Britain | Wanderings and ... wonderings.

Mar 24 2019

Britain, Cats, Edinburgh, Music, Photography, Scotland, Tourism, Uncategorized

Trying to capture album covers.

Ventured into some vinyl shop on Cockburn Street, Edinburgh the other day. I wished to recreate the truly gnarly album cover of DJ Shadow’s truly spellbinding Entroducing (1996).

Entroducing (1996).

I was loitering around the venue for a good 25 minutes, the owner becoming visibly vexed with yours truly. He didn’t like the cut of one’s jib, nor the fact I was papping his customers.

I managed to get a half-decent snap out of the 1,835 taken, and this was of some random not even in the fucking shop.

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I’ll see you in another life when we are both cats.

Tagged 1996, Album, DJ Shadow, Entroducing, Music, Photography, Snaps, Trip hop, Vinyl

Mar 06 2019

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Britain, Technology, Tourism, Trains, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized, United Kingdom

HS2 is coming.

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“HS2 will change things.”

I remember the chat well. This was eight years ago when I was doing soul-destroying manual labour/customer service in Edinburgh Waverley train station. The job was well paid and a laugh – colleagues were cracking banter and all hit the sauce like pros – but the “civilians” who ventured into that station. Fucking hell. Never again. Members of the general public are the dregs of humanity.

Anyway, I heard this HS2 topic daily, a colossal event on the horizon. The railways in Britain are a shambles. No-one knows why and not a soul has a solution. It’s been like this for the past century. No-one knows why. HS2 is meant to be the panacea for the chaos.

HS2 trains, expected to be operating by December 2026, will be 400 metres long, travelling at up to 250 mph – the fastest in Europe, apparently – and able to hold 1,100 seats, the initial line between London and the West Midlands. Following this, ‘Phase 2’ will connect Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds.

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The new lines will connect to existing standard-speed lines, with ‘classic compatible’ trains running on both high-speed and classic lines. The idea is that classic lines will benefit from HS2. The London to Edinburgh journey time, for example, will be 3:38 hours instead of 4:23.

Guaranteed they will still cost a fucking fortune, though.

I can get a flight to Dublin for £6 but a train to London King’s Cross is £194. And this for the privilege of being sat on some rickety rocket chock-full of intoxicated bairns.

Trains are torture.

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Architecture, Britain, Edinburgh, Photography, Tourism, Travel, Uncategorized, United Kingdom

Princes Street wasn’t always a toilet.

I fucking hate Princes Street. It’s dire, chock-full of stores that appear designed exclusively for desperate housewives. There are also mobile phone shops and a budget book place – this curious number sells no novels, the only items on display autobiographies of pointless celebrities and road maps of Denmark published in 2004. All very bizarre. Added to this is the plethora of American tourists crawling about with their bumbags on, elephants in the In Bruges (2008) sense.

Princes Street looked decent in 1858, though. No spackers to be seen here.

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Tagged 1800s, 19th century, City Centre, Edinburgh, In Bruges, Photograph, Princes Street, Scotland, Scott Monument, Stills, Tourists

Jan 30 2019

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Britain, Cinema, Documentary, First World War, Germany, Photography, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, World War One

The Great War (1964).

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I finally got around to viewing this epic 26-episode series from 1964. It’s an incredible compendium of WWI in all its participants’ hubris and misguided adventurism, and is majestically narrated by Sir Michael Redgrave (this bloke sounds more Laurence Olivier than Laurence Olivier himself).

This is how to do a documentary – with sweeping scope and intricate detail, no half measures. With terrifying archive footage and an expert use of primary sources read by contemporary actors, as well as interviews with those serving on the military and civilian fronts, it set the benchmark for such works, acting as a precursor to The World at War (1973).

The wonders of the Internet ensure it is free to binge-watch.

Tagged BBC, Documentary, First World War, The Great War, WWI

Dec 07 2018

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Britain, Cinema, Data, Mobile phones, Movies, Technology, Uncategorized

O2 outage – premonitions of Skynet.

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25 million customers losing the plot over an ‘outage’ due to “faulty software”. Shit came to a standstill because we can’t function without data.

It reminded me of an episode at Edinburgh’s Corn Exchange when their electronic ‘stuff’ stopped working so they had to add up drinks order prices with a calculator; it was too diabolically stressful for them and the masses were fuming.

The technology ends up, to paraphrase the movie Fight Club (1999), owning us. James Cameron was right and Skynet will be very real. Just wait until O2 becomes self-aware and hacks the nuclear codes.

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Britain, Construction, Edinburgh, Photography, Scotland, Tourism, Travel, Uncategorized, United Kingdom

Edinburgh Christmas Market.

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The Xmas Market is back, Edinburgh’s ‘winter wonderland’. Stalls selling tacky clobber, ‘German’ food and drink at Weimar Republic-level prices, and jingle bells noises.

Personally, I think it’s