁOSKI

KS. ABP GEN. BRYGADY MIRON CHODAKOWSKI

KS. PŁK ADAM PILCH

KS. PPŁK JAN OSIŃSKI

KS. ROMAN INDRZEJCZYK

KS. PRAŁAT BRONISŁAW GOSTOMSKI

KS. JÓZEF JONIEC

KS. ZDZISŁAW KRÓL

KS. ANDRZEJ KWAŚNIK

GEN. BRONI BRONISŁAW KWIATKOWSKI

GEN. ANDRZEJ BŁASIK

GEN. TADEUSZ BUK

GEN. WOJCIECH POTASIŃSKI

WICEADMIRAŁ ANDRZEJ KARWETA

GEN. KAZIMIERZ GILARSKI

TADEUSZ LUTOBORSKI

STEFAN MELAK

STANISŁAW MIKKE

BRONISŁAWA ORAWIEC-LOFFLER

KATARZYNA PISKORSKA

ANDRZEJ SARJUSZ-SKĄPSKI

WOJCIECH SEWERYN

LESZEK SOLSKI

TERESA WALEWSKA-PRZYJAŁKOWSKA

GABRIELA ZYCH

EWA BĄKOWSKA

ANNA MARIA BOROWSKA

BARTOSZ BOROWSKI

EDWARD DUCHNOWSKI

ZENONA MAMONTOWICZ-ŁOJEK

JOANNA AGACKA-INDECKA

CZESŁAW CYWIŃSKI

PPŁK. ZBIGNIEW DĘBSKI

KATARZYNA DORACZYŃSKA

ALEKSANDER FEDOROWICZ

DARIUSZ JANKOWSKI

GEN. BRYG. STANISŁAW KOMORNICKI

JANUSZ KRUPSKI

WOJCIECH LUBIŃSKI

BARBARA MAMIŃSKA

JANIANA NATUSIEWICZ-MILLER

KS. RYSZRD RUMIANEK

IZABELA TOMASZEWSKA

ANNA WALENTYNOWICZ

JANUSZ ZAKRZEŃSKI

JAROSŁAW FLORCZAK

ARTUR FRANCUZ

PAWEŁ JANECZEK

PAWEŁ KRAJEWSKI

PIOTR NOSEK

JACEK SURÓWKA

MAREK ULERYK

DARIUSZ MICHAŁOWSKI

ARKADIUSZ PROTASIUK, plane capitan

ROBERT GRZYWNA

ANDRZEJ MICHALAK

ARTUR ZIĘTEK

BARBARA MACIEJCZYK

NATALIA JANUSZKO

JUSTYNA MONIUSZKO

Edinburgh speaks for itself.

2010-04-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a long day... let's have Edinburgh speak for itself today. Literally.

Spring springing - this way.

Along the Water of Leith, this is where poppies are made.

At an Oxfam in Stockbridge, a trip into the past.

A bookshop in Stockbridge is never out of style.

Worrying messages from dancers.

Modern Art Gallery offers moral support.

Failing that, there is religion.

Spring, and bus eavesdropping

2010-04-08T11:47:00.000-07:00

I have to tell you, I never thought it would happen. Ever! I had given up, resigned myself to the freezing fate; and then it sprung on me. Oh sweet spring! Not the full-blown, all sun and birdsong madness of the South, but the gentle, shy, and so slooooow spring of the North. Oh you've taken your time this year - a month late!? You'd better make it up to me.

So, it's doing its best. On the run yesterday I could smell the grass growing, and the apple tree was in flower. The blackbirds are singing, and I saw birds collecting plastic scraps for their nests, possibly the saddest scene in the world. Still, we're going ahead with this full shebang, (hopefully) no stopping it now. And here is the proof.

Princes Street Gardens covered in thousands of daffodils.

Some even make it to the cemetary.
Green shoots on tentative shrubs.

An unusually trusting dunnock.
The fountain is turned on in the Princes Street Gardens for the first time.
With the usual Edinburgh wind blowing, everyone around it gets soaked, but they don't seem to mind.

And, below, for entertainment value, a conversation I overhaerd on the bus between two teenage girls, speaking in Polish. I had to bite my lip very, very hard.

'I bought like three white tops. Yeah, this, and another, and with short sleeves. It's like, I love white, real white, y'know? Fucking love it. So, yeah, and when you see him, when he's here, you'll be like, you'll hate him. You'll be like, he's such an idiot, I can't believe I was in love with such an idiot, I must have been fucking stupid!'
'Yeah...'
'Yeah, I tell you. I could be, like, a psychologist, I know! Like, this guy, I have like, such a good connection with him, I can always give him, like, advice, y'know? I wanna be a psychologist.'

'Yeah, you earn a lot of money.'
'Yeah, a fucking lot of money. But I don't want to go to university.'
'You have to go to university to be a psychologsit!'
'Well, yeah, but to be like, a hairdresser, I just have to do college.'
'Yeah, but..'
'You don't get it, I fucking love it, it's my hobby. And the best thing is, you can put some cash away, and open your own salon, y'know? So I could do this as, like, a hobby, and do something else for money. Like a lawyer, or tourism.'
'What is tourism actually?'
'It's like, you learn Spanish, like, and you travel and meet people.'

Holyrood Palace

2010-04-07T11:25:00.000-07:00

Was nothing like I expect a Royal Palace to be. It is very beautiful from the outside, dark stone, turrets and sloping roofs, and a fascinating fountain adorned with figures of tradesman and animals standing in front of the gates, dripping with rain. Inside, however, the palace felt unassuming and small, and not in a positive, homely kind of way, but rather in a dusty, neglected way. The ceiling were low, there was little, light, and the place felt more uninhabited than palaces that have actually stood empty for hundreds of years. It was devoid of signs of real life, care, any personal touch... I can only assume that the toursits are only allowed to see the dullest part of the pallace; otherwise, I feel pretty sorry for HM Elizabeth when she comes to visit.

There was a touching collection of the Royal Family photographs though and oh, I am such a royalist. I hope she lives forever! One portrait of her did however remind me of a young woman I used to work with, who was in some obscure way related to the royal family; there certainly was something Germanic about her swinging arms and very loud toothy laugh. Conversations with her used to puzzle and interest me in a weird sort of way; it was like standing outside and looking through a window into a room full of people, looking onto a coctail party, and seeing all the bodily politics and manouvers, and seeing the smiles and polite nods, and deciphering the politics of power, and then walking away with a sense of relief and wonder.

The Edinburgh Castle, which would look more appropraite as a Royal residence.

Easter Sunday technology challenge

2010-04-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

It is all about the breakfast. There were the wonderfully colorful eggs - part smuggled from Poland, part local production; incidentally, you could spot the Polish ones even when they were stripped off their colorful shells as apparently Polish hens are given carotene to make the egg yellows a deep fluorescent orange. So yes, there were the eggs, a lamp-shaped butter, white sausages and horseradish and lovely Polish ham. Very simple and completely secular - normally all the foods on the table would have been sanctified in the Church earlier that morning. I actually miss that, the preparation of small wicker baskets with a selection of foods representing all foods to be eaten the following year, including salt; the dressing of the baskets in white linen, green branches and flowers adorning them, being carried to the Church proudly by the youngest member of the family. I still remember the enormous baskets with dozens of eggs and entire breadlofs that the peasant women would bring, to ensure that each and every food they were going to serve their guests on this Sunday morning had been made holy.

The simple breakfast table.

The very Polish Easter cake, and a very Scottish fuitcake.

Tatatoes the engineer had his heart set on seeing the Union Canal boat lift, so we ignored the rain and got on a train to Falkirk. I have to admit, it was something worth seeing.

A friendly train driver in Falkirk.

The excellent piece of engineering in motion.

The lift was completed in 2002, and it was opened by the Queen herself. The guide told us that four and a half thousand people stood in the pouring rain as she pressed the red button which released the wheel for the first time; in reality, the button which she operated with such glee was a 4.99 door bell from B&Q. Actually, the wheel was released by people in the control room - but she does not need to know that, bless her dignified octogenarian heart.

A view from the top of the Union Canal towards the North side of the Firth of Forth.

You can take a boat and go on a rainy ride on the Falkirk wheel, and be transported from the Forth & Clyde Canal to the Union Canal in four and a half minutes, while your boat continues to nestle comfortably in what I must call a basin of water. And it is incredibly energy efficient - it takes the energy needed to boil eight electric kettles to complete one turn. Go physics! Yes, I know, I am a geek.

But a happy geek - for when we floated gently down there was a display of hand-reared birds of prey. And they were gorgeous! There was something quite bizzare about having them held down on perches, in equal distance from one another, and yes I did believe they would tear one another apart if it weren't for that. The barn owl would occassionally screech loudly, while the buzzard would try to take off after a pigeon. The kestrel would just spread its wings in the wind and let it lift its light body, in a graceful movement. I just had to hold it, and I did! It was light and beautiful and keen-eyed.

The buzzard.
The sweet kestrel - isn't she beautiful?

The European Eagle Owl, a serious piece of bird.

The screetchy Barn Owl.

I also held the massive European eagle owl - I had to rest my arm on my hip, it was so heavy! But it was also so docile I could stroke it between its lovely feathery ears, although the enormous claws made me quite weary.

Two days in one

2010-04-03T15:20:00.000-07:00

The first day happened when I got up to get the car back to the rental place. It had just stopped raining, and I could see the dark clouds moving out towards the sea. From underneath them, a new, bright sun was rising, and the wet streets and buildings and trees of the city glistened and shone as if just made, as if covered in tiny crystals. I drove around for a while, enchanted, through the empty streets. Walking back I went close to the castle, it too suspended on a wall of black rock shiny with the rain. The market stalls were just being erected, and everyone was smiling.

When I got home Tatatoes and Tanatoes were fast asleep, so I too went back to bed. It was not difficult to fall asleep, as my morning experience was so much like a dream! By the time we finally started stirring it was well past eleven, and the sky had become overcast. I had a little wonder with Tatatoes around Stockbridge, and we spent an immoral amount of money on cheeses and bread. After that I took Tatatoes to Leith, to have a look at the port. He was fascinated by the rotating bridges, once used to let the ships in and out of the docks. These times are long gone, the docks have been filled in and the machinery is covered in thick layers of paint, but it is still there to be seen by the trained eye of an engineer.

The gangways of the restaurant ships.

Clouds over Leith.

At Princes Street Gardens the crucifiction was complete, the Romans were still hanging around the cross but Jesus and the disciples were already on their way to the minibuses.

The Easter way of the Cross; Jesus and the disciples walk back to the minibuses.

We spent the evening and Kay's bar, trying local ales and whiskies; I am much more knowledgable now that we've been to Edradour, and the barmans were forced to consult their 'whisky bible' more and more frequently as they were struggling with my questions. Perhaps they are secretely relieved they only have one more month of putting up with this!

If it weren't for yeast life wouldn't be worth living, or how to make Whisky

2010-04-02T13:59:00.000-07:00

Not only did I survive, but I also actually enjoyed driving the car on the wrong side of the road today. Tatatoes had two wishes : to go and see Forth Bridge, and to go the a distillery. To this I added a visit to Shackleton's Endurance, moored in Dundee. A car was indispensable.

Fortunately I have been riding a bike on the wrong side of the road for a year now, so the concept of doing the same with a car did not seem that weird. I also managed to avoid opening the door when trying to change gears; instead, Tatatoes would forget he was not the driver, and release the handbrake before I had a chance to even switch the engine on. All in all, however, we did well, and covered nearly 200 miles.

