Perhaps one day it will happen but I very much doubt it – a lauded director decides to use Gorgie Road as a seedy backdrop for a modern noir. I imagine a jaded Bogartesque PI stopping off at Aldi for a few cheap beers after a draining day spent with myriads of local scum.
In fact, I’m going to have to make this motion picture, the drama shot on a battered HTC, Gorgie City Farm the site of the climactic shootout.
Edinburgh January blues in a snap (the roundabout connecting Elm Row with London Road). It’s not exactly Chernobyl circa 1986 but mornings in this part of town are certainly fucking grim.
And the wind broke my umbrella.
A rainbow above KFC at Meadowbank. This is quite the surreal moment.
Leith Street purgatory.
The traffic in Edinburgh is a sadistic abomination, something that would drive Michael Douglas out his car à la Falling Down (1993). Every fucking day there is a jam of jams, caused and compounded by traffic lights with a five-second gap between green and red, omniscient roadworks, never-ending tram extensions, a 20 mph speed limit, tourist questions to the bus driver as if he were a tourist information office, and Edinburgh’s much-vaunted position as the prime location for filming chav fodder (Fast & Furious, Avengers) in, which brings about all manner of diversions. The city is a conurbation of the slow.
Whose doing is this? I don’t know but I can tell you that Edinburgh Council are, in the words of John McEnroe, “The absolute pits of the world.” So I blame them whether it’s their fault or not.
Further reading:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-35812226
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17682291.edinburgh-named-as-worst-uk-city-for-traffic-jams/
It doesn’t often look like this at Hutchison. For a very brief instant, things were cinematic. And then it was gone just as a beaten-up Ford Mondeo staggered into frame. This was my ‘Decisive Moment’.
I have been in this store more times than any other building in the history of my life. I have visited this shop on so many occasions that I could win a rebooted version of Supermarket Sweep blindfolded in record time; I know the location of every item and can blitz a £60 shop in under three minutes. I’ve conducted some cursory calculations and my conclusion is that I’ve graced the self-scan machines with my presence at least 3,500 times, which *must* be unique, unless I’m so solipsistic I’ve overlooked the fact that local working-class fanny magnet Fred (or whoever) has lived over the road for 40-odd years and ventures inside merely for chats.
Anyway, yesterday I saw a midget outside kick the fuck out of a trolley because ‘it’ stole his £1 coin. Scenes. He looked like Verne Troyer on steroids.
Saw this the other day after a long hiatus, and what an experience it is. With Sexy Beast (2000), it’s one of the few post Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) Brit gangster movies that actually delivers; Christ, remember all the early noughties mockney garbage that pummelled audiences into paralysis? That was one rotten era, a silly chav flick out every other week. And they all seemed to feature twats.
Gangster No. 1 (2000), though, is so stylishly put together and shamelessly so, the performances at times terrifying, and it shows the actual power and results of the ability to inflict violence rather than nonchalantly shrugging off the act as something comical (all Guy Ritchie movies). The film is about something, which is a rarity these days.
And it’s so good to see Malcolm McDowell in a decent movie; it’s almost as if he made a conscious decision to star in tripe after knowing nothing could ever top if…. (1968) and A Clockwork Orange (1971). That’s a perfect double bill, by the way, and so too is Sexy Beast (2000) and Gangster No. 1 (2000) – proper carnage but arty proper carnage with lots of swearing.
Sexy Beast (2000).
Once upon a time, I went to Falkirk for a ‘night out’. I can’t remember a distinguishing characteristic about the place save that it was dodgy; it had a Chernobyl feel to it and the bar staff were more difficult to understand than a Klingon speaking in their native tongue. The wheel, however, was something I was convinced I knew well. I always thought it was a sort of Central Lowlands version of a vintage ferris wheel à la The Third Man (1949). I only found out the other day that it’s not a wheel as in a ferris wheel, but something functional and once again … not at all a ferris wheel.
It is in fact a boat lift which connects the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal, and it’s quite the impressive achievement both aesthetically and from a purely engineering perspective. How I didn’t know this I … don’t know. I figure I was just lost in semantic confusion.
I might visit one day, and I now understand why Falkirk experiences a little bit of tourism. I would not, though, recommend its pubs to even Francis Begbie in his pomp.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.scottishcanals.co.uk/falkirk-wheel/plan-your-visit/
http://www.visitfalkirk.com/things-to-do/family-days-out/the-falkirk-wheel/
Arty-farty pretensions with this snap from Monday. Interestingly, there’s a graveyard coming up on the left there and I once saw a (presumably hammered) woman clutching a bottle of budget cider wander inside and take a shite in a bush.
All very Edinburgh.
I was in Newcastle this week. The city is a bit of a toilet and their football fans quite possibly the most delusional on the planet. I fondly recall Michael Caine’s Jack Carter uttering the immortal line, “Listen, the only reason I came back to this crap house – was to find out who did it. And I’m not leaving until I do.” That’s Newcastle in a sentence.
It has its wee charming attributes, though, as do most post-industrial northern dwellings. It’s Hovis advert territory but with tracksuits. I spent my time here wandering about like a wee numpty in search of locations featured in the movie. I didn’t find any, although I did locate a hostel kitchen that had no sink.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.movie-locations.com/movies/g/Get-Carter-1971.php
https://www.getcarter.xyz/locations/arriving-in-newcastle/
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/former-get-carter-pub-re-opens-8285847
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 