Doors Open Day

I've meant to go to see the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland for some time. That mouthful of a name makes it sound so dull, does it not? Much Edwardian earnestness is expected: it's actually brilliant. I saw a display of photos of vanished industries, heard their photgrapher talk about his work, and listened to a talk by John Hume about his work in recording industry in Glasgow and elsewhere. In the questions after, somebody trotted out some cliches about the decline of shipbuilding in that city and was treated to a two minute course in economic history.

They were also selling some publications cheap and I bought a book that I had browsed through before, of photos by Erskine Beveridge. I'd never heard of him before either. They are wonderful pictures with that time-machine quality of good photography. That man is standing in front of his black house now.

This all turned into the main event of the day, but I did also get to see behind the scenes at the Queens Hall (quirly fact: they have a electrical substation inside the building), saw how my former next door neighbours in the old vet school building are getting on, and caught up with the highly specific and splendid Causey project.

So it was doors open in Newington rather than Edinburgh really, but I suppose I've lived here long enough for it to feel like home and to care what the neighbours are up to.

New Year bothy trip

Up to about 15 years ago, most of my New Years were spent in a bothy somewhere in the Highlands. This fell away rather recently, what with people having children, moving away to jobs and suchlike. But myself and some friends decided to revisit the bothy experience this year.

We walked in to Cadderlie on Hogmanay. This is a faintly odd walk-in, starting as it does in a quarry, but soon the view looks more like Argyll, with dripping birch and alder woods. We needed the headtorches by the time we arrived to find an empty bothy. Later, two other parties arrived, also from Edinburgh, and took up residence in the other room. We joined them for the bells and some refreshment was had.

On the 1st, we mostly gathered wood for the fire. This was possibly the best day and I took some photos.

Just after taking this I walked down to the shore and saw an otter run into the loch (too fast for the camera, unfortunately). It surfaced some way out and watched me for a while. In other wildlife action, the bothy mice had chewed up a pair of Crocs.

The morning of the 2nd must have been one of the grimmest I have experienced. Mid-morning it started getting darker again, then there was a peal of thunder and it sleeted for a while. The green-grey scene outside was like a definition of the word "bleak". Later, things improved a little and we went for a walk along the loch a bit.

This looks like being the winter of the high winds, after two winters of snow and ice. On the way back, we had snow from Tyndrum to Glen Ogle, then an increasing number of fallen trees, a field full of water at Callander that was emptying over the road, and two lorries on their sides on the road just outside Stirling. This all felt very ominous, but although there had been high winds in Edinburgh too, my flat seemed to be in one piece.

All change at Haymarket

The news that the council have voted for Edinburgh's trams to stop at Haymarket, rather than going to St Andrew's Square is incredible, even by the fucked-up standards of this project. Can you imagine having to change there to a bus to complete your journey? More likely, nobody would use it for the journey from the airport. I certainly wouldn't. I do wonder if it's not an attempt to goad Alex Salmond into paying more for it. But he's too smart for that I think.

Election time again

We're coming up to another election, and so it's time for a look inside my postbag again. Tonight I have two leaflets delivered together: one is from the Scottish Lib Dems, and the other is a virulent tirade against AV, from people calling themselves no2av. Oddly, the Lib Dems don't ask me to support AV in their leaflet. Why is it that the no2avites can get to use the electoral register (the letter is addressed to me personally)?

Back garden in the snow

I daresay a lot of snowy pictures will have been put in blogs recently. But why should I be different? Taken recently while working from home and wishing it would just stop.
I didn't open my bedroom curtains for a few days, but when I did I saw these icicles.
There was a LOT of ice around the downpipes and gutters. Thankfully it seems to have melted without any damage.

Midsummer

In a rare burst of social life, I went to a party last night, and quite enjoyed it. I walked back through Marchmont and Grange at about 3am. It wasn't really dark, more a kind of blue dusk, with blackbirds tuning up in the gardens.

Today has been an exercise in staying one step ahead of dehydration. And I can't get rid of the smell of tobacco smoke.

