Easter at the beach

Finally back on the air after most of a week without broadband - when I got home from work on Monday I noticed my cable TV was out and reported it. After dinner I tried to log on with plans to try and do some extra work from home because there was a ton on at work, only to find out my broadband was also out. Since both services come in through the same junction box I was wondering if there was a common fault. Phoned Virgin (who took over from Telewest and haven't really impressed me since they have) to try and report the second fault and this was the start of almost two hours of being pissed around, put on hold, transferred, lost, having to phone again, on hold, lost, told to call a different number for broadband problems which turns out to be a premium rate number so you have to pay Virgin to tell them the service you pay them for isn't sodding working. No, not impressed with that at all, how utterly crap is their customer service?

In the end the engineer who came out wasn't told of the second fault - again how crap are Virgin at looking after customers? - but was happy enough to look at both. Thursday evening was the earliest they could send someone (which didn't make me any happier, 4 days with no service), they were supposed to come after six so I could get home from work but the eejits at the help desk never bothered to pass this on to the poor engineer who rings my mobile at 4pm to say he is outside my flat. I was obviously still at work. He has more appointments later and can't come back. Now being without cable is annoying, but I have already been most of a working week without broadband and a week when I had more on than I could deal with at work and needed to try and do a bit extra but couldn't because of this. And now I'm thinking when the hell will they next get out? Luckily the engineer who is used to this sort of problem - they rarely pass on time requests to them - phoned his boss direct and arranged someone to call over the holiday weekend and its all sorted, but I'm inclined to write a stinker to Virgin, assuming they bothered to read it since I have emailed them before about parts of the way service has changed since they took over and they never bothered to reply. This is the same company who wants to offer space flights in a few years? Richard Branson, you are an arse and you should sort out the customer care for your terrestrial companies first.

Anyway, back on the air, catching up on a week of missed emails - including first pics of my new wee cousin just born in Canada last week - and getting round to sorting more Paris pictures for my Flickr, but before I put up some more Paris pics and video, something a little closer to home:



Spring has sprung and the locals flock to the sun-kissed beaches of Portobello, Edinburgh's Rivieria :-). In true British fashion we have had some mild spells during the winter which means flowers were starting to grow in early February then as we hit the Easter holiday weekend we get snow, hailstones, rain and driving, bitterly cold, icy wind. My friend was taking his dog (Bruce the greyhound, who has graced these pages before) for a walk but with the weather so changeable we just went down to Porty to let Bruce gallop along the beach. It was one of those days of rapidly alternating dull, overcast weather as large gray clouds came over, only to scud away just as rapidly with the high winds to leave you in sunshine, then back to cloud, sun, cloud...

Through it all the howling, cold wind which cut through you and drove the sea into foamy gray-green wildness. Especially further down where the good beach at Porty gives way to stone steps and a sea wall, where the waves were crashing into it then rebounding back outwards with undiminished ferocity to hit the incoming waves, resulting in huge explosions of foaming water, often coming up high enough to soak the promenade where I was filming from, a good 8 or 10 feet above the water. Welcome to the Scottish spring!



I was attempting to supply a little commentary on this video, but I think the wind drowns out most of it. In case you are wondering I was basically doing my bit for the tourism industry and advising anyone watching this who was thinking on visiting our beautiful land to bring something warm. And waterproof. Still, although the beach was almost deserted despite the school holidays (a small blessing of the weather, less screaming kids to deal with) some folks didn't seem to be put off by the weather, happily out playing in the waves with their jetski:

Spring time in Paris

Just back from the most fantastic long weekend in the City of Light, a place I've known in literature, art, photography and cinema for years but never actually been to. Standing on the Pont Neuf, the location for Les Amants de Pont Neuf, the French film where I first saw (and fell in love with) Juliette Binoche gave me such a rush (just the first of many French film actresses I've fallen in love with, French cinema has a habit of producing the most engaging leading ladies, from Catherine Deneuve to Audrey Tautou). Turning round as I walked along the Seine past all the little green lock-ups of the bouquinistes selling rare and second hand books, art prints and bande dessinee right there in the open air I can see the towers of Notre Dame, the edge of the Ile de la Cite, the Louvre and then suddenly a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. And for some reason it isn't until you finally see the Tower that you really, really feel like your are in Paris. And its a wonderful feeling. You're in Paris, its spring time and the sun is out and suddenly life is good...



More to come on Paris soon, I'm still kind of processing it all; late yesterday night I saw my last glimpse of the city from the air as we took off, the whole of Paris sparkling in the night and there was the Eiffel Tower, seen from the plane as we soared up into the night above France, glowing in the Parisian skyline, the great searchlight rotating on the top. An hour and a half later (and some nice red wine, merci Air France) descending through some clouds which clear to show the dark, night-time waters of the Forth and on the left Edinburgh lit up in the night and the Castle from the air, seemingly floating with the dark Castle Rock invisible from our height at night, only the floodlit battlements visible. I flew over the Eiffel Tower and Edinburgh Castle all lit up in the darkness within an hour and a half or so, even the simple act of the flight home was brilliant.