The morning was splendid with sunshine, and I followed the bus route to bring us to the foot of Forth Rail Bridge. Tatatoes, an engineer, insisted on having a close look, and the weather could not have been better.

Forth Rail Bridge in the sun.

From there we had an hours' drive to reach Dundee, but we veered off to have a coffee in Kilmarnock. I was curious to have a look, as the town is famously the birthplace of Johhny Walker Whisky, and even more famously the site of a massive employee-employer-government dispute when the Kilmarnock distillery was closed last year by Diageo, costing the town 700 jobs. The place itself, however, perhaps unsurprisingly, was absolutely bleak. Massive multistorey car parks, shopping malls, bingo halls and living estates, doom and gloom and no sign of coffee. Disillusioned, we stopped for a brief glance towards Norway over the sea, and continued towards Dundee. The countryside was actually reminiscent of Poland – big fields, dense forests, tree-lined streets. It felt homely.

The Firth of Tay seemed to me to be even bigger than Firth of Forth, perhaps due to the length of the bridges which connect the southern and northern shores. The one I could see, ie. the one I was not actually driving on, actually had a bend in it. The city itself looked absolutely grim; grey, dark, and uninspiring. In fact the beauty of the Discovery sail-ship itself was diminished by the bleakness of the surrounding architecture – a concrete leisure park, and a boring glass-and-brick dome of the Discovery museum.

I was actually quite excited to see the ship which had carried Scott on his unfortunate and failed attempt at being the first man to set foot on the North Pole. I had read so much both about his expedition, and that of Shackleton. How ironic that one survived to return, but without the ship, while the other sacrificed himself and his crew, but the ship returned. In a way it is fitting that after having served under the short-sighted and selfish Capitan the boat should be put to better use as a merchant and training vessel. This also means that the restored vessel is not really as it was on its first voyage, which was a real shame actually.

Shakleton's Discovery.

As far as the sail-boat itself, the most surprising thing about it was its size. I have seen much more footage of Shackleton's Endurance, and so I imagined that also Discovery will be similarly compact. Instead there are actually two entire storeys under the deck, the rooms have proper high ceilings, and the deck stretches long and wide.

We were off quickly, North towards Pitlorchy and the Edradour Distillery. It's the smallest distillery in Scotland, and the closest one to Edinburgh which is not owned by a corporation. The approach to Pitlorchy is beautiful, along the river Tay which winds its way through a wide, green valley. The river is shallow and rocky, and a known destination for fly-fishing; in fact, we saw men standing with fishing rods, knee-high in the river, at regular intervals.

Pitlorchy itself seemed like a major tourist destination, and reminded me of the cutesy towns in the Peak District. Bell's Whisky has a 'Visitor Centre' there, but we drove swiftly past and started climbing. The distillery itself was hidden in a dip of the valley slope, invisible until we were right at the door. Which was, as it later turn out, one more way of making it hidden from the eyes of the law when it was being used for illegal whisky production.

We just made it in time for the last tour.

The Edradour distillery, all whitewash and red timber, made very tourist-rady, but very cute nonetheless.

The long distillery building, and the malting building in the distance. The distillery malts and dries its own barley; as opposed to the distilleries on the Islands, they do not use pete smoke for barley drying, so their whisky does not have this typical, strong, smokey flavour, but is lighter instead.
Here is the malten barley, ready for being ground into a sort of coarse flour. It is then mixed with hot water and mashed until a sugar-rich water is obtained, called the wort.
The wort is cooled, and pumped into the big vats, where yeast is added. Ah, my good friend yeast, dearest saccharomyces cervicae, the maker of bread and the creator of alcohol, the single organism which makes our life enjoyable, possible even! My favourite invisible friend. Here it makes malted barley practically into beer, which is then distilled into the beautiful amber whisky.

Here they are, the two copper stills, for two distillations. The shape of the still determines many of the whisky's characteristics. The fact that they are made with copper is important as well, as the metal reacts with the liquid to rid it of certain unpleasant aromas.

The two condensers, the outpipes of the two stills inside. The condensers are cooled with water and hidden under the ground level, again, historically, for protection from custom officers. The beer-like substance, called the wash, has only 8% of alcohol. At the first distillation, the vapour which rises from the still is around 17%, and by the time it has made it to the second still, it is closer to 25%. By the end of the second distillation, the spirit is nearly 70% alcohol.

From the still, the whisky goes into a container; only the 'heart' of the spirit, the strong, pure liquid which flows for around 90 minutes is kept. Both the early and the late distillation spirit is not fit for being matured, and is distilled again.

The spirit goes into barrels, to mature for ten years. They use diverse barrels there - wine, port, sherry, and bourbon; and each adds something of their own flavour.

Off to the warehouse the barrels go. During the ten years, a quarter of the alcohol will evaporate. At the moment of being put into a barrel, the spirit is around 65% alcohol; by the time it's matured, it's around 55%, and needs to be watered down for bottling.

The used barley is taken away by a local farmer as cattle feed. No wonder the hairy Highland cows look so content!

The muscle behind all this hard work.

I'd have played a prank on you - if I had remembered!

2010-04-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

It's quite amazing the amount of detail you note when you need to keep pace with a slow walker like Tatatoes. The frequent pauses he has to make to let his legs rest make you look around and admire, as well as giving you license to get into conversation with people you would normally not have the time to engage with.

To avoid walking, we bought tourist bus tickets and travelled around the city. The day was cold, windy and glorious, so as usual I insisted on going to the sea. In Newhaven the sea was showing its real colours, brown rather than blue, the high waves preventing the sky from mirroring itself in the water. Tatatoes wondered at the tiny boats, tossed this way and that in the harbour, its small mouth enough to let in the commotion of the bay beyond. We had to brace ourselves against the gusts in order to admire the view; you could see far, far away, to the bridges and beyond, towards the snow-capped mountains in the distance.

Newhaven bay moored tiny boats.

The Forth bridges.

Speaking of which, the snowfall of the last two days had one glorious effect of covering all of the Pentland hills, making them into a breath-taking backdrop for the city. I forced Tatatoes and Tlanatoes to climb to the very top of the Royal Mile so that we could admire them in their luminous splendour. They are the perfect city hills – small enough to be conquerable, and big enough to take make your imagination soar.

The snowy Pentland hills.

Surely there is a simple algorithm which calculates the daily increase in density of tourist traffic on the Royal Mile as a corollary of the day's length. Tatatoes pointed out that the Asian tourists, renowned for their incessant photo-snapping, seem to have become much more chilled out. It is true, I can hardly remember seeing one technology-heavy small-boned Asian, in a floppy hat and sunglasses, weighed down to the ground by the sheer weight of their gadgets, and never taking their eyes off the screens to actually have a look around. They seem to be enjoying themselves nowadays, strolling on the streets – buying things even! A true cultural change.

Easter was in the air. A lonely piper was making noise on the Mile, and I got into a long, music-centred conversation with him, only to e rewarded by a good ten minutes of diverse melodies, from Highland ballads to real dance pieces.

A man and his pipes.

I have never actually made the effort to stop and listen to what bagpipe music sounds like; I can see how, especially after a few vodkas, especially in a murky, wooden room, especially on a winter's night, its wailing, pipe organ-like sound would be appealing. I admired the elegance and naturalness with which the piper wore his kilt, too; especially the shiny black shoes, with their intricate lacing, caught my interest, perhaps I'll be able to photograph them another time.

We were making our way home when, suddenly, on the steps leading to the National Gallery, we were surrounded by, well, clowns! I had completely forgotten it was Prima Aprilis, the 1st of April, and this happy group was playing a universal prank by looking jolly. I can't believe it had slipped my mind, I used to be good at pulling people's leg!

The happy clown gang!

Fortunately there were no pranksters in the Fisher's restaurant where we went for dinner. I was excited about this, my third, visit to the restaurant – the second time was a bit of a letdown, but I was sure it was just a misunderstanding. My instinct was right, and we had a wonderful hedonistic evening. The eighteen oysters we shared between the three of us were impeccable, cold, salty, meaty, and so full of flavour I would sit back and close my eyes as I was chewing them so that not to miss one ounce of gourmet pleasure. The wine, a Rully Burgundy 2007, mirrored the fresh saltiness and acidity of the oysters perfectly, and added a its own tongue-full of sensations. For main we had lobsters, as fresh as they could be, caught right across the street in the Fife. They were smaller than their Atlantic cousins, but sweet and juicy; I'm afraid the conversation practically died for a good half hour as with absolute glee I worked my way through every single limb in search of pockets of flavour. Home-made vanilla ice cream was the final, perfect touch. As we were leaving the head waiter looked at me and said – 'I remember your face, you've been here before!'. Oh yes, and I will certainly keep coming back.

Waterlogged Edinburgh

2010-03-31T17:52:00.000-07:00

By mid-day I had already written to my friends that I had given up on spring; that as far as I could see we were stuck with eternal winter for good so it was time to start investing in skis, start buying provisions and prepare for when the polar bears come knocking. The snow was falling frantically, in a massed effort to fill every inch of available air, and to cover every square metre of surface. The temperature was too high, however, and all the weather managed to achieve was awful, ugly slush. Which kept melting. Little trickles of water turned into streams, running in the gutters, carrying leaves and trash, blocking the drains, overflowing on the streets, and finding their way to the river.

Waterlogged park.

I met with a friend in the afternoon; the sun had come out for the first time in a good few days, so we dumped our bags at my flat and went for a short walk, taking advantage of the weather's sudden change of heart. There was standing water everywhere. In the park, dogs and children paddled in belly-deep puddles, to the despair of their owners and parents. Daffodils rediscovered their watery origins as temporary ponds were created around them. The world was washed clean, but the mop and the bucket were still out, witnesses to the work recently done.

Fun in the park.

We walked along the river as well, or rather tried to – when we reached Dean Village it became impossible to follow the river-side path, as it was no longer there. It had disappeared under ten centimetres of roaring, clear water. I had never seen the river as full as it was this afternoon, happy, fulfilling its destiny, playing around with is power. Watching it, so strong and full and real, tugging at weeds, burrowing into the banks, felt liberating.

The peaceful Dean Village and the roaring river.

I did not have to leave for the airport until eleven, so for once I had the right amount of time to dedicate to the making of my mushroom risotto. We kept chatting as I continued to slowly add the broth, ladle-full by ladle-full, with an unusual amount of patience – normally if a meal takes more than half an hour to prepare I grow impatient and up eating half-cooked dishes. But chatting with Thirdtoes gave the afternoon a lovely, carefree rhythm and I was beyond being bothered by anything. Her third sector job manages to combine academic insights with real-life applications, and sounds fascinating. I really enjoy her cutting-through-the-bullshit approach, straightforwardness and acuteness, so refreshing after weeks of mild and tepid political correctness of the office!

After a long dinner the effort of getting off the couch and stepping outside was almost unbearable. Our eyes were as if smeared with honey, we could easily have curled up and fall asleep where we were sitting. Full of beer, rice, spinach and yoghurt, we made our way slowly (very slowly, as we both got stitches from overating) up Princes Street, to jump on respective buses. I was taking the swish and clean airport express to pick up my dad; I swear, the bus has a better décor and is more comfortable than more than one airline it has been my dubious pleasure to patronise! Now I join the crowd of pacers, nail-biters and mobile-phone-glancers as I wait for the plane with my Easter guests to arrive.

Bloody weather!