Dirt under the nails again

I'd like to record my first tiny bit of gardening after about a six year gap. The tenement I stay in has a nicely-kept communal garden where I have negotiated planting rights. This has coincided with unseasonably warm weather. The heat made it feel like I was back in my garden in Ipswich in the warm muggy south.

Election night

First an update on my personal election postbag. More materials have been arriving, including various of those newsletters that pretend very unconvincingly to be newspapers, but of course just have stories about Party X and how great they are. Is anybody actually swayed by this kind of stuff? The ruse is so worn out that I doubt it. More convincingly, I received a letter with a handwritten address from the Lib Dems. The contents looked handwritten but was actually printed/photocopied (not quite sure). But anyway, somebody was trying hard, and some family member/intern probably got the job of writing out lots of addresses. Oh, and I just got an almost identical one from the Tories. Sorry guys, but saying "Me too" doesn't cut it.

I have a polling station across the road, but it's not my polling station. Some odd boundary-drawing means that I had to walk up to Sciennes and vote in the school there. As a kid in Glasgow my primary school was used for elections, so that an early memory was going to vote with mum and seeing familiar classrooms with the desks pushed back and plywood partitions in front of the sandbox. Today was much the same really. I lingered in the corridor for a moment to admire children's work based on Matisse's The Snail (erudite or what?).

If any readers aren't familiar with a British General Election, what happens is this. You enter a large room, usually a school classroom. It is almost empty. Sitting at various desks in it are a selection of pensioners and students earning beer money. They are always very polite. You read a list of streets to see which desk to go to, then hand over your polling card, have your name checked off a list by one of the polite people, and get a voting slip. You then retire into one of the plywood shacks and place an X in the position of your choice using a pencil on the end of a bit of string. It only remains to slide the folded paper in the slot of a black-painted metal box and you have voted. You may then optionally view children's art on your way out, nodding to the various political hangers-on who congregate round the entrance for some reason.

Other countries have vote rigging, violent demonstrations, and people being prevented from voting. Gives you a cosy feeling, doesn't it?

Unlike some, I will not be staying up for the first results, as it's pointless. I'll find out quick enough in the morning.

Nautical

I finally got to Trinity House in Leith on Saturday. It's the old story: if it's on your doorstep you don't make the effort. It's a lovely interior filled with maritime stuff, including harpoons, sextants, ship models and a totally mad painting of Vasco da Gama rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

You have to turn up at the right time though. On my first attempt I must have missed the slot. It was a nice day though, so I walked down to Ocean Terminal, where the tricolour was flying. The Latouche-Tréville of the French Navy was in, with a support ship whose number I didn't note.

A letter from Ian

I've got the set now. Another personnally addressed letter, this one from Scottish Labour.

A letter from Neil

I have just got another personal letter, this time from the Conservative candidate for Edinburgh South. If you missed the comments on my previous post on the subject, this is clearly because Edinburgh South is a key marginal with the incumbent about to step down. Actually it wouldn't surprise me if the Torys took it.

We know where you live

Just got a letter from the Scottish Liberal Democrats, God help me. It is addressed to me personally, yet I have never had any connection with them or any other political party, and I haven't lived here very long. I presume they get the information from the electoral register, but I really don't like this. I can't help seeing it as a very Big Brotherish own goal.

Tram

I discovered today that the Edinburgh tram project has inspired its own Downfall mash-up.

I keep getting into conversations about the tram, usually with people who claim that the lateness of their bus/the quietness of this shop/the bad weather are caused by the tramworks. I've never really reached a conclusion myself. I have been hugely inconvenienced by the works, but then there's always something going on in a big city to get in your way. Edinburgh has always had serious unresolved transport issues, and I do like the city-of-the-future look of the promised system. One argument the anti-trammers use is that "it won't even reach to the airport", but as far as I can tell, this is simply not true. One day, we'll look back at this and laugh.