Two of the most beautiful cities in the world and I'm lucky enough that one of them is my home... More later and pics and vid to come, but I've only just started working on those and realised I took more than 2 gigs of images... Well, wouldn't you? And now I'm trying to get out of the habit of saying 'bonjour', 'merci' and 'au revoir' in any shop or bar I walk into... Missing Paris already...

"Cities are like volcanoes, they always have to move. If they don't they're dead."

This rather peculiar and somewhat nonsensical comment comes from Allan Murray, one of the architects behind the highly controversial 'Caltongate' scheme proposed for Edinburgh, which would see a major redevelopment of the Old Town leading to the Royal Mile, including demolishing some listed buildings (which also happen to be home to people as well as listed). Strangely enough the company behind this attempt to dump a pile of bland, featureless architecture in a historic World Heritage site has attacked the people opposing this ill-conceived plan as 'thoughtless', while commenting that it is right for democracy to have a say while then dismissing some 2, 000 complaints against them, from private individuals and from important heritage groups. Democracy obviously suits the developers only when it agrees with them, otherwise you are just being 'thoughtless' and emotional (gee, some folks will lose their homes, imagine being emotional over that?!?! Eejits).

The architect who came up with this strange 'argument' in favour of his development (which he obviously has a huge vested interest in) above is also responsible for incredibly dull, featureless modern creations in the city already, which have nothing in common with the city environment or any distinguishing features that would make them stand out from a hundred other developments anywhere else in the modern world, exactly the sort of boring design that makes our cities look so dull and repetitive, and which in a historic city like Edinburgh is worse than dull, it is cultural vandalism. We've had, huge, ill-advised developments dumped on us before and they still blight the city, it is completely right that people are wary of them, especially in an area like the Old Town. That caution doesn't mean the city can't continue to evolve and develop, just that we should be very, very careful how and where we do it and I get the impression the developers are more interested in money than protecting the community in that area and our historical nature. I'm not Prince Charles and have no wish to see only more Neo-Classical architecture, but in World Heritage sites like the Old Town and New Town it is always advisable to err on the side of caution. If a developer wishes to work in that area they should expect that, it shouldn't be a surprise to them.

Oh and Mr Murray, volcanoes don't so much move as erupt and explode. The ground around them may move as a result of their eruptions but the volcanoes themselves not so much (other than the ground moving by floating over the hot liquid rock below, but all ground does that). And I don't think you want to include cities and active volcanoes in the same sentence because that's a scenario which doesn't raise connotations of flourishing life, rather images of destruction, so I'm not sure what point you were making there. Unless it was a Freudian slip acknowledging your oversized development in a sensitive area will be destructive and leave scars on the city for years, just like a volcanic eruption would. Quite why the council approved this in the face of mass rejection by affected citizens and heritage groups I have no idea; if I was a cynic I'd be checking for brown envelopes slipped under doors...

On the BBC

The photograph I posted here last weekend of the new moon hanging over a twilight street of Victorian tenements has been put up by the BBC on their website in their weekly 'your pictures' section of the Scottish news part of the BBC site (it's the fourth one in). I was quite surprised this shot came out at all, actually, it was my usual gonzo photography, spur of the moment, see a scene, try and snap it - no kit, just my small compact digital that lives in my bag, a tiny 3-inch mini tripod meant for table top use that I sometimes have in the bag and a handy gatepost to sit it on - and a lot of luck. I'm pretty chuffed that it worked and even more chuffed that the Beeb picked it for this week's crop of images from round Scotland, especially given how good some of the pictures in that feature are each week (click to see the larger image on my Flickr).



Since I started posting digital photos I've had some borrowed for articles, for teaching guides and other uses (and that's not counting ones I've taken at comics conventions for the work blog) - doesn't pay anything but it does give a damned big feel-good factor. And being an old web-hand I still have that old-fashioned belief that the web is meant to allow us to share a bit ( a lot of us who started online in the early 90s still feel that, I think), so I kind of like the fact that a number of different folks have asked to use some of my pics on occasion.

New moon



Just after sunset a pale new moon hangs in the sky over the Victorian tenements of Edinburgh



The same section of canal as the earlier canoe photos, only a couple of hours later on (click for the bigger versions on Flickr)

And suddenly there were canoes in Edinburgh

Heading up to Mel's to take care of Dizzy, the incredibly pretty kitty, close to sunset I paused on the bridge which crosses the Union Canal. It's always worth stopping for a moment there because sometimes you see something nice sandwhiched in between the Victorian tenements; sometimes ducks, geese or swans, sometimes just the sun reflecting off the water or, as in today's case, a group of canoeists paddling past. I guess they were making the most of an unseasonably mild and very clear, sunny day which was more like very early spring rather than early February in Scotland. Isn't it nice the things you can just come across walking round your neighbourhood? (click the pics to see the bigger versions on the Woolamaloo Flickr)

Accordion by the beach



Down on Portobello beach this afternoon (a dry day!!! a day with no howling gales!!! Quick everyone outside!!!), my mate's dog happily running around sniffing interesting smells (most animals walk about with their heads held up to see around them, except dogs, who trot around with their head pointing downwards so they can sniff everything) and as we walked along the beach we could hear music. Walking up onto the nearby esplanade we saw this chap playing the accordion, while nearby a wee boy was dancing happily to the music. It sounded like a little bit of France in the middle of Edinburgh's seaside and put us in happy mind of our trip to Paris coming up in a few weeks. I imagine in Paris accordion players busking must be a bit like bagpipers in Edinburgh.