2010-03-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, I underappreciated it. I admit, I've been spoilt, I've had no problems to speak of, it has been glorious for the best part. People have told me about the rain and the wind and I just didn't listen. Well, I have been shown!
There was no way of sleeping last night, with the rain battering against the windows with tiny icy fists, and the wind ramming itself against the walls in blows that made my soul suffer. With ears full of toilet paper I finally managed to drift off. I could hardly believe it was morning when the alarm clock went off, it was just as dark as before. The door to my tiny appartment opens on a quiet, narrow street; this narrow street has turned into a wind tunnel, my door was dripping wet, as was I minutes after I stepped outside. I was greateful to my landlor for having left behind a massive red umbrella - at least it was high visibility and protected me from being hit by a car while I was crossing the streets, shielding my entire body and not being able to look around at all. In fact, the lack of coffee and violent wind combination made me potentially lethal to other pedestrians as well, and many times I narrowly avoided collision with body-less, from my perspective, pairs of feet.

Coming back from work was even worse. I had one hand busy with a shopping bag, so the windy rain, or rainy wind, could pretty much do what it wanted with me. Desperately hanging on to my umbrella I zig zagged accross the pavement and pivoted on my heels. May I mention this was the first time since I was five I was wearing wellington boots, and they were bloody uncomfortable. I actually found myself oggling the waterproof gear of a fellow bus stop victim - her swanky red wellys with their warm red sock, the red waterproof sports jacket and, yes, a wooly hat against the icy wind which cuts to the bone, to the bone I tell you! She picked up a mobile phone, and guess what, she was Polish. I shouldn't be surprised really, because most of the Scots I have seen have simply given up on the idea of fighting hte weather, or even preparing for it, and act and dress as if they were not being blown to bits by the chilliest wind known to man. Yes, women in short jackets, boys in t-shirts, and it's close to 0, and windy. Hardy, hardy people.

In fact, I was close to giving up to - I was nearly home when a sudden gust finally got the better of my trusty red umbrella. It got yanked out of position, turned inside out like a confused jelly-fish, and flattened against a railing. It looked so helpless! I quickly restored it to its former shape, and we agreed never to speak of it again.

Yes, it's bloody snow, at the bloody start of April!

Perhaps I should give up on the idea of spring though. I have been fooling myself for too long. It is never going to happen. No more encouraging buds, no more enticing flowers, it is official, we are stuck in winter forever.

Soon to be Easter

2010-03-29T14:23:00.000-07:00

For (nearly) naturally dyed dyed Easter eggs, take:

Eggs, obviously.

Onion skins.

Hot water, pot, transparent nail polish and a bit of time. Paint a design, put the eggs into the inion dye and leave for as long as you desire, depending on how strong a shade you want to obtain. My grandma taught me this one.

And the effect is, well, this:

Glamour of train travel

2010-03-29T09:55:00.001-07:00

Nothing glamorous about train travel. I am already tired when I get on the train going North; I needed to change in Darlington, the train was late, the wind chilled me to the bone, there was no access to the coffee stand so I'm stuck with my tea getting colder in the massive cup, and with an unappealing chicken salad sandwich in plastic which I am having second thoughts about. I get on, the the dance of the seats begins. I have a window seat by a table, and it is occupied by a large package of some sort, wrapped in bubblewrap. I turn to the woman sitting next to it, who jerks her head up rapidly and looks at me with anger and contempt. It's not her package, she's in her own seat. The package belongs to the Asian girl in the seat opposite, who struggles to pick it up, and bumps into the man sitting next to her, on the isle side. Confusion; I wait with my bags uncfomfortably wedged into a single seat, trying to let other passengers go through. The woman 'sitting in her own seat' is plugged into a DVD player and does not take the earphones out, or stop the film, in spite of having gotten up. She continues to stand there, blocking the passage, waiting for me to get seated, looking annoyed. When she speaks it's with a loud voice of someone whose ears are blocked. The Asian girl squeezes past me, swearing under her breath as she tries to find a space for her package.

Finally we are all settled, and the train departs. I open my uninspiring sandwich with a squeak of tortured plastic, and the sound makes the woman next to me grimace. I eat guiltily as she exhales the air of contempt. The Asian girl in front of me settles down too, and focuses hard on the screen of her black Apple. She is working, she has deadlines, she is stressed. The small man next to her, with wispy blond hair, tanned, wrinkled face and a tight blue t-shirt, is plugged in as well. A silvery MP3 player hangs from a pink band around his neck. Looking down his thin nose, into space, he is silent. But occasionally he will emit a high hum, as he tries and fails to contain himself and starts singing to the music. They are less hums, in fact, and more like the sounds people make in their sleep, half-comprehensible, a-melodic, decontextualised. Suddenly he bursts into song for a second – 'Daddy's coming home', and than goes silent again, and sighs deeply. The Asian girl next to him does her best not to flinch.

Staring with large, blue eyes, completely round. It is nearly like listening to a Pythian prophecy, 'Slow down', he says suddenly, 'How are you..?' and you feel drawn to interpret these random words, random phrases, give them some sort of meaning. It's like Chinese water torture. After a while you start to relax, you manage to concentrate, and then a burst of song, or a low wail, or a single word, loud and clear, comes out of the man's mouth, and jerks you back into tension. By the end of the journey my muscles are so tired, as if I had been wrestling with him the whole time, but it's only from wrestling with myself as I fight to stop myself from strangling him.

It may be that I'm tired, or maybe it's a typical side-effect of reading D. H. Lawrence, but I find the whole set-up unbearable. The passengers faking disinterest in the proceedings of others, while in fact wallowing in nosiness. Overhearing other people's conversations, being forced to listen to their mobile phone exchanges. And in the row further don a tall, grey-haired man in khakis and a brown jacket, with an elegant, slightly crumples appearance, keeps looking over to our table, taking sudden interest with the spilling of yoghurt, a vulgar interest which contrasts so sharply with his intellectual appearance. His companion wears a bright pink shawl and a bright pink lipstick, and they exchange opinions in measured, calm tones, hardly looking at one another, detached and aloof, like people who know one another too well and can hardly contain indifference and contempt. The fact that I have to inhale coughed-up air makes me feel grimy. My God, would they stop coughing, I can smell what they've had for breakfast, and for dinner the night before, it's oppressive. I hold my breath in automatic dread and disgust. The pettiness of it all, as we strive to pretend we're alone while in fact we're surrounded and closed in a small, horrid space until the end of the journey. No escaping.

I feel a bit better when I catch a glance of the Angel of the North up on the bank, and then, after a while, is the sea. Not long now.

New camera and birds watching

2010-03-29T09:25:00.000-07:00

Edinburgh is lovely, but no city smells the same way Sheffield does. The moment we get up onto the hill I can smell the moors, a clean, pure smell of good air from over the park, green and damp and refreshing.

When I get home, to Sheffield, this weekend, there is a delightful present waiting for me. Some weeks ago I bought a new camera on ebay, a used Olympus E510, with two lenses. And it's there, waiting for me, all ready to go. I can't wait to go outside and try it out, but first things first – for an hour I curl up with Skinnytoes and the instruction manual. Then we venture out, and snap, just to get a feeling of the camera. I immediately love the second zoom lens, which goes up to 150mm – all of the sudden great shots are much easier, and I spend a long time hunting small birds and squirrels. It's not until the day after the camera shows its real potential though. We go for a long and varied walk, starting off along the river, then climbing up through the forest towards the moors, across the moors into the forest again, and back at the river. There is a lot of bird activity, but spring is so late this year there is no foliage at all to obscure them from view. We catch a sight of a woodpecker, but he's too quick and too far away to be photographed. We get an unusual display of singing from three greyish-brown birds though, displaying and puffing up their chests in bramble bushes, unusually bold. They look sparrow-like, but sing prettily; later, after long consultations, we decide it was a dunnock.

Singing dunnock.

We're on the way back when we when the most exciting sighting occurs. We were criss-crossing fields on a steep slope and stop for a moment to look at a rabbits' den, when from the pine tree above us, noiselessly, a brown owl takes off and glides smoothly to the next group of trees below. I kneel down and start putting on the zoom lens when another one appears, and follows the same route. I look for them for a while but, slide down the slope and the noise I make falling scares them away, I see them slide glide even further down, and give up. We were already on the road when Skinnytoes spies one in the tree, a clump of brown+reddish feathers. I hold my breath and creep, but the owl sees me and looks down, straight at me, from its high perch. It's not bothered by my presence, though. What is, however, getting on its nerves is a group of small birds, perhaps blue tits, who are chirpig excitedly around it. It seems the owl is being mobbed. I watch it try to ignore them, half-closing its eyes like a lazy cat in the sun. But the birds are not giving up, and in the end the owl takes off in a proud, graceful way, and glides back up the slope and into the forest. At home we decide it must have been a tawny owl, and I am officially in love with my new camera.

Tawny owl looking regal.

Fear of heights and love of the sea

2010-03-29T08:28:00.000-07:00

For my friend's sake, I did it again, or half-did it rather; I climbed (or half-climbed) Arthur's Seat. At least this time the visibility was very good, and, to make it more interesting, instead of following the well-trodden footpath we scrambled up a steep slope. I was not impressed with how much rubbish I came across on the way up; but rubbish is material for another entry. The point is, we succeeded in making our way up to the top of the smaller of the two peaks, the one that looks like an iceberg in volcanic rock. My heart fluttered as my friend insisted on having a smoke with her feet dangling over a two hundred metre drop. I bravely sat there with her for a few minutes, wind elbowing me towards the edge, and then I remembered a description of the fear of heights I read once – it's not about being afraid of falling, but about being afraid that you're going to jump. Which I was contemplating in a detached, 'I wonder if I could fly' kind of way. So I backed away from the edge, took a few photos, and we started coming down, and the strong wind was making our eyes water.

Arthur's Seat in its cloudy glory.

The view of Edinburgh from over the edge.

Even though it was quite late in the day by then, we boarded the 41 bus to go to Cramond. I've been wanting to go there since I found out there is an island there you can go to when the tide is low, and it is quite cute too, apparently. We chose a bad time, and the bus took ages, picking up uniformed school kids from public schools and then dropping them off at various suburban locations. We did make it finally though, and it was worth it. The smell of the sea was overpowering, and the tide was just coming in. There were lots of birds foraging in the seaweeds, calling and flying low over the water. The beach is a nice spot, and the walkway to the island looked very inviting. Unfortunately we had missed the low tide, so we contented ourselves with watching it eat up the walkway greedily. I've not seen a tide move in so fast before, bubbling like a stream between the rocks.

Sunset over Firth of Forth as seen from Cramond.

It was getting darker, so we called at the friendly-looking pub in the village. To our horror, it turned out to be a Sam Smith pub though, serving electrically pumped mediocre beer which tasted of nothing and left no impression whatsoever. I was not aware of the existence of those pubs, so Linguatoes explained it all to me. They are just like Whetherspoons, but more cunning as they do not advertise their corporate identity on the door and fool you into believing you're entering a nice, homely pub. They are cheap, too, and only carry the approved range of beers and spirits. Perhaps I've become spoilt in Edinburgh, but the beer was truly awful and I left my pint unfinished.

Pink Edinburgh

2010-03-27T04:13:00.001-07:00

I have recently read a book which argued that nowadays girls are being bombarded with pinkness, and that choosing one dominant colour for everything from toys to clothes to furniture reinforces sexist stereotyping. I admit that her observations agree with my child-less view of the situation. Since I was little, I have been actively boycotting pink, aware of the connotations. Inspired by the book, I decided to hunt examples of pink-clad females of all ages to see if the author actually had a point.