Weekend pictures

Some pictures from the weekend. From Arthur's Seat, early in the morning:
Skies over Midlothian, from the Pentlands:
A cold snowy day, with better winter conditions than I've experienced on hills twice the height. And on the way down, some big icicles:

Yet further snow

I reckon we've now had about a fortnight during which I could always see snow in the streets or on roofs. This will be deeply unimpressive to you if you live in Canada, but for Britain it's pretty rare. You have to go back to the early 80s, or maybe even late 70s to find a precedent. Yesterday I visited some friends nearby, and we went skiing on a golf course (best use for it that I've ever found). After lunch, we did a South Edinburgh haute route from Blackford hill onto the Braid Hills. Although we did this on foot, there was snow all the way, raising the possibility of Norwegian style ski tours. If we got this more often, would I ski to work though the snowy wastes of Midlothian?

Mair snow

First thing this morning, I had one of those half-awake thoughts. "Wouldn't it be funny if there had been a huge snowfall overnight, and the world is turned white?" Then I looked out and it had.

There had been remnants of snow the night before, but there was now a perfect, even covering. There was snow banked up at the base of my windows, and skeins of spindrift reached out between the rooftops.

As you can perhaps guess, I retain enough of a kid inside me to still enjoy some extreme weather, especially when I have nothing in particular to do at work. I'm certainly not alone in this. As I made my bus journey, the shared sense of adversity produced a kind of camaraderie with my fellow travelers. We offered personal experiences of our journeys so far, swapped stories about the stupid things we'd seen people doing, and shared plans for the rest of our day. I wonder if anybody has studied the positive effect of extreme weather?

I got to go home early too, and saw these tower blocks catching the afternoon sun.

Snow

My flat has a nice view, but I find it hard to photograph. You really have to see it. Here's quite a nice picture of Blackford Hill from this morning anyway.

In other news, snow and ice on Arthur's Seat reduced my time to 17 minutes. On the way down, a walker on his way up warned me of the ice. "I know!" I answered, and did a standing glissade down the path towards him. We did a short dance of awkward laughter and skidding feet until we were both stable again.

Arthur's Seat

Better pacing today bought me to the top in 14 minutes.

In fairness to my previous comments, I should point out that there were a couple of local lads on top, who asked me where lots of things were before I got my breath back.

Arthur's Seat

It's a lovely day today. I went up Arthur's Seat this morning (and how many cities have their own mountain, albeit a small one?). I used to do this fairly regularly and in a nerdy but harmless way, would measure the time from my doorstep to the top. I think 21 or 22 minutes was the record. This is only my second ascent since moving, so I think I should start making the exercise more regular. And my new benchmark is 16 minutes from the park gates to the top.

It is an exceptionally clear day. From the top, a line of peaks in the Highlands were visible, where normally there is cloud or haze. The summit viewpoint indicator actually misses quite a few out, but I had prepared with a crib sheet. Some of the more impressive sightings were Ben Bhuide, Ben More and Stob Binnean, Ben Lawers, and a bit of Beinn A Ghlo.

I had a chat on top with a German student about hills and Edinburgh. It's always noticeable how few natives you meet up there.

I didn't have my camera, so no nice pictures, I'm afraid.

PS: Just realised how similar this is to a previous post. Clearly, I'm becoming very predictable.

Doors Open Day

DOD continues to surprise me, usually in relation to things I thought I knew.

I saw inside the City Chambers for the first time: the 10 storey staircase, the view over Princes Street, the gaudy gifts presented by visitors and twinned towns. They have a great statue outside, of Alexander and Bucephalus, which is public, but I don't usually have a reason to pause there.Of course, the subject is reason winning over animal passions (the horse was afraid of its own shadow). No chance of a moral lesson will be passed up.

Best interior of the day was the Royal College of Physicians. Their main hall contains columns that are masterpieces of the decorator's art, made to resemble Sienna marble, and so good that they are probably worth more than the real thing. Two beautiful libraries too, filled with leather-bound volumes with titles that I could spend all day browsing through (The Atlas of Skin Diseases, anyone?).