Quack quack

Walking along the Union Canal this weekend, ducks and other birds (sadly I do not know everything and bird types is one area I am weak in - anyone know what these black waterfowl with the white bills are?) swimming around. The ducks go past, the black birds swim past, their little red-orange webbed feet just visible through the greenish water, working away like the paddles on an old Mississippi steamboat. Then suddenly they start diving. Ploop! One minute they are there, next moment only concentric ripples spreading outwards on the surface of the water to show where they had been, then suddenly they pop up again elsewhere, like a WWII German U-Boat doing an emergency surface. I had a sudden urge to do my Jack Hawkins impression and call for the depth charges...

It was very hard to capture these sudden movements on the camera, so I switched to video mode instead. You can hear a voice at the start which is a tiny little girl with her dad shouting "quack quacks!" in delight. Nearby some narrowboats which are lived on the whole year long, the restored old Leamington Lift Bridge (I don't know why but it gives me such pleasure to see it raised and for holidaying folks to sail under it), the floating restaurant barge which cruises at the weekend, new waterfront cafes, offices and homes, the remains of the old Scottish and Newcastle brewery slowly being taken apart as the area is remade (Sean Connery lived just right round the corner from this spot as a boy and delivered milk in the area - now he comes back to the nearby cinema on a red carpet for the Film Festival every year). And this is all a short walk to my home in one direction and to Edinburgh Castle the other way. The little marvels we can see even in the middle of the city if we only stop and look for a moment and share that simple, childlike delight in these little surprises and presents the world offers us.



(apologies for the poor quality - my camera does very good video but that means big files so I need to reduce it so much to fit on YouTube it never looks right - oh well, it's free!)

snowy Saltire
Originally uploaded by byronv2

Wind whipping around a Saltire above the entrance to the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh as snow makes streaks across a leaden night sky

Party on Princes Street

Dark and very wet in Edinburgh as they are doing the final preparations for tonight's Hogmanay bash - maybe not the best weather for standing outside for a huge open-air party. I'm giving it a miss - been there and done that many times (was there right at the very first one) and now at my age can't be bothered freezing outside for hours, queuing ages for the loo etc, better at my age to retire to the billiards room of my Gentlemen's Club with the port and (chocolate) cigars... The traffic was utterly fubared by the closure of Princes Street for the party, an endless line of cars and buses all the way back past Haymarket (I decided to walk, rain or not, it was quicker), which makes me worry how bad my daily trip to work will be when the stupid tram roadworks hit Princes St soon - wouldn't mind if it was useful, but the line won't go near 4/5 of homes so its bugger all use to most Edinburgh folks... Anyway, shot a quick panorama just after sunset; you can see a camera crew setting up on a platform to cover it, the lights of the fair in front of the illuminated Bank of Scotland Building over on the left, the stage almost ready in the Gardens and the Castle above it all.

Two sides of the Castle

Going to work a few days ago, south side of the Castle as the bus goes through the Grassmarket, home to old inns where Burns once stayed. At this time of year in Scotland the sun is so low in the sky it doesn't clear Castle Ridge in the early morning, so from the New Town side on the north it is silhouetted with the rising sun behind it. But from the southern view that same low sun, stretched out to a golden copper as warm as the morning air is frigid, washes across the ancient wall and makes the native stone glow with life against a clear, pale blue sky.

This morning, the north side of the Castle, looking from Princes Street, the battlements in shadow as the low sun hides behind the Ridge. Everything is covered in hard frost, from the plants in the valley of the Gardens below the volcanic mount to the walls of the Castle, glittering in morning light, sparkling as if millions of tiny diamonds had been dusted over the city. Beautiful.

Hunting werewolves

Full moon this weekend, good werewolf hunting weather (hey, everyone needs a hobby and it gives me some exercise and gets me out into the fresh air):



(all this scene needs now is Christopher Lee in his Dracula cape; click for the bigger version on my Flickr)



(the full moon reflecting on the Union Canal; fun to compare this to summer evening pic of this same location I took a while back on my Flickr)

No lycanthropes were harmed in the making of these photographs, although my fingers got sodding frozen.

(click to see the full size pic on my Flickr page)

The lovely Victorian merry-go-round in Princes Street Gardens as part of the Winter Wonderland; annoyingly I missed getting pics of the official switching on of the Christmas lights and opening of the Winter Wonderland and the craft fair and German market because I didn't know what time it started on Thursday, although I did see it all coming on and fireworks going off as I sat on the upper deck of the bus on the way home. Still, the evening before, on a wild, windy, wet winter's night I saw them testing out the lights and the colours through the rain-spattered caught my eye and since reflections on the bus window or camera shake didn't matter much for this kind of pic I thought I'd just snap it.