Well, it's been fun, but it's been also much more difficult than I expected. It seems parents are much more immaginative than we give them credit for, and while pink did occur frequently as the colour of accessories, headbands, scooters etc., the actual clothing was varied and not dissimilar to the predominantly black and brown of an avarege Edinburghian. Arguably, I did not break into kindergardens or lurk around playgrounds; my hunting grounds were limited to the streets of the town centre. Arguably, when I did come accross children, they were probably born to middle class, stereotype-defying families. Nonetheless, I did really struggle to find examples of the full-blown pink princess type. I did, however, find some interesting pink adults. So, with no further ado, I bring to you - pink Edinburgh.

Chill-proof pink.

Pink on the go.

Daddy's girl pink.
'It's been a long day' pink.

'Please steal my ipod' pink.
Pink conference.

Spring pink.

Royal Botanical Gardens and other tourist adventures

2010-03-27T03:50:00.000-07:00

The morning was glorious and sunny when we woke up, so it seemed like the right sort of day to wander around the botanical gardens with a camera. I have been meaning to do that for a while now, so the group split and I wondered off on my own. There was plenty of bird activity around, so I started stalking.

A chaffinch fresh out of a fight.

Spring-time robin.

By the time I got to the gardens, the weather was already turning. I was standing on the hill overlooking the city, watching a mass of black cloud come in from the the West like a dark wing; I could see it was raining. For a few minutes all was glistening with brilliant sunshine, with the backdrop of darkening sky, each building of the city panorama below me defined as if on a coloured glass panel. But then it went dark and gloomy, and a bitter wind started.

A first peek of the glasshouses.

Old and new glasshouses.

I took refuge in the glass houses. The first one you come into is the highest glass house in the UK, with palms towering high above your head.

The tallest glasshouse in the UK.

As you stepped through the glass-panelled door, leaving the windy and chilly weather behind, you were immediately struck by the strong smell of flowers. They were standing everywhere in pots, lilacs, begonias, and lots of other plants I could not recognise, all in full, fragrant bloom. From there, a network of glasshouses started. What I enjoyed the most was that each glasshouse had a different, individual smell. In each, different plants were flowering.

Into the habitats.

There was one more enchanting surprise apart from the flowers. When I was exploring one of the habitats, I saw something move in between the leaves with the corner of my eye. I stopped and spied, and discovered it to be a little red breasted chirpy robin. Must have gotten in through the open windows, and was clearly having a time of its life. In fact, I soon saw there were more than one, and they were filling the air with singing. They must have been in there for a while, as they were completely tame and unbothered by the presence of people. It was a one in a lifetime photo opportunity. I waited for one bird to sit itself comfortably, and started inching my way towards it, snapping pictures throughout, expecting it to take off at any moment.

May I help you?

Ready for the close-up.

Preening.

But it continued to ignore me, or rather – to look at me with curiosity in between preening sessions. I got within 20cm of it before it decided I was getting too friendly, but in the meantime I got some really unique shots. Later I met a few blackbirds who've had a similar idea and were singing happily amongst tropical vegetation.

In the afternoon my herd of cats converged again in the National Museum of Scotland. The museum is based in a modernist building on the south side of the Royal Mile, its bunker-like shape made acceptable thanks to the sandstone coating. Inside it is quite spectacular in a modern, 'I'm an architect's drawing come live' sort of way.

The National Museum of Scotland in sepia.

Inside the National Museum of Scotland.

I was pleased with the way the displays were organised, especially the ones on 'Early People' (silly name for the section though, I was nearly expecting there to be a 'Late People' one, full of Mediterraneans on display). The main point was, the captions were not didactic, but written in plain language, and honest about the gaps in knowledge, or insufficiency of current archaeological data. When I was a child, I remember museum narratives would present you with information, and claim their take on the facts to be the only true and possible interpretation. I find it refreshing that now kids are encouraged to doubt and enquire.

Pictish writing.

The day finished with a lovely, rustic meal at Cafe Marlenne on Thistle Street. This tiny restaurant serves good, honest French food, hearty and tasty, and for a very reasonable price. I'd been such a full weekend even now thinking about it makes me feel tired, but it was great to have all of my friends invade!

The old woman who lived in a shoe

2010-03-27T03:29:00.001-07:00

And had so many children she honestly did not know where to put them. Well, I'd like to think that I've managed a bit better in arranging sleeping quarters for my five friends who came to visit me in Edinburgh, and in the minuscule flat. The evening scenes were reminiscent of the dwarfs from Disney's Snow White, although, in the end, no one slept in the cupboard.

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Layered jelly in all its splendour.

I celebrated their arrival by making layered jelly. Living alone brings out the Monica in me, seriously! Still, I've always wanted to make it. I remember it being one of the few desserts available when I was a child; even the most basic cafe always had tall glasses of layered jelly, or jelly cut up in cubes, standing in the refrigerated glass displays, gathering dust. It was served with an optional dollop of whipped cream. Which was not a great idea really, melting cream on warming up jelly is not terrible appealing. Still, it has sentimental value so as I was waiting for the guys and girls to arrive I played around with layers of green and yellow. You have to make a portion of jelly first, pour it into glasses, wait for it to cool, put it in the fridge, wait for it to set, and repeat. It takes a long time. Also, foolishly, I used all the glasses I had in the house in the process, so I had nothing to serve tea in when my long awaited guests finally made it there. Jelly requires sacrifices.

On the following day, childishness continued. First, we had a copious brunch in the National Gallery Cafe. Following a friend's suggestion I ordered a buttery, and very soon it turned out that one is not enough. Apparently from Aberdeen, the buttery is the ugly cousin of a croissant. It does actually look like a croissant that somebody sat on, but do not let the appearances fool you, for it is far superior to a croissant in taste. It is just more buttery I suppose! Highly recommended.

The Water of Leith.

From there we paid a brief visit to the Royal Mile and the castle, and then decided to walk along the river towards the sea. It was a lovely day, and the first time I have really felt the spring is on its way. I've never explored that section of the Water of Leith before, and now I'm looking forward to walking it again through small parks, along the water, and emerging into the quay.

Spring comes to Victoria Quay.

Somehow we were inspired to continue along the water (ok, it was my idea), which was not easy one you passed Victoria Quay. I was shocked to discover that the only way to get into the Britannia Royal Yacht is to pass through a commercial centre. You can't even see it from the embankment as the whole area around it is a closed car park with high fencing and scary signs. As much as I wanted to see it, I am now intent on boycotting it.

At the port.

Where the cormorans hang out.

We pushed on West along shopping malls, through roadworks, past massive siloses, and through new urban developments. Feeling teenagy and silly we snacked on goo eggs and kept walking in spite of everything until we reached Newhaven harbour. We were all tired and hungry by then, so the unexpected appearance of the lovely harbour was a delightful surprise. The sun was just beginning to descend, the bay was calm, and we could see clear across to the other side. It was irresistible. There was a pub, too. What was to be done? We got pints and sat on the cobbles by the water's edge to watch the tide lick the stones, and to admire the white lighthouse, and to spy on kayakers, and to let the view seep in.

Newhaven harbour.

Kayaking in the Firth.

It was excellent, nearly summery, with the low sun and the lazy sound of the waves, the sound of my Polish summers. The view was vast. We sat there and chatted until it got cool and moved on back to our communal burrow. Then we feasted on take away food, dragged out the mattresses, sprawled out and watched a weird Cohen brothers movie until late, sipping beer. When it finished, we all fell asleep in the same room in a big heap. It was practically a slumber party, a perfect end to a teenage day.

Dream-like vision of spider man and lighthouse at Newhaven.

Gastronomic evening with a fellow foodie

2010-03-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

This is probably the most enjoyable part of being in Edinburgh - that so many people find it worthwhile to come and visit. Even if it's just for one evening, as in the case of Wondertoes. The lovely maniac came up just to have dinner with me! I dragged her all around town to build up her appetite. A Scottish restaurant was the only option really, so we put our minds and cellphones together and booked a table for two at the Stac Polly, opposite the Lyceum Theatre. My guidebook was very complimentary, and we were very, very hungry.

The restaurant had a simple, relaxing decor - save for the saluting Scotsman figureby the bar, which was just silly, frankly. Apart from that, the enterior was a simple white with the furnishings all upholstered in the same tartan material. The short menu promised many meaty delights - we uniquevocally boycotted the vegetarian option. This was no evening for lentils.

It is good to hesitate over the menu knowing that the other party is willing to share their portion - four tastings for the price of two! I settled on fishcakes as a starter, but, alas, the dish was greener on the other side. Wondertoes picked a marinated pear wrapped in prosciutto and with a sea-salt dressing. For a moment, there was only silence as my tongue went to heaven and I had to wait for it to find its way home.

The demolition of a fishcake.

The 2005 Valpolicella we ordered went much better with the main dish. There was no point in resisting, the Scottish beef stake was calling to me. It could have just as well stepped out of the kitchen and asked to be grilled, like in the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy. And when it arrived, it was truly perfect.

Scottish beef at its best.

The dish had so many flavours, and each element had maintained its own structure. My camera steamed up and my eyes watered. I did not hesitate to try Wondertoes' duck with rasberry sauce either - it was fantastic for the first three bites, but then became too sweet. Which was just as well, as after all this I certainly had no space for dessert. I ate more meat in that one evening than I normally do in a month.

Having dinner with a fellow foodie and two cameras.

There was only one thing that could help us digest - the warm healing glow of whisky. Merrily we progressed to Jamaica street, and the Kay's Bar. It looked so inviting, and the cushion on the windowsill was free.

Kay's Bar glows amber.

The stuff dreams are made of.

I could really get used to it. The wonderful wax-whiskered bartender managed to comnprehend what it was I was after, and, yes, soon I was holding a wonderful, beautiful, aromatic glass of Sassicaia, whisky matured in wine barrels. Oh yum. That's the one on the left of the photo. The paler, floral one sadly I don't remember the name of, but I did end up drinking that one as well. Good times.

We had an amazing evening, very gluttonous and very chatty. The only way to finish this adventure was to have a nice, relaxed breakfast before Wondertoes had to catch her bus to the airport. Fortunately Cafe Centro on George Street opens at 8am, does very nice porridge and coffe and, depending on who is behind the counter, I can chat to them in Italian or in Polish, or both. And, the big windows offer a prime opportunity for observing suited and booted office workers on the way to their cells. Sadly, I had to join that stream, bid Wondertoes goodbye and hope we can repeat this some time soon!

Cafe Centro in the early morning.

Wind

2010-03-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

I don't do windy days. Maybe because my house was in a forest, wind always meant the natural order of things being turned on its head. It meant disturbance, noise, falling trees, circling leaves, upset birds.

St. John's Episcopal Church being spooky.

Edinburgh is apparently the windiest city in the UK. This is one thing that does not agree with me. Since yesterday night, the wind has been upon us. The clouds were streaming past us on the way back from the restaurant, bright orange against a black sky. It gave me the creeps, it's like a cheap camera trick in a horror movie, but it is very convincing when it is happening for real, the sky streaming overhead, the buildings eerie and empty, the streets deserted... All that inspired me and Wondertoes to take some ghost-like photographs, and warm up our chilled tremulous hearts with the amber glow of whisky.

Turned into ghosts, me and Wondertoes hover above the sidewalk.

