Category Archives: Architecture
More uninhabited Leith snappage from the COVID-19 vault.
If you look closely enough, you can see a pigeon at the back of frame taking a shite. It is their territory now.
Edinburgh’s London Road like you’ve seldom seen it before.
Lunch-time wanderings again but on this occasion with a twist. The COVID-19 calamity presented the chance to obtain a soulless, way-too-sharp semi-decent snap of London Road from the roundabout. And yes, I was ‘distancing’ as I ordinarily do (for people in this part of the world generally stink), and also donning ‘Corona Clobber’, i.e., latex gloves and surgical mask.
In any other age, the frame would be rammed with our clunky buses. But not today.
2020 is historical.
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.
Storm Dennis strikes Leith.
It’s not been pretty; in fact, it has been rather harrowing. Tornado season is now over, however, and we can now look forward to the Coronavirus.
New Year’s adventures in Germany – Flughafen München-Bad Bergzabern-Straubing-Flughafen München.
Autobahn.
I’ve not been in a car this much ever, Munich Airport to Bad Bergzabern to Straubing to Munich Airport, a goodbye to the 2010s in a most chilly and mostly plastered Deutschland, with a soundtrack of the decade’s tackiest pop hits.
Bad Bergzabern in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate took in the delights of this wooden bad boy, which I presume was an observation tower to view troop movements as its vistas overlook the border with France. I climbed up the fucker and left a wee mention at the top, carving ‘Nuuuuu’ into the floor with a pocket knife. I am very proud of that. One day some random will scratch their head at the … ‘word’ and then hit Google. A lovely wee town, it even had a heaving club which was visited just after midnight, where locals sparked up inside. Flashbacks kicked in to a pre-2006 Edinburgh when you could smoke a cigar and not get chased off the premises by their interior ministry.
Midnight fireworks.
Straubing – not a lot happened in Straubing. I did my usual morning run/descent into death followed by a supermarket jaunt, and rounded off proceedings by watching Dragons’ Den clips for three hours off a tablet, contemplating the decade ahead and hoping that one day folk in airports will just fucking learn how to distinguish between the arrivals and departures screens (this also applies to the denizens of train stations).
Freezing run action in this park.
Goodies.
Other delicacies included the outrageous wearing of Crocs and the sighting of that ‘big pile of shit’ from Jurassic Park (1993).
All in all, quite the splendid wee trip. A civilised affair (for once).
Leith wanderings.
The Foot of the Walk (pub).
More aimless trudging about Leith on a Monday morning. It doesn’t half look grimy at times, yet the odd bit of gentrification aside, has a semi-charming honesty about it.
Easter Road.
Newkirkgate Shopping Centre.
The hideous trams are sadly expanding their accompanying plague into here, though – more congestion, more roadworks, more ruined small businesses, more vexing tourists without a clue where they are.
Leith Walk. Trams to shit on here by 2023.
Trams are a nuisance, a conduit for cretins.
The Edinburgh Christmas Market is back with a vengeance.
This Xmas market is an addiction. I don’t enjoy a single second meandering about its gruesome stalls, yet I continue to do so every year as it gets worse and worse in its lumbering pointlessness. The only parallel I can think of is watching Manchester United play football these days.
One day this is going to end. Best to savour it while it’s here.
Further reading:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-50446733
The fall of the Berlin Wall – 30 years on.
The Berlin Wall has been down now for longer than it was up (1961-1989). A lot of stuff seemed to happen during that Cold War era but since the wall’s … demise it’s like very little of significance has actually happened, even though it has. When you live through the decades rather than read about them things are less dramatic.
Francis Fukuyama’s ‘The End of History’ is of course absolute pampers but for me at least, it does often feel like history is indeed over, the Manichean structure of it gone, and we are now living in post-historical times. And nothing means anything anymore. Maybe it’s the 24-hour news cycle, the desensitisation to carnage as a result of its hourly reportage.
Anyway, here’s a mediocre snap of the Berlin Wall from my first trip there in 2009. Later that day I went to Checkpoint Charlie with a pal of mine and said to him: “This is fucking shite.” I don’t know why I was expecting something magical.
And check out these two stunning movies:
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 