Making his mark

Last week in the local Edinburgh Evening News I read about a graffiti artist who has been going round mostly the east of the city and spraying mostly right-on political slogans on advertising billboards or sometimes on buildings belonging to large corporations. Then the other day I actually saw the guy at work as I bought a Scooby Snack at a shop near work, looked out the window as I was waiting at the till and saw a young guy on the other side of the road, step-ladders on the pavement in front of the large, ugly billboard sticking up on Southbridge, overlooking the gap site below where the huge fire was in the Cowgate a few years ago (and still, depressingly, a gaping hole in the historic heart of the city as they argue over what will go in there and how it will fit with everything else).

As I glanced over the road at this guy on the ladders it dawned on me he wasn't pasting up a new billboard ad, he had his spray can out and was scrawling something about cutting carbon emissions. Bright, sunlit day, very busy street, dozens of people walking right past him and no-one seemed to notice except me. He finished his slogan, climbed down, picked up his ladders and simply walked off down the street, almost no-one the wiser. Amusingly right round the corner from there are a number of police cars at any one time as officers come and go at the nearby courts and, as I said this is a busy main street in the Old Town near the University, full of people. Gee, I can see why the council and police are having trouble tracking this devious scrawler down with his advanced stealthy covert tactics! Shame for once I didn't have me camera with me... Somehow my mind flicked back to Chopper stories from Judge Dredd.

I'm not condoning scrawling (although the billboard is a bloody big, ugly intrusion into an Old Town street anyway, defaced or otherwise) and might even agree with some of his slogans (although some seem a bit cliched) but I had to admire his cheeky gal, the ballsy way he got away with it by just acting like someone who should have been up those ladders doing something so he could do it in the middle of the day rather than some stealthy nocturnal attack.

The Bridge

A couple of weekends ago I took my parents on a belated anniversary gift of a trip on the Maid of the Forth, which sails out from South Queensferry opposite the Hawes Inn, where Davey Balfour is bundled aboard ship in Robert Louis Stevenson's superb adventure Kidnapped, then right under the mighty Forth Bridge.


(the Hawes Inn pub sign makes sport with its RLS connection)

I've seen this Victorian marvel of engineering a thousand times but this was the first time I had sailed under it; the real scale of the structure becomes staggeringly real when you are this close, right under the main cantilever sections, thousands of tons of steel hanging in the air above you, foundations driving right down into the river; it took the lives of over 50 men and boys to build it.


(going under the great Forth Bridge; check my Flickr stream for the full set of larger scale pictures)



From there the boat continues down the Forth, passing coastal towns old and new, country houses and modern oil and gas terminals, international ferries, Edinburgh in profile on one side, the Kingdom of Fife on the other and the Firth of Forth opening out towards the North Sea, islands - or 'inches' ranging from mere rocks to larger spots dotted throughout, many still showing marks of war, structures hurriedly added to protect the coast and nearby Rosyth naval dockyard during the two World Wars, now mostly they are full of colonies of seabirds (this whole part of the coast is a huge area for seabirds). History flows like the tidal waters here; Roman ships coming into nearby Cramond for the Antonine Wall forts, vikings, French men'o'war, English raiders, German aircraft - it's a working river still, tankers, international ferries, even aircraft carriers (HMS Ark Royal sailed down this route just a few months back, just barely fitting under even this high bridge).


(Inchcolm Abbey, my mum and dad in the foreground walking towards it, the Saltire fluttering in the breeze)

Eventually we come to Inchcolm island, home to a gorgeous 12th century abbey (although some maintain its religious life goes right back to Saint Columba himself, the man who brought Christianity to Scotland in the 500s AD). History and landscape and seascape and wildlife - birds, seals - of my beautiful homeland, a place so near to where I live but a place I had never been to before and I got to share it with my folks.


(sunset across the Forth from Inchcolm, the bridges in the distance; nearby some seals were popping their heads up to watch us, waiting on the visitors to leave for the day so they could come up and claim their beaches for the evening)

An hour and a half on Inchcolm wasn't nearly enough and we want go back again when the new season starts again next year. Afterwards we sailed back up the Forth as the sun set behind the Bridge, shafts of light breaking through the clouds at the end of the day as we sailed upriver, east to west. After docking, as dusk fell on a perfect day we wandered over to the Hawes Inn and settled ourselves down in the cosy wooden interior for drinks and dinner (lovely food, great, friendly service), a perfect end to a perfect day.