But today the wind continued, and stronger. As I was trying to focus on the numbers and letters on the screen, it started howling in the cracks of the windows, and rattling the blinds against the glass. I continued to ignore its showing-off outside, the throwing of plastic bags into the air, swirling them around the roofs, tangling them in trees. So it started hammering its head against the wall, blow after blow after blow. I knew I would not get away. The sky was all streams of clouds, warped, fluorescent. It got darker, people left, I had to go home. I braced myself against the wind, but it knew, and as I stepped outside it let off, and pretended to be docile. It was warm, which made it worse. I was prepared for an attack, for icy fists, and instead I got insidious fingers, crawling around my neck, gently tugging my coat, like a creepy mugger you can't shake off. It was really getting to me.

I got off the bus in the city centre, and started walking home, the wind by my side, in my face, all around me. It made me feel dizzy, lose orientation. When the gusts were stronger my bones would evaporate, and my head would turn into a balloon, and just bob between my shoulders, helplessly. I was going to be swept away, I knew it. But then it would stop, and I'd turn into lead, unable to move my body which became heavy and lazy, as if there was hot honey in my veins. It took me a month to get to my door, and my hands were shaking, and my knees were wobbly when I walked up the stairs. The wind shut the door for me, and the last creepy finger ran along my spine, which was wet and cold with sweat.

Windsweapt New Town.

The weatherman tells me the wind is going to be even worse tomorrow. I may have to call in sick.

Oxford Bar

2010-03-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

Oxford Bar on Young Street.

Now here is a really nice local pub. It is so local, in fact, that when I walked in, on my own, I had that immediate first impression of treading on someone else's territory. The tap room was full, mostly with middle aged men, standing arround the small bar, one eye on the footy, one eye on me, pints in hand. I can't say that as I stepped in conversations stopped, toothpics were chewed and a lonely wolf howled in the distance, but I did feel I was intruding. Well, too bad, this was were I made my appointment, so this was where I was going to stay. The other room was empty but for a group of young German tourists talking in hushed voices. I took my time before returning to the tap room, had a look around the bleak walls and faded photos, realised I could not put it off any longer and went to get a half of Belhaven Best. I was curious to try it as I've been reading all about the brewery at work, and it is made just a few miles from Edinburgh. Just as I was sitting down with my frothy glass others arrived, and I got distracted from actually tasting it, but I do remember it was smooth and nice.

The busy tap room.

I really don't like the term 'old man pub' - it sounds so derogatory - but in the case of the Oxford Bar, well, it is fitting. It is a relaxed, old fashioned place, and has the air of old bachelorhood about it - they've let themselves down a bit, could do with a good clean, but it has good core values and can probably mend a sink. I'm mixing my metaphors here, but you get the idea. The pub's claim to fame is being the favourite hang out of Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus - again, I hope this means more to you than it does to me. As far as I'm concerned, it was chilled out, had good beer, and would make a decent local - if I had not already given my heart to Kay's Bar.

Suspicious locals.

Green tea and murder

2010-03-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday night train journeys are never a good idea. The carriages are packed to the limit, people are tired and disheartened and rude, it's dark outside, you're too tired to read, but not tired enough to sleep. The next day you can still feel it in your bones, the body heavy with sleep when the alarm goes off and no, you can't snooze it, you've got to be at the office damn it. Fortunately the beginning of the weekt got better as more caffeine entered my bloodstream, and as the weather improved outside the window. It was nice enough by the end of the afternoon to put sneakers on and jog gently downstream, along the Water of leith, looking out for birds and listening to the city, distant through the trees. I walked the last bit, enjoying the sun and the breath of spring in the air. And, enjoying the anticipation of a book, waiting for me to have a shower, make a cup of green tea and curl up in front of the gas fire for a dip into the fifties. Skinnytoes introduced me to Raymond Chandler, and I am enjoying this new discovery. These are prime detective novels, the original stuff. The man talks little, is tough on the outside and soft on the inside. The dames are beautiful, spoilt and heartless. Everyone smokes, the rich are very rich, the poor very poor. It's a world of chrome, wood and nylon, of pigskin suitcases and golden cigarette holders. His detailed descriptions situate everything perfectly, and the narrative unravels in unexpected directions. Last time I checked the dame was lying on the bed in a pool of blood, the husband had fled, and the hero was handcuffed to a chair and looking into the bloodshot eyes of an overworked, short-tempered copper. The book is calling, the green tea is mashing, time to have a moment to myself.

Darbyshire bird-spotting

2010-03-14T15:48:00.000-07:00

Cold but sunny, the day turned increasingly gloomy the further into Peak District we drove. We were too far to turn back now, so we decided to walk along the river away. The air was full of disapproving squeals as the birds were being blown out of the trees by the violent gusts of wind. With every blow the air would fill with their black shapes, and they would circle for a while like leaves caught in an air current, before settling back down grudgingly, only to be forced airborne again after a few minutes.

We were hoping to see first signs of spring, but the fields and trees were just as barren as they were in the middle of winter, only the slightly fuller buds betraying that it wasn't just out waiting for a warmer weather front. We were turning back when we heard a strange sound, a bird call so bizarre it sounded electronic to me ears. A big white and black shape was circling above a field, looping this way and that, in quick, violent jerks, showing off its amazing flying abilities.

I could not resist, and started walking closer, all the while fitting the zoom lens onto the camera. The bird suddenly sat down, giving me chance to spot it properly – I've never seen one like that before, with the oddly shaped wings and a distinctive tuft on the head. Soon it was off again and I climbed and than jumped a dry stone wall to get a better look. I thought it was trying to impress the female with its aerial acrobatics; she was standing in the field all the while, watching, until I got too close and both of them took off and moved to the adjacent field.

Later Skinnytoes' dad told me they were lapwings, and I'm looking forward at bumping into them again when my new camera arrives. Perhaps than I will be able to do justice its green, iridescent plumage, which in the poor light of the evening looks dull and monochrome on the shots I got.

Leith

2010-03-11T14:54:00.000-08:00

Aslightly topsy view of Victoria Quay.

The Scottish Government has quite a few buildings around Edinburgh , with the most spectacular being St Andrew’s House, overlooking the train station, it’s art-deco form seemingly growing out of sheer rock. The main building of the administration, however, is Victoria Quay, a new building on the site of a disused dock.

The picture of the Queen, discreetly placed in the lobby.

The place does have a rather marine feel, and is nicely isolated from its surroundings by a row of Georgian warehouses converted into flats and restaurants. The main stairwell resembles the inside of a lighthouse, and there is a lot of open space in the building, with light-wells, glass corridors, and open staircases which wobble precariously but look pretty.

The main stariwell.

And, if you’re office is on the right side of the building, you can look straight into Leith docs and spy on massive oceanic transport ships loading and unloading, coming and leaving, followed by flocks of wailing seagulls… And, cradling your warm cup of tea, you can look upon the open sky above the sea and the waters of the dock, swept by cold wind and rain while you’re all safe and cosy on the other side of the glass window. I think it’s a great place to work in, introverted, modern, and exposed to the elements. As a result, I spend the best part of my working day staring dreamingly out of the window…

Leith, the canal enters the docks.

The dreamlike atmosphere of the day continued as with a friend I transferred from the steel-and-glass Victoria Quay into the cosy and quirky Roseleaf Bar and Café. The interior won me over instantly. When you look around the place, it is obvious it is someone’s brain-child, the fruit of many a sleepless night spent planning, plotting, lovingly designing every detail… The speakers wore hats. There was a collection of tacky porcelain animals above the bar. There were antique lamps, mismatched chairs, and candles in rose-decorated teacups. Artificial flowers wound themselves around the bar, all dark wood and tarnished mirrors. But what really made me convinced this was a good place to spend an evening with was the answer to my question about white wine by the glass – they had five on the go… Five! Unheard of. And none of them was Chardonnay.

A few hours and more than a few wine glasses later me and my friend decided to give food a chance, and we were presented with copies of National Geographic, with the menu stuck neatly between the pages. They were historical copies, from the 1960s, and we spent a long time marvelling at the passing of time. The magazine we were leafing through was more than fifty years old, this is two generations, but it seems it is destined to retire as a menu holder.

Blast from the past.

Seafood pelasures

2010-03-10T13:46:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my family I made a great culinary discovery yesterday evening. They were leaving the following day, so a restaurant meal was in order. For reasons known best to them, they decided on a French restaurant – as if, living in Paris , they were not getting enough of that already! In fact, when I called up to book the table I was greeted with a cheerful ‘Bonsoir!’, and automatically cringed. Their French guidebook recommended the restaurant describing it as ‘the real thing’. ‘Relax, you’re at home!’ was the upshot of the review. Oh well, I thought, it will be an experience. Fortunately, at the last moment they changed their minds, and decided to go a bit more local. Again depending on the infallible Routard, we booked a place at the Fishers in the City.

Thistle Street looking west.

Thistle street, where the restaurant is located, is one of the two pedestrianised streets running parallel to the busy main streets of the New Town. I do like how that part of the city is organised – the grid structure is very convenient, but the style of the architecture, with relatively low houses made of the usual grey stone, makes it feel homely rather than uber-organised. Thistle street turned out to be a hot-spot for restaurants in the city, and, as we progressed slowly towards our venue, we browsed a massive selection of menus, from Tex Mex and Thai to bar food and Italian. Even though it was Wednesday night, lots of the places were full of people, always a promising sign.

Thistle Street looking east.

Fishers was easy to find, with the banners outside resembling sails, and large, tall windows which were already filling up with guests. We nestled into a comfy corner, and focused on the menus. The next two hours were full of hedonistic pleasures. I usually don’t go on about restaurants – in fact, it’s Skinnytoes who is known for remembering what we’ve had to eat four years ago in a certain small bistro in Spain, while, as far as I’m concerned, he could be making all up. But this time, I was really impressed. The oysters were nothing like the usual bags of salty water I have become used to expecting – they were meaty and full of flavour, and so fresh you could still taste the sea. When the main dish of fish arrived, our table became suddenly silent, and for a good half hour each one of us methodically savoured every single shred. The fish were done to perfection, and all the side-dish vegetables were ripe and flavoursome. Even the bread was excellent. We washed it all down with crispy, mineral Sancerre, undid the top buttons, and sat back in utter satisfaction.
Highly recommended!

Scotland's second national drink - Irn-Bru

2010-03-10T01:45:00.000-08:00

The world has Coca-Cola, but Scotland has Irn-Bru. I have seen it before, ‘down south’, squeezed in between the other soft drinks, looking unassuming. But here, Irn-Bru is King. My office colleagues seem to send down gallons of the stuff a day (to be fair, I would as well if I had to stare at the same spreadsheet week after week). Daily I spot people cradling bottles and cans of the fluorescent orange drink on the streets. Apparently, when the first McDonalds opened in Scotland, it was boycotted until they included Irn-Bru on their menu. But it’s not just anecdotal evidence which abounds. My economic reports tell me that, so far Irn-Bru has managed to resist takeovers, and it has the better part of Scotland’s fizzy drink ‘share of throat’. Talk about David vs Goliath!

The achievement is all the more surprising when you consider the taste of the drink. It is VILE (and here legions of Scots stampede across my desk and squash me to death in sacred rage). Ok, well, maybe not vile, but definitely… different. Have you ever had any of those orange-flavoured vitamin tablets, without actually diluting them in water, just putting them on your tongue for it to fizz away? Or, for the Poles out there, do you remember Vibovit, the vitamin supplement powder you could shake out of the package straight into your mouth? Well, it tastes nothing like it, but this is the closest I can get. I guess you just have to try it – preferably when there are no Scots around to feel offended by your reaction.

