Author Archives: Ben Gould
Slumdog Gorgie.
A (historical) pal of mine said to me the other day that growing up in Gorgie was like “battling through gorilla warfare”.
Very accurate.
There used to be a bingo to the left of the snap. I went to school with the lad who burned it to the ground many years ago. We all know he did it but never spoke about the act to the authorities.
Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.
Gorgie does Corona.
Convincingly Vanilla Skyesque visuals in Gorgie this afternoon, with most residents ‘self-isolating’ (or whatever) as all semblance of civilisation crumbles.
I expect martial law and food rationing by May.
Corona has unleashed the creatures.
There’s this line in The Departed (2006) uttered eloquently and menacingly by Jack Nicholson’s Frank Costello: “You learn a lot – watching things eat.”
I can’t help but think of it every time I venture into a supermarket (or pop on Facebook to have a butcher’s at human antics) in this nauseating Corona epoch we now reside in – folk hoarding bog roll and pasta, literally slathering and screeching about the venue, peasants resembling something rage-like out of 28 Days Later (2002).
Source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1255377/British-Army-coronavirus-latest-ministry-of-defence
I feel sorry for the checkout staff. That’s a tough gig.
You learn a lot – watching things shop.
Lothian Road had a port?!
I did not know until last week that Lothian Road, right where the Odeon Cinema now resides, was once home to a port (Hopetoun), this the start/end of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal. Nor was I aware that Burke and Hare were among the navvies who built the waterway. Cracking article here in The Scotsman: https://www.scotsman.com/heritage/when-passenger-boats-could-dock-at-lothian-road-in-edinburgh-s-city-centre-1-5036076
A 13-hour journey quickly supplanted by the railway, imagine being sat on a barge for that long without the internet.
P.S. No midgets were harmed in the taking of that photograph.
Further reading:
https://canmore.org.uk/site/52712/edinburgh-port-hopetoun-union-canal-basin
A Carl Sagan quote blew my mind.
‘Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.’
^Wow.^
My Friday KFC adventure took on a bit more meaning.
Nixon in China.
Spotted two mass-murdering maniacs at Haymarket the other day. Ruined my morning.
Bye for now.
Ugly Edinburgh.
The reveal of the buildings on this list wasn’t much of a shock, and I am humbled by the fact that two of them I work in, and another – see photo above – I pass at least four times a day (I even wrote a shitty blog about it a while back).
If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain – someone said that once (Dolly Parton and David Brent). Only through the contrast with the rotten can we appreciate the palatial.
FYI: I presently write this from a building on the list.
Safe – relishing the ridiculous.
More highly addictive utter trash binged on Netflix again, this eight-episode thriller a cross between a ’90s peak Joe Eszterhas number and those seedy Hollyoaks specials that were broadcast after the watershed. The appeal of this kind of show is in its cliffhanger formula; every chapter has a spanner chucked in the works or a new revelation.
Unadulterated rubbish it may be, but the sordid spectacle is worth it for trying to pinpoint where the fuck in England Michael C. Hall’s ‘accent’ is meant to descend from. It’s eight different counties mixed in a verbal blender, Owen Hargreaves meets Gillian Anderson.
Bizarre.
Knives Out (2019) is splendid.
This is one terrifically entertaining whodunnit with an unexpected political undercurrent that comes to the surface in the third act. The time flew by, mainly due to Daniel Craig’s outrageous PI southern shtick. His voice is so uncannily like that of House of Cards’ Frank Underwood, I closed my eyes and pictured Kevin Spacey and all the resultant grisly news following the accusations about the bloke. It didn’t ruin the movie, only giving it a creepier edge.
Most films of this ilk hark back to Agatha Christie and are mere pale imitations of those superior yarns; Knives Out (2019) is something more than that, with its contemporary setting and subtly subversive reworking of the genre. You also believe these characters.
Even Chris Evans failed to vex me.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/knives-out-2019
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 