A morning of mists

Chilly in Edinburgh this morning, cold enough in the early morning and after sunset to see your breath; I can taste the winter on the air. Cold, but beautiful - the mist which often falls in Edinburgh, especially in autumn, lay over the city. By the time I was on Princes Street the sun was just barely above Castle Ridge; the Castle and buildings of the Old Town were faint through the mist, like fading dreams evaporating in the light of morning, or perhaps the reverse, perhaps the daytime city was dreaming itself into being as I watched. The copper-red sun struggled above Ridge, fuzzy and indistinct through the mist, making it glow like a living thing as it curled around old buildings, battlements and the peaks of Arthur's Seat. An hour later it was a clear, blue sky, crisp, sharp, as if the mist had never been, the world solid and defined, but I saw it change from dreamstate to waking world and know that both are, in their own ways, real and imaginary at the same time.

On the way home tonight the sun had just set, staining the sky red in the west; a darkening sky in the east and a huge, full moon rising in the sky even by 6 o'clock. The mist was rising once more, following the line of the setting sun, like a great, soft blanket being pulled over the city from east to west. The city changes again, slips herself into another form, another reality, another dream. All cities are both real and dream places, their ever-changing faces as much how we see them as any subjective view, presenting perspectives to those who will look and appreciate her special gifts.

Anatomical

Last weekend was the annual Doors Open Day, when buildings not normally open to the public let people into visit. I'm still sorting a stack of photographs I shot as we tramped all round town, from designer make-overs by local architectural practises in old mews buildings to places like the observatory on Calton Hill and the Royal College of Physicians in the New Town. I'll post a few more when I get time to sort them out, but I thought I'd kick off with these few shots taken in their two libraries; these are rare 17th century medical volumes, which the College Fellow on duty in the library was kind enough to let me photograph as long as I obviously refrained from using the flash (in stark contrast to the folks at Scottish Heritage who didn't allow any photography even of the Georgian rooms, which seems extremely backward to me if you are inviting in visitors, especially if you are a public body - bad marks to SH, big thumbs up to the RCP who really made an effort to make visitors welcome and encouraged photo-taking).


(click the pics to see the larger versions on the Woolamaloo Flickr stream)



Apologies for the reflections here, but as the books were under glass there wasn't really anyway round them - it was either reflections of the lights or stand right over it and get my camera in the reflections, but the quality of the draughtmanship here was far too good not to try taking a pic. These books pre-date the Act of Union between Scotland and England.



Just look at the detail in this anatomical study of the human skeleton and musculature; the cross hatching and shading is amazing. More so when you consider this is around three centuries old and an artist created this by hand and another artist would then have laboriously created a negative inscribed into a copper plate for printing. Books like this, being disseminated all over Europe by groups like the Royal College, are physical artefacts of the birth of the modern era, the move from superstition to reason and science, exploring the natural world and our own physiques to find new wonder even the greatest minds of Classical Antiquity could never have dreamed of. They are also gorgeous works of craftsmanship and art. A modern Gray's Anatomy (a standard text for most doing medical degrees) may be more informative and accurate, but it lacks the elegance and beauty of this work.

Fire

On the way home from the cinema tonight I saw a flickering orange light in the distance, silhouetting the distinctive towers of Donaldson's School for the Deaf over by Haymarket (where I once did a photo project back in my college days). Since Donaldson's is one of the few large buildings not lit up at night in Edinburgh it didn't take me long to realise the reason I could see the towers after nightfall must be because that glow must be from a fire behind the school. And from the size of Donaldson's I'm guessing it must be a fairly big damned fire to illuminate it light that.


(fire at or near Donaldson's School for the Deaf, Edinburgh - larger versions on the Woolamaloo Gazette Flickr set)

Too early for anything to be on the Scottish news yet and I have no idea from this distance if it was just a huge bonfire nearby (but who has a big bonfire just a few weeks before Guy Fawkes Night??) or an accidental conflagration, but I clambered up onto the wall near me, stuck the camera on the mini tripod stashed in my bag and snapped a couple of pictures - sorry, they are a bit blurred but it is impossible to focus when all the viewfinder shows is mostly black, so I had to just point it in the right direction, set the lens on night shot and let it go (I decided the subject matter outweighed the poor quality of the pics). Still, despite being a bit out of focus if there is a story here then I can say the Woolamaloo Gazette scooped it first! I do hope that it isn't something in the actual school though; it is a rare institution that helps a heck of a lot of hearing impaired kids and the day I spent doing my photo project there back at college was a great day, the kids being so friendly to this big old dumbo who couldn't even sign properly (yup, I was the odd one out there that day because I couldn't lip read or use sign language, so in effect I was the one with impaired senses).

Doors Open Day

Tomorrow (Saturday 29th) is the annual Doors Open Day for Edinburgh, when people can get into buildings and areas of buildings that aren't normally open to the public. It's pretty interesting and also free so accessible to anyone - certainly every place we tried last year proved to be pretty busy with folks making the most of the opportunity. The Cockburn Association has all the details and there is also a Flickr stream for last year's Door's Open, which, I'm rather chuffed to say, also has one of the photos I took on it after the organisers asked if they could use it to help promote the event - hopefully I can get some more pics tomorrow with the new camera this time. I'm looking forward to wandering round with some friends poking into parts of my city that I don't often get to see.