I guess it’s a bit like Marmite – you love it or you hate it – but with more nationalism. An English friend told me about the reaction of his Scottish girlfriend when she found a lonely Irn-Bru can in a shop in Spain - she was over the moon and practically in tears. He had never tried the stuff before, so, grudgingly, she offered him a sip. When he performed the usual ‘oh my God this is terrible get it off my tongue now!’ pantomime, she was so offended she snatched it out of his hand and refused to ever sleep with him again. Well, I may be exaggerating a little bit, but the fact is the guy is now hooked on Irn-Bru, and their relationship is progressing smoothly.

What satisfies my inner ad maniac is also the funny, in-your-face and sometimes offensive advertising Irn-Bru is known for. In the past, it proclaimed the health benefits of its iron content, and was actually called Iron Brew. It was pointed out that the name is misleading as the drink is not actually brewed at all, and certainly not from iron, which is why the truncated Irn-Bru emerged. Today, it depends on the image of the no-nonsense, masculine, brick and steel grim North for its appeal, and it is working. The advertising slogan ‘Made in Scotland from Girders’ is timeless, and their ad campaign of double entendres featuring animals is just my level – a prawn proclaiming it’s into Irn-Bru and hard core prawn sites, or a chick saying there is nothing like Irn-Bru when you’ve just been laid, well, c’mon, it’s not exactly high brow, but it does create a really appealing contrast with the family-oriented, white-toothed, girl-next-door sexy Coke ads. It won them multiple advertising awards, and, well, it makes me chuckle.

On boarding schools and other conspiracy theories

2010-03-07T12:11:00.000-08:00

No longer does the hill mock me, I have conquered both of its vulcanic tops. The other day, as millions of people before me, I climbed Arthur's Seat. I still think it is rather amazing to have what is basically a mountain in the very middle of the city. They seem to even graze sheep there from time to time - the grass is cropped short, and there is other, hard evidence as well.

Between the peaks of Arthur's Seat.

In spite of the weather not being perfect there were a lot of people around, and in fact the further we went the more I found myself worrying about the obvious erosion of the hills. The short, weak grass is no match for thousands of hard-soled trekking boots, and people keep making their own paths, so that from above it seems there is more bare ground than vegetation. On the very top, even the hard bazalt is made shiny and smooth with the steps of countless tourists. And so, moved by pity, I shall not climb the hill any more - a good excuse, mm? Well, maybe just once more, but that's it.

On the way back I went to explore a building I spotted the other day from the train - well, spotted is not exactly the right words, as this is an immense structure, as big as any palace, and, standing on a hill, with its tall spires, it's visible from all around. Still, its purpose proved mysterious - Google Maps do not label it, and Google Earth has four (!!!) photographs. Four. A corner shop in an Icelandic fishing village has more coverage than that place. And, all the photographs available are taken from the outside, from behind bars. I was very curious.

It turns out this amazing building is a private school called Fettes College Prime, and the internet informs me that it was the romping groung of the fictional James Bond, and sadly the painfully real Tony Blair. The school does not have a website accessible through ordinary search engines, and very little is written about it at all, which I find mightily suspicious in this era of freedom of information. It is an all-boys school, of course, which makes me snigger as I am quite fluent in the private lives of the sweaty pubescent pupils of all-male private schools thanks to the insightful books of Stephen Fry (think Daisy Chain). It is a good idea in a way - lock them in with their stinking armpits, awkward movements and greasy hair until they metamorphose.... sadly, for the most part, into posh egomaniacs.

I spent a few weeks in the buildings of a private school once, many years ago. I wnt on an English language course/adventure holidays, and it was one of the most bizzare experiences of my life. I was fascinated by the architecture, very similar to the one of the building I was looking at, massive, tall, gothic and dream-like. Just as the pupils during term time, we were confined to the school grounds, which were immense, the school itself in the middle of nowehere - to this day I have no idea where it was actually located, it was beyond geography. I spent hours wondering the empty dormitories - the whole school was left open for access, probably because no-one realised any kid would be interested in exploring it. Little did they know! It was dehumanising, the scale of it, the high ceilings, the lack of privacy - we, and so also the pupils, slept in plywood cubicles with no doors, constantly assaulted by the sound of one another's activities. I searched for signs of individuality, and found few - some stickers above a bed, a notebook left behind in a drawer... What a horrible, unnatural place to grow up in.

The gate was ajar, although held together with a loose chain. I resisted the temptation to go in and investigate; there was something eery about the large, empty lawn, and also the signs on the fence suggested CCTV, imminent arrest followed by painful interrogation or possibly being shot in the knee. All I will say is that all the cashiers at the nearby Waitrose had very posh accents, as did the kiddies playing football on the pitch. I shruddered as I thought that I was looking at the next generation of CEOs, ministers and corporate lawyers.

Fortunately there were things to take my mind off the sad realities of the democratic world, and I spent a happy half hour annoying swans. Annoying, as I would come to the very edge of the water, they would speed in my direction all puffed up and pretty, and than I would fail to meet my end of the bargain (no bread). I stood the snarling and took pictures instead.

Swans in Inverleith Park.

Missing friends

2010-03-07T00:30:00.000-08:00

It was the first time for a while I've been able to sit down by myself and think, between the office and friends my days have been unusually full of sound and action. My break from the world was taking place in a restaurant in the Royal Botanical Gardens' building, a beautiful modern structure of wood and stone, very Nordic and very functional – save for the excellent but useless wooden staircase, which was closed for repairs, its harmonious structure being supported by crude wooden poles wedged comically under the normally free-hanging steps, basically ruining the whole idea, making it into an unplanned mockery of modern eco architecture.

Royal Botanical Gardens building and the beautiful but useless staircase.

Royal Botanical Gardens, the building's ceiling.

It was nice to sit there, munch a scone, sip tea, look up on the ceiling (which was very nice as you can see). Paristoes and Corsicatoes were exploring the gardens, the Polishtoes team was in town, and I could smile upon them benevolently in my silence.

It's late now, and I can hear my friends stirring in the darkness, settling to sleep. They are going back home tomorrow, and I will miss their company, we've had such a good time, days really packed with being alive. And such nice foods, too – twice I was treated to a ready-made dinner upon returning home from work, and twice it was the Polishtoes' amazing beef goulash, thick and tomatoey and generally mmmmmmm. Friday night, when we combined it with tortillas, sour-cream and beer, was a feast.

Friday munchings - Polish bigos and sundries.

We all took the train to South Queensferry to look at the bridge today. The little town which nestles in between the two bridges - the Forth Railway ridge, and the more modern Road Bridge - was a nice surprise. The majority of the buildings were from the 17th century, and the place breathed the air of suburban affluence, and was generally pleasant to look at. The receding tide uncovered the pillars of the structure, making the bridge look even bigger. We walked all around, admiring it from this point and that, listening to the song of the trains as they entered the network of steel beams.

Forth Railway Bridge, curtesy of Polishtoes.

The bridge, a boat and a train.

The calls echoed through the bay, followed by thundering as the trains went past and above us. Sections of the bridge were clad in plastic, perhaps for restoration, making it look like and unfinished Lego construction. It was a good place to see, with the expanse of the water, and the grey clouds playing above and again mirrored in the silvery bay, the construction harmonising somehow with the landscape, a good place to see.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

2010-03-04T09:23:00.000-08:00

The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art has been re-hung to celebrate it’s 50^th anniversary. I only found out about it as I was waiting for my friends in the small and chilly hall of the main building (I like how, in modern art galleries, every-day objects become recontextualised and you find yourself admiring the ingenuity of the metal coat hanger in the hall). What that means is that works than never make it out of the archives are uniquely available for viewing, and this is a Good Thing.

The museum’s collection is split between the main building and the Dean Gallery on the opposite side of the road. The location of the museums is very unassuming – they are housed in grand buildings in a very quiet part of town, on the Northern side of the Water of Leith, across Dean Bridge. Surrounded by extensive gardens, they feel isolated and calm. In fact, it was late afternoon when we were there, and there were only a few people inside, contributing to the atmosphere of a place beyond time.

The collection in the main building is just big enough to be skimmed through in a an hour, which was how long we had until closing time. One of the sections celebrated drawing, and there were some really unique pieces to be seen. Out of loyalty, I have to mention Klimt’s sketch of a couple, the woman heavily pregnant, lowering their heads as if facing an invisible judge. But there were works of many artists I have never heard of before, and whose names I will not remember, but whose drawings really touched me. There was a work called ‘The Hokey Pokey Girl’, all bizarre and warped, the girl’s face all eyes and mouth, like a child’s drawing. I passed it without thinking, but then felt compelled to come back to it, and the atmosphere of the scene, the characters of the people shown, the murky light somehow conveyed, the quasi-illicit meaning of it all made clear in the ticket seller’s face emerging from the shadows, all done in simple pen, really came through for me. There was also a drawing the title of which I have forgotten, but it depicted a group of young men standing around, perhaps in a courtyard, their bodies close, the drawing breathing the air of autumn, of teenage youth… It was very good. And, yes, a charcoal sketch of a fat female body emerging from the darkness, pale and old, with just enough light for the viewer to be able to make out the contours of this expanse of flesh. Finally, there was a simple piece of A4 printer paper, blue-tacked to a plank and covered in glass. In the middle of the page was a tiny image, perhaps 2x3 cm, and it looked just like home print-out of a scan of an old photograph. But it was not – it was, instead, a micro-drawing, done by hand, in pencil, by a man my age. It was so detailed and so minute my eyes watered when I tried to focus on the features of the individuals, the drawing pretending to be a school photograph of a class of children taken in the nineteen thirties. Madness.

There was no shortage of typical modern art gallery sort of stuff which makes you either shrug and go away or, well, take frantic notes I suppose. Black square on white background sort of thing, and I admit to walking past it without looking. The current display clearly shows some groundbreaking moments – things that were important as they were being done for the first time, like a 1x1 study of a London street, which IS a replicate of a piece of London street, bizarrely hanging on a wall (‘Addison Crescent Study’ by Boyle Family). We spent a long time looking at Douglas Gordon’s ‘List of Names’, where he charts his life through the names of people he remembers meeting, writing them down in identical font in long columns running the height of the gallery. Some are misspelled, some half-forgotten, some we even recognised. It inspired me to do a similar exercise if I ever find myself with a pen, a paper, and a lot of time.

The best thing about the gallery is that it is right on the Water of Leith, and allows for a thoughtful, refreshing walk home through the green.

Living in denial

2010-03-02T06:57:00.000-08:00

It’d been a month, and I had not managed to get to the sea, even though the shore of the Forth of Firth is only a mile from my house in a straight line. An attempt was made the day before, in spite of the unconvincing weather forecast – I wrapped up warm, prepared to face the wind and chill, stepped outside and had immediately had to fight the urge to step back in. In the face of gale force winds flagellating my skin with frozen rain, I had to admit I was in denial and we went to the National Gallery instead. The weather was much more bearable when observed from behind the great glass windows of the National Gallery café.

Inclement weather. Brr.

National Gallery cafe.

It was a perfect gallery day, and we spent a good hour in the Italian section. For a long time we studied ‘the Triptych’ by Joos van Cleve – it abounds in interesting and humorous scenes cleverly hidden in the fantastic landscape which form the backdrop to a stylised scene of Jesus being taken off the cross. There is also a minor work by da Vinci, a Madonna which was displayed without any protection in spite of already having been stolen once in 2003.

