birthdays

Its my birthday today, my age clicking over in time with the ending of the year. I've never cared much for my birthday, always feels sort of squeezed in there as everyone darts around getting ready for New Year and this year I can be bothered even less with it. Dad warned me that my card was one mum picked up ages ago - she had the habit of seeing something she thought perfect for someone for a birthday, Christmas etc and she'd get it then and put it aside, often months and months in advance (or even years - one of my cousins doesn't know it but she had put aside a certain something for her to be given on an upcoming special occasion, its just sitting there ready). So I opened the card today and there it is signed love mum and dad. And I felt as if someone hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer and that was me out of it for quite a while. I'd much rather have it than not, of course, but it was still bloody hard and I was struggling already (birthday is bad enough but New Year is often depressing at the best of times). Goodbye 2008 - you started so well, with the promise of a trip to Paris and I was very happy. Then you became the worst year of my life and I don't even remember half of it going past because even when I think I am functioning okay I don't think I am and am still running on autopilot a lot of the time. Go away 2008, you're not welcome here anymore, although somehow I doubt 2009 will make me feel any better.

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.