The turning of the seasons



Some leaves are clinging to their lush greenery, aided by the bursts of almost summer-like warmth, while some have already begun to dry and turn red and gold. In Mel's garden some late bloom roses have come out after we trimmed the plants back earlier in the year and some final insects are buzzing round the flowers in the sudden warmth before winter arrives, while the berries hang on the bushes. Walking home the long, red twilight stretches long, thin shadows, skies blue, wispy clouds tinged salmon pink. The wind rustles in the branches and with each little breath more leaves fall to join their cousins in little piles on the ground or to float along the canal alongside the ducks and swans. When the autumn moon rises it is a huge, harvest moon, glowing brightly in a purple-black sky, the stars changing their tempo to their winter configuration. Each warm day now is a gift; you wonder if it will be the last one before the inevitable slide into the long, dark winter.

Moments of transitory beauty

On the way to work, a glorious, almost perfect Scottish autumn morning; the sun is lower in the horizon and its light now stretched out to deeper, warmer tones than the harsher light of summer - we've entered the Golden Time. Our location north of the edge of Europe means our weather and climate isn't always the nicest but it also means we are at the curve of the Earth to see the sun tilt further as the seasons pass us, from the height of summer to the low arc of the sun's brief appearance in winter. At this time of year, when we are lucky enough to have a clear day, it means the sunlight becomes the most glorious golden-copper hue; against the older buildings constructed of great blocks of native stone rather than mere bricks it looks magnificent.

It looks even more beautiful against our nation's natural beauty (and regardless of weather one thing Scotland has in abundance is astonishing natural beauty), the warm gold of the autumnal sun matching the colours of the season perfectly, the gold of the harvest being brought in, the leaves browning, crisping, drying, turning, falling. Yesterday morning an almost perfect autumn scene - clear, pale blue sky and the sun, low now in the sky, just above Castle Ridge, shining directly through the rich foliage of the trees in Princes Street Gardens as I passed.

The branches are still full of heavy greenery from summer, but already some leaves are turning, a mix of verdant green with touches of red, brown and gold, the trees equivalent of the man with just a touch of distinguished gray, perhaps. The low morning sun came through them from behind and lit them up, the green still vibrantly alive, the turning leaves glowing as if from inner fire, a last reminder of beauty and life before the long sleep of winter; Edinburgh Castle, her ancient stones warming in the morning sun, the backdrop to this and what a backdrop. It lasted only seconds, the juxtaposition of where I was, where the sun was in relation to me, the trees, but for a few seconds I saw pure beauty shining in a dying leaf and the play of shadows and sunbeams across the Castle. For a few seconds I had no cares in this world, lost in the ephemeral, momentary beauty of my homeland, glowing with the glorious light of an Impressionist painting but infinitely more lovely than any artist's hand could capture.

Random recent scenes

Princes Street this evening on the way home, basking in late sunshine; outside the oh-so-posh Jenners department store a bagpiper in full highland dress is jamming with two black musicians playing some sort of ethnic variation on tom-tom drums. They're clearly all enjoying themselves as are the locals and tourists who stop to listen to this mix of African and Scottish. It sounds brilliant.

On my way in and out to work I pass some spectacularly beautiful displays of bright, colourful, fresh flowers in Princes Street Gardens and the crescents at the West End; in the bright sunlight the flowers almost glow. The council mismanages a lot of things in Edinburgh but kudos to the gardners for creating such beautiful, eye-catching displays that just make your day nicer by being there.

Making the most of the sudden burst of warm, summer-like weather we head down the coast where near the beach at the Fidra Lighthouse I bump into my friend Claudia with her visiting parents. After a very long walk all the way down the beach to North Berwick we're licking our yummy ice creams when my big cousin and her husband suddenly appear.

Bus to work on Monday; as I am getting off one of my friends from the book group is getting on although I only have a chance to say hello to her as we pass. Clearly it is my week for randomly bumping into friends and family as I go about. Who will be the next Guest Star in the ongoing soap opera of life?

Walking down Middle Meadow Walk a temporary wooden wall hiding the building works in the old Royal Infirmary which has been covered with posters for Fringe shows is now peeling and torn, scraps flapping in the breeze now it is all over. The grass of the Meadows still shows the marks of the recently departed marquees and big top from shows.

Hot, sunny day, warmer than most of the summer - great. Except it is too hot and dreadfully airless at my desk at work and I'm dying for some fresh air all afternoon - a good excuse to meet a friend and sit outside a pub on the way home drinking cold beer in the fresh air and watching the sun slowly dipping towards the horizon.

Sitting in Beanscene with Mel, enjoying coffee and cake I notice they have details on how to buy the antiqued leather sofas they have in the cafe - the sign advertising this is simple but brilliant "order a sofa to go". Oh yes, please, can I have a skinny latte, triple choc muffin and a sofa to go?