After a while I pretended the weather had improved and dragged Skinnytoes towards the meadows.

Very patient, very cold dogs.

We walked through the university area, reached the Meadows and gave up – it was just too bloody cold.

Sticky buns.

Fortunately another café presented itself, and we munched lovely fruit buns made on the spot by the smiling baker.

Birthday at the sea

2010-03-01T13:57:00.000-08:00

For my birthday I, Skinnytoes and my Polish-toed friends went to Dunbar. I guess there are more exciting places around Edinburgh, but this one a) is near (20 min by train) and b) is at the sea. We arrived at lunchtime, and I herded the cats towards the fish and chips shop I could smell all the way from the station – fish and chips by the sea being an absolute must.

Cute and quaint Dunbar High Str.

The shop was quaint and old fashioned, split in two sections – the takeaway and the café – with a small metal gate with a ‘do not enter’ sign in between the two areas. We took the sign seriously and kept going outside the café and in again through the other door when we wanted to get a better look at the menu, sit down, and go to the bathroom. It must have look like a scene from Benny Hill. In the end cod and chips were purchased and we walked to the harbour to munch and feed seagulls, which were vicious.

Dunbar harbor (courtesy of Polishtoes).

I have never seen a North Sea-facing harbour before. It was high walled against the storms, and full of tiny fishing boats, some hardly bigger than a Mini Cooper. It was hard to believe anyone would want to venture out into the sea on those, especially considering the heavy swell and the sharp-toothed rocks along the shore. And yet later on we saw one of those toy boats brave the waves – we could hardly see it at times, it was so small the tide hid it from our view – approach one of the rocks, plant lobster cages and speed back to the harbour again, all in ten minutes or so. The only apparently stationary thing on the boat was the skipper, who was managing to keep perfectly vertical even when the tiny boat danced underneath him like it was made of cork.

At the beach (courtesy of Polishtoes).

We spent quite a long time observing the tide coming into one of the bays. Collecting mussels and seaweed, we watched the sea inch in slowly, and then quicker, until my friends got soaked by a sneaky wave and we decided to move on. A few hours later, the beach was all swallowed up, and the tide was boiling between the rocks.

The shore (courtesy of Polishtoes).

There were lots of birds I have only rarely or never seen before, and I wished I’d taken binoculars and my bird book. We certainly spotted eider ducks popping happily up and down further away from the shore, out of the reach of the breaking waves. I love their ergonomic design and mad colouring of the males, they look like art-nouveau teapots.

Wind-chilled, we headed back to town for a tea, but there still was time before our return train, and the sea was calling. With Skinnytoes we spent a good half hour watching the waves crash violently against the concrete shore in town. It was better then fireworks! Skinnytoes managed to snap this amazing photograph of the wave just crashing in as I try and escape being soaked, and scream out in glee.

Skinnytoes' amazing shot of the incoming wave.

Some of the houses were right at the sea front, completely exposed to the water and wind, the waves licking their walls and crashing against the windows. Living in such a house must feel like being on a ship, I can’t imagine how they sleep – I would be terrified that at any moment my house will be uprooted and washed away into the depths. Perhaps they have interesting dreams.

The birthday day culminated in a massive bottle of Prosecco, and a chocolate cake – which I put my face into. Aaaah, the satisfaction.

Rainy Stockbridge Saturdays

2010-03-01T13:49:00.000-08:00

Increasingly I realise that on a rainy, lazy Saturday, it’s good to live in Stockbridge. Even excluding the chain coffee shops, you are still spoilt for choice in terms of late breakfast providers. We wandered into a nice looking deli just past the coop, and found it to make very nice coffee, and supreme almond croissants with a marzipan heart.

The promising but disappointing Stockbridge deli. Still, good croissants!

Skinnytoes was contentedly leafing through the newspapers the deli provides while I explored the contents of the shelves. Unfortunately, the products on offer were more show than substance, and on closer examination the deli resembled an ‘ethical isle’ of any supermarket, with a lot of pre-packaged ethically stamped pastas and muslies, soft drinks (including Coke) in old fashioned glass bottles, white organic loaves… The wine section was the biggest disappointment, its selection dominated by New World corporations, and no organic wine to be seen. What saves this place is the meet and cheese counter, but all in all I was left wondering how it managed to compete with the supermarket next door when offering practically identical products at much higher prices.

Bread was the first thing on the mental shopping list, and the baker’a wagon just pulled in as we approached a shop I spotted some time ago, boasting it provided ‘the best bread in Edinburgh’. Its boast seemed to have some purchase on reality, as the queue started half the way down the street, and making the bread delivery a logistical puzzle and resulting with crates of baked goods being stacked all around the waiting customers.

The bread queue (the irony!).

I picked up a French-style loaf, which proved heavenly although a bit too sweet, and a dark, dark brown loaf of organic rye. Now that was a Loaf, so heavy and dense I felt like I was carrying a sack of flour around. One slice of this is as filling as three slices of white bread, but it does require a good bread knife and strong teeth!

I could not help myself and I nipped to the cheesemongers as well, and spent nearly twenty pounds on two pieces of cheese, and a chorizo sausage. It is scary how quickly I can ruin my weekly budget when faced with a piece of Manchego!

The place of financial temptation.

For my birthday treat, Skinnytoes booked a table in a tiny restaurant just a few steps from my house, called, appropriately, the Stockbridge Restaurant. Down a flight of steps and overlooking a tiny basement garden, the restaurant is just one, nicely decorated room, and it was full to the brim. We sat in a cosy nook to enjoy a very reasonably priced set lunch menu , and a less reasonable bottle of white (priceless). I loved the beetroot and pigeon starter which, as Skinnytoes pointed out, would not have been out of place on a Polish menu.

My perspective on prospective restaurant visitors.

To end this gastronomic day, in the evening we headed out for some beers. Stupidly I agreed to meet some friends in a town centre pub, and it was all the horribleness you could expect, from mediocre beer to smelly bathrooms to shouting, sweating, swaying crowds of unpleasant people. After a while we made up an excuse and finished the evening in a pub I’ve read about in one of my guidebooks. Two steps from my house, Kay’s Bar is in an old tiny corner house on Jamaica Street, and it is everything town centre pubs are not. It has discreet lighting, good beer and very nice whisky, and professional staff. Two elderly dogs roam the grounds, and old barrels decorate the walls. The small room at the back is lined with books, and we settled on a comfy window sill with contented sighs.

In memory of Alexandra

2010-02-25T13:46:00.000-08:00

She was standing in the rain, and crying. I did not expect it. Such a strong, commanding woman, full of witty insightful ironic comments, with her hand gestures and an expressive face. From the first minute you spoke to her it was clear she would take no bullshit from anyone, she lived a life of her own choosing. Small and slim, with a very white skin and very dark hair and a heart-shaped face, in her long unusual jacket, a small black hat, moving through the streets with purpose and determination. And now she was standing here, in the rain, with me, and the tears were just escaping out of their own accord.

Her child had died. A healthy child, born to a healthy mother, died because she was refused a caeserien. She is a pettite woman, and her child was well over four kilogrames, and she was two weeks overdue, and she had been in labour for fourty hours. Still, they refused to give her the caeserian, and the child was killed by an unskilled doctor, with forceps.

And this happened here, in Edinburgh, in the best maternity ward, in the 21st century, to a healthy mother and a healthy child. Forceps are considered dangerous and antiquated in most countries, but are still widely used in the UK. Small women are adviced to have a caesarian in other countries, but in the UK the NHS is trying to keep down the costs - a caesarian is twice as expensive as a forceps birth - and the dangerous instrument is used instead. And a healthy child is injured, and dies.

'You never get over it. You try to understand it, but you never get over it. It's a piece of you, a child you carry in you for nine months, you develop a relationship, and it dies. To have a healthy child murdered, and we don't even know if there is going to be an investigation. In this country you put on a white coat and you can kill without prosecution.'

She is so hurt, there is nothing in her face, in her body, but the pain. Although she keeps apologising, I am glad she is talking to me.

'This country is so good at being this' - she gestures to the beautiful buildings around us as we stand on a street in central Edinburgh. 'A facade. At pretending to care - about human rights, about social justice, about health of the citizens - and than it does nothing. It's the pits. In any central European country, this would not have happened. In Hungary, I know the medical system is corrupt, but if you pay, you are going to get service. No-one will risk killing a healthy baby, because no more patients will come to them. Here they are not accountable. It's an accident.'

In the end she has no more to say, and again we hug, and I hope for her future. I watch her run accross the street, dark and small, and when she's gone behind the corner I start to cry.

I wouldn't have normally written about this, but Beatrix wants as many people to know as she can. She wants to create a media storm so that an enquiry is held into her child's killing. She has just interviewed for the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1253013/Forceps-killed-baby-doctors-using-them.html Please read.

Galleries for a snowy day

2010-02-24T10:49:00.000-08:00

When it hit, I was ready. Wooly cardigan - check. Red scarf - check. Red beret - check. Umbrella - check. Gloves - half check (only have one). And step outside, into the snow. Ah, yes, it is not over yet. The various monuments along Princes Street did not look as impressive as usual with the wet snow heaped on their heads.

On the way to work...

The blizzards raged throughout the day, but by the time I was free of the keyboard and screen again all had turned into mush. People were hurrying in the rain, hiding their faces in upturned collars and generally struggling to ignore the outdoors which was violently upsetting their plan by turning umbrellas inside out and negotiating its chilly fingers through the sleeves and into the cosy inside of their jackets. As I was walking down Hanover Street I could not help myself and stepped into the cozy vegetably artsy interior of Henderson's Shop and Bistro.

Henderson's interior.

It is a lovely shop, with lovely food, and lots and lots of tasty healthy and indulgent treats. As I was browsing exciting exotic chocolates I had a chat with, hm, well this is a family business, and she is the aunt, so perhaps in some way is a co-owner? Either way, she told me that the business has actually been going on since the seventies. I know Edinburgh is a wealthy city, but I still found it very impressive. The shop has a restaurant downstairs which I intend to explore once rainy weekend.

Stocked up on salad and Chili Chocolate I headed back out and continued down Hanover street, shedding flakes of a delicious spanakopita I got to keep me going until dinner time. I was heading for the Scottish Gallery on Dundas Street. The area seems to be popular with art dealers, and I made some mental notes for when I am rich and famous.

On Dundas Street.

The gallery itself turned out to be a commercial venture as well. In it's small, quiet interior people were working busily on their computers, surrounded by works of modern art. Some pictures had red stickers on the name tags to indicate they have been sold. I got a glance or two.

Inside the Scottish Gallery.

I was the only visitor, and hesitated for a second, but then decided not to give in to the paranoia. I hung up my coat and scarf (at last reasonable people who provide a jacket hanger at the door), put down my umbrella, and inquired politely if it was ok to take photographs. We exchanged lukewarm smiles, I have been acknowledged. I could commence my vieving.

Winter fields.

I know someone who would like this one - it's called 'Remembering the Grand Canal'. She got the colour of the water spot on.

Most of the upper floor was dedicated to the work of Alexandra Knubley. I have never seen a technique like hers before, a combination of oil paints and beeswax which allows her to draw dramatic lines through the very fabric of the painting. Some of the paitings were much to harsh for me, painting architecture with this technique makes it too unintelligible for me. What it is wonderful at, though, I thought, was depicting forests. I am aware that I am biased. Yes, there is no view as beautiful in my eyes as a sunlit forest floor. These particular paitings made me gaze and smile, and feel relaxed, and at home. And they were genuinely beautiful.

My favourite two.

The lower floor hosted a variety of art objects, from beautiful to adorable to just really bizzare. I loved the Japanese vase, and was not surprised to see the 'do not touch' sign near it, it was utterly strokeable, and hypnotising in the precision with which it was made, hard to believe it was sculpted with human hands.

A Japanese vase at the Scottish Gallery.

There was a fair bit of jewellery as well, and I was quite touched with these fragile, laborious and very disposable paper creations.

Paper jewellery.

And there was a lot of purely bizzare stuff as well, such as the 'The shooting of Jeasus', or a distrubing pile of pottery called 'How we live in the suburbs'. You don't want to know what they cost.

The shooting of Jesus (I'm not kidding).

How we live in the suburbs. Apparently.

A golden finger sticking out of the wall, a porcelain fig leaf with earrings, head-shaped mugs, you know, the usual array of decontextualised weirdness. There were also quite a few objects resembling pieces of ultra-new or degrading machinery and materials. If I had a catalogue, it would probably be saying something like 'The artist was inspired by the lethal clenliness of industrially produced stainless steel elements to anesthetic machines' or 'The artist seeked to recreate the sense of loss we feel when faced with material decay'. And I understand those ispirations, I really do, I have often spent minutes staring into a pattern of rust, or even worn stainless steel pieces as jewellery. What I can't understand is why go to such lengths and such expense to try and re-create something which is already given to us by the endless creativity of the world, why not just re-contextualise it, rather than seeking to reproduce it in those half-baked creationgs which try to make dried kethup look like rust, and demand three thousand pounds for a ring of blue metal. Yes, I am such a conservatist, but it seems like a waste of time.

On a lighter note, a photo of an original comic strip, also for sale at the Scottish Gallery. Ah, we've all been there, and remember it with disgust.

Reading This Blog is a Health and Safety Risk

2010-02-23T12:45:00.000-08:00

At the bottom of the road on which I live in Sheffield there is a school. It is housed in a steep-roofed Victorian house, and has a few trees in the yard, and a painting of a tubby mermaird on the wall. Generations of local inhabitants have passed through its door, and it is something of an established institution. Skinnytoes went to school there, as did his dad. Who once was telling me about the walking trips he used to take with his class at primary school. Up to thirty ten year old kids, plus one male teacher, would head out on full-day trips into the Peak District. And not to walk along the river in an orderly line, or to skip around in a well-fenced field - they would climb up Jacob's Lader and head accross the peaty labirynth that is the moor to the Kinder Downfall, eat their snap, and head back to town well after dark. He remembers those trips fondly.

Currently our neighbour sends her son to the same school. There has been quite a bit of snowfall recently, but the school yard remained strangely quiet - no snowball fights, no snowmen, no snow angels. The kids were kept inside, in case they slipped, strained their ankle, and their parents sued the school for child neglect.

What is wrong with this picture?

The outsourcing of responsibility. Overprotectiveness. Vicious litigation. They have become characteristic of the British society. On the underground, on the train, in cafes, you're forever bombarded with information about potential 'hazards'. 'Please take extra care while at the station as surfaces are wet and may be slippery' - I can just hear the voice repeating this message every thirty seconds at the train station, and it makes me unwell. Recently I have read a science fiction book in which the society reaches such a level of personal liability paranoia that law firms cover entire cities with CCTV cameras which constantly monitor the citizens. As a result every human interaction is bound by a strict etiquette, there is no spontaneity, and no sincerity, unless apropriate contracts are signed. No one ever gets their feelings hurt, no one is at any danger, at any time.

The Health and Safety pandemic is just one more sign of a fear-fuelled - and fear-fed - society. Consider the two web-pages I came across today. Kudos if you can spot which one is the spoof.

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/Dealingwithemergencies/Preparingforemergencies/index.htm

I especially recommend the booklet:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_176618.pdf

'If you find yourself in the middle of an emergency, your common sense and instincts will usually tell you what to do.' But in case they don't, we give you this booklet. Priceless.

For a more sensible take on the subject, see

http://www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk/index.htm

They also have a booklet. It's much better.

http://www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk/booklet/general.htm

And remember, if you're house has just been hit by a nuclear weapon, your children are being eaten by aliens and your curtains don't match your carpet, STAY CALM AND CARRY ON. And read the booklet.

Spying on Edinburgers

2010-02-22T12:31:00.000-08:00

Or is it Edinburghers? Or Edinburgians?
After the rather provincial feel of Sheffield it's nice to walk the streets and find interesting people to spy on again. Fashionistas, part-time Burlesque queens, suited-and-booted office cat-walkers, elegant older ladies, happy-go-lucky but ever so fashion-conscious students, all of them parade themselves in front of my lense on Friday afternoon. I often wish I had a pair of those spy glasses, where you just go 'click' in your pocket and get a shot of what - or who - you're looking at. You can actually buy them quite easily now, but the resolution is pitiful, making them useless for anything other than actual spying. I am left with following people around and making a fool out of myself. My theory with photographing people is: no-one ever thinks they're important enough to be photographed, so just go for it. Nine out of ten times they will look back to see what monument or architectural quirk you were pointing at. One out of ten times you have to run fast, but hey, what is life without a bit of risk.

Walking an owner at the Grass Market.

A princes at Princes Str Gardens.

A gentleman with the North Bridge.

Catching up in front of the Scottish National Gallery.

Rush-hour bus queue at Princes Street.

The fairy-tale city.

Possibly a mass case of spinach-stuck-in-teeth syndrome.

Against planning ahead

2010-02-21T12:20:00.000-08:00

Spur of the moment decisions are sometimes the right ones. On Thursday afternoon I found that a schedule misunderstanding with a friend of mine left me to look forward to a weekend on my own in Edinburgh. I swirled around in my chair to examine the map of Scotland which hangs behind my desk – so many places to go to, all of them so difficult to reach... For reasons known best to the rail companies, the distance which can be covered in three hours when going South of Edinburgh takes two and a half times as long when going North. And, the weather forecast was unpromising. I could spend a gloomy weekend in Edinburgh, watching comedies and eating ice cream. Or, I could bite the financial bullet and head home, to Sheffield, for the weekend. Which I did.

Walking in the Peak District was fantastic. We took the car and drove to Monsal Head, where a river winds and snakes through a long, steep-sided valley. The river was as full as I have ever seen it, and the weirs were real raging waterfalls.

The snow was melting on the southern slopes, while the northern ones were white; from the hills themselves to little mounds of earth the pattern repeated itself, so that a field of molehills looked like a miniature copy of the landscape which surrounded it. The melting snow created networks of tiny streams, clear as crystal and glittering in the sun. Our walk was full of tiny vignettes of spring.

From Monsal Head we followed the river until we came to the A6 road, at which point we turned away from the river and started to climb. In a few minutes we were at the top of the slope, and negotiating our way through a very muddy path which lead through a farm. Hairy cattle observed our attempts at staying vertical and relatively mud-free with interest.

Easily amused cattle.

We soon rejoined the river further upstream on the other side of the hill, and walked up towards the Crossbrook Mill. There were people climbing the white walls of the canyon there, and the usual medley of water fowl. The Mill has a new hole-in-the-wall cafe which warranted investigation. We sat for a good long while sipping strong tea from real (not plastic) cups and basking in the early spring sun, giving it the chance to bring out our freckles. This was the first time this year I've felt the sun give off any heat, and it was a welcome change.

Winter has not given up yet though, it would seem – today we woke up to a world covered in ten centimetres of fresh snowfall. Hushed and white in the morning, by the time I had to walk to the station the city was receding back into grey, streets and pavements full of cold, wet slush. The time for snow is past!

Food Inc at the Filmhouse

2010-02-18T13:19:00.000-08:00

Once again I was rushing through the evening streets, very nearly late for a show. I was heading to the Filmhouse Cinema for a screening of ‘Food Inc.’, a 2008 documentary. Again, I did not really read up about it beforehand, and was just looking forward to something interesting to fill my evening.

As I rush past, people are watching curling at the winter Olympics, and I overhear : 'Bloody Switzerland is kicking our ass!'

It was five to when I got in, just enough time to go to the Filmhouse café and grab a pint of Polish beer – turns out you can take alcohol into the cinema. That may be just because the Filmhouse is such a small and hippy venue, or perhaps this is a Scotland-wide habit? I may want to investigate.

The busy interior of the Filhouse cafe.

It was a full house, and I had a chance to scrutinise my fellow cinema-goers as we queued up waiting to be let in. Multiple earrings, floppy hairdos, hand-made mittens, tweed and comfy shoes, glasses and capacious shoulder bags; yes, I was decidedly amongst my own kind. They looked like a good, interesting crowd, and this impression proved to be important later on, as it was the post-film discussion which was the most satisfying part of the evening.

The film was fine, it adhered to the usual post-Moore sensational, alarmist, simplistic style, with personal stories of battles against corporations taking the centre stage. There was very little information which was new to me, but then again I’m ‘in food’, and I believe that in general the European public is much better informed then the American one. Still, there were some interesting pieces of information I was not aware of – like the fact that most beef in the US (and I suspect in other places too) is corn, not grass-fed. What that means, in a nutshell, is that the cows are fed petroleum, and that the whole system depends on carbon fuels. The cow’s health suffers too, as it’s digestive system is not designed to deal with starch-heavy food; it has to be provided antibiotics as a result. Finally, corn-fed cows develop massive amounts of e-coli in their gut, and this, combined with industrial-scale slaughter and meat-packing, practically guarantees that at some point, some of the consumers get sick with e-coli and die. One meat processor devised a solution to this problem – he disinfects the meat with ammonia. The end product, after the meat has passed through kilometres of tubes, been treated with gasses, squashed, formed and re-formed again, is a slab of pale meat-derived protein used as ‘hamburger filler’. Talk about the medicine being worse then the illness! (And I’m sure fast-food companies can get away with it as, technically, it still is ‘beef’ – only processed beyond recognition).

Corn-feeding of animals, and the massive availability of corn-derived sugars, makes for foods that are cheap at the counter, but like any good capitalist product drag in their wake a mass of hidden costs (called, in economics externalities – I think of them as the ‘not my problem’ costs). In the case of food, these include: pollution from corn farming, food processing and from cow-produced methane (yes, grass fed cattle fart much less!), soil and environment degradation from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (doesn’t the name just send shivers down your spine?), and finally health costs to the consumer, and thus the entire economy.

I do wonder if someone has calculated how much the economy would improve if we were not at risk from food-linked cancer and diabetes. I wish they would, and I wish the governments then took it seriously. Naïve as I am, I keep believing that – yes – another world is possible. For the final message of the film was just this – it is up to us to chose what we eat. Supermarkets and food-producing companies depend on us for their profit, so we have to shop carefully and vote with the trolley. I initially shrug my shoulders at this, knowing this message to be much too simplistic. Giving the responsibility to the individuals, not to the governing bodies, is only part of the solution; consumers need governing bodies to provide information and safeguard their health and interests, not everyone can afford to shop with the trolley, etc etc, well-rehearsed arguments. In the end, however, I had to admit that, simplistic as this may be, this is the heart of the matter. It’s up to us to make sure that what ends up on our plate is the thing we want to eat.

Speaking of the devil.