Happy birthday to the Book Group

I just realised today that this month's meeting of the Edinburgh SF Book Group will mark the fourth birthday. My former colleague Alex and I thought it up back in the summer of 2003 and decided a good start date would be after the busy circus of the Festival left town, so we opted for September. And for our initial discussion it seemed fitting to pick a debut novel, so we opted for one of the best debuts novels of recent SF by one of our favourite writers, Glasgow-based Richard Morgan, the Philip K Dick award-winning Altered Carbon (which also introduced Richard's character Takeshi Kovacs and also made headlines when it was the subject of a large film rights deal via Joel Silver. I remember the Guardian running an article on that and unable to reach Richard who was on holiday at the time they nicely pilfered quotes from our interview on the Alien Online without asking or crediting the site).

The book group has gone on over those four years, surviving the debacle of the Bloggergate nonsense between me and my former employers at the Bookstore Who Shall Not Be Named (where it had driven sales of backlist titles and boosted the company's profile, but no more - that's their loss) and trying to find a new regular venue after that. We've got a good core of different folks who come regularly and we've had more folks join us since then. We take turn about getting to choose books for the month which means we get a good, diverse range of material.

We've taken in graphic novels like the Sandman, classic SF from Alfred Bester and HG Wells, contemporary political SF like Ken MacLeod, horror from James Herbert, fantasy like the Lies of Locke Lamora and also more mainstream material with touches of SF like David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas or Michel Faber's Under the Skin (which the literati can read, safe in the knowledge that they aren't really part of that 'SF nonsense', they're literature). Ursula le Guin has rubbed shoulders with Margaret Atwood, Charles Burns, Aldous Huxley, James Lovegrove, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeff VanderMeer, Sheri S Tepper, Neal Stephenson and Robert Louis Stevenson among many others. Because each of us gets to take a turn picking a book we get exposed to more diverse material and so more to discuss, more to think about, more to enjoy. One of the few pleasures better than reading a good book is being able to share it with others and talk about it. And if that also means enjoying some trips to the pub too, so much the better (since there is a very welcome social aspect to the group too).

We started with an author who now lives in Glasgow and this fourth anniversary month sees us discussing a recent novel from an Edinburgh-based scribe, Charlie Stross as we discuss his novel Glasshouse. In a lovely bit of coincidence Glasshouse won the Prometheus award (given by the Libertarian SF group) last week just after it was picked for our September meeting, so congrats to Charlie. We normally meet on the last Tuesday of the month in Henderson's on Hanover Street and anyone is welcome to come along - meeting details usually go up on the Book Group blog.

Out with a bang

And thus Edinburgh's Festival season, the world's biggest arts festival, comes to an end for another year with mighty explosions echoing across the city like the pounding of the Castle's cannons as the traditional classical music and fireworks concert took place. I was lucky enough to be invited to my friend's workplace which has a good view out towards the front of the Castle rather than standing with the 250, 000 others in the streets and hills of the city watching it all. It was a lovely late summer evening as we walked into the city centre, the last glow of the sun washing the stones of the Castle in a copper glow before finally fading into darkness, the stars beginning to appear in the sky above the floodlit fortress. An air of expectation from thousands of people waiting in the dark... The orchestra in the Gardens begins to play and suddenly the dark night explodes in light, colour and sound, incredibly ephemeral sculptures and flowers of light in the air, lasting only seconds.













I love fireworks - there are some things you never grow out of an a huge fireworks show is one of them. But fireworks launching into the sky from an ancient fortress atop a volcanic rock is something else again. I love living here. You can view the full set at larger sizes on my Flickr stream.

How not to park in Edinburgh

Someone filmed some parking attendants in Edinburgh at work using some unusual tactics near the Usher Hall, sitting waiting in a large, unmarked car and as soon as someone parks where they shouldn't nipping out and booking them as soon as they are out of sight (wouldn't it make more sense just to go up to them beforehand and say you can't park there or you will be fined? Then they won't be causing an obstruction? Oh yeah, then NCP who run the scheme for the corrupt council and the council themselves don't make money from it...). Even better the parking attendant's vehicle is parked on double yellow lines causing an obstruction itself! And there are no less than three of the buggers in it.



I've got no problem with them booking people parking illegally, but I'm wondering why they need three people in a large vehicle parked on double yellow lines and why they need such a large car to swan round town in (and park in stupid places with impunity)? Since attendants can't patrol every area isn't it more important they be spread around as much as possible and not just sitting on their arse picking off lame ducks like this? And for going round town (or for sitting in a vehicle like this) why not use something smaller and more appropriate for city driving? This might explain why the buggers are never to be seen making sure idiots don't block the green lane and cycle lane on the busy main route I take in and out of town to work, where ignorant sods regularly park on the lanes so they can go into a shop because they are too lazy to park elsewhere and walk more than a few feet (some of the gits even park on the pedestrian crossings to nip in for their crappy tabloid and pack of fags of a morning) and yet since the official police traffic wardens stopped going round our part of city I've almost never seen the council's own - I imagine this might explain why, they're all sitting in a large car making their targets.

Doors Open

And as another Festival fades away (although the city is still busy with tourists - that ebbs and flows according to season but never actually stops) there are still more things to look forward to, including this year's Doors Open Day on September 29th. That's when many buildings, a lot of which the public normally don't get into (or if they do there are parts they never normally see) allow people in free to explore their city and appreciate its culture, architecture and history - its really a great day, getting to see things in buildings you pass regularly but had never seen within. And I was quite pleased when I was asked if a couple of interior shots I took at last year's Doors Open could be borrowed to be used for illustrating this year's. You can get details from the Doors Open page on the Cockburn Association site here.

End of the Fest

Well, that's the quickest couple of weeks of the year - holiday time - gone past already in a blur. Back to work this week and with the Fringe, Film Festival and Book Festival over the city seems so much quieter, all that's left behind of the world's biggest arts festival are the many posters for shows now finished and gone, slowly peeling off walls and panels with that same sort of melancholy you get from Christmas decorations still up after you've gone back to work in the New Year. Still, we've got the huge fireworks concert to come this Sunday night and luckily Gordon has invited Mel and I along to his work again, which has a long conference room with views out to the Castle; they also very nicely put on some food and booze to go with the event - certainly much nicer than jostling with a 100, 000 others on Princes Street to watch it.

I enjoyed a bit of Fringe while I was off, took in the Book Festival (actually I was invited to the launch party this year which was nice of them, bumped into several folks I used to work with a few years ago, which was even nicer), caught a very good panel on graphic novels there (first year they have covered the genre, went very, very well, I'm pleased to say) and as usual caught a pile of movies at the Film Festival (sadly the last time they are planning to hold that during the rest of the Festival in August, boo). Mel and I were right there on opening night to see the adaptation of Peter Jinks novel Hallam Foe which starred Jamie Bell (all grown up from Billy Elliot) and which was largely shot in Edinburgh, so that was fun to see some of the city on the big screen (also a pleasure to see the Film Fest's Hannah McGill who as well as being involved in running a great film festival always looks so glamorous and gorgeous at these events) and we were there on the final day when they do Best of the Fest to reshow some sold out films. Documentaries, foreign language films, science fiction, fantasy, comedies and animation all in a few days then chilling with a drink outside afterwards and Joe is a happy boy.

Day Watch, the sequel to the surprise international hit from Russia, Night Watch, was excellent but my favourite film of this year's fest (and Mel's too, actually) was the movie adaptation of a book by one of my favourite authors, Neil Gaiman (and illustrated by the quite wonderful Charles Vess), Stardust. Was a little funny for me to be watching this film since I remember hosting a reading and signing for Neil for that book when it first came out back in the 90s and still recall sitting chatting after a totally packed event in the bar of the lovely, old Cafe 1812 as he doodled a picture on the inside of my copy and signed it after the fans had all gone (I even remember him being impressed when a friend of mine produced his copy of Violent Cases to be signed and Neil at once recognised it as a first edition). Back then he had talked about possible movie work and here we were years later watching our second Film Festival screening of a film based on a story by Neil (MirrorMask was the year before last).

By Neil's standards the story is very simple and straightforward, not as layered as most of his other work in prose or comics, but as he said back at that event in the 90s he really wanted to make a straight fairy tale but for adults and that's also what the movie version brings. It doesn't try to be clever and postmodern, to reinvent the wheel. Instead it gives you a gorgeously warm fantasy with evil witches, a quest, romance, swashbuckling, magic, corrupt princes, an innocent hero and as a bonus Robert de Niro in a lady's bloomers dancing to the can-can. I mean what else do you need? Leave your cynicism at home and just wallow in a beautifully shot fairy tale (much of it shot in the islands of Scotland) which boasts a great cast (including Michelle Pfeiffer who just doesn't seem to be getting older, does she? Although ironically she ages in the film every time she uses her magic). Everyone left the cinema late at night with huge smiles on their faces, its just one of those sorts of films; you're never too old for a magical fairy tale. Of course some people think they are too old for such things, but that probably means they need it more than anyone, poor souls. It should get a general release in the UK this autumn (I think it has just come out in the US), so watch out for it.

My parents came through to visit before going off on their own holiday; I had a cunning plan to take them out for a cruise on the Maid of the Forth which would have been an early anniversary present and a way to spend the day with them too (sails from right under the mighty Forth Bridge down the river and includes a trip to the islands to visit the old monastery) but sadly that was the only day they weren't sailing because of some liners coming up the river that day. So we'll need to try again at some point, but at least we did get a fun day together anyway and a lovely lunch out at the canalside pub in the village of Ratho (great spot for food and drink). And then my old mate Bob through with his wee boys too, so again we all had fun. The boys are convinced I am a pirate because of my bandana and since they love pirates that makes me cool to them :-). Naturally I don't want to disappoint them and try to keep up my swashbuckling ways for them. They also like knights and swords and kept asking if they would see knights at the Castle - so when we found men in plate armour posing just down the slope from the Castle you can imagine how big their eyes opened! Movies, shows, books, drinks, food, friends and family, what a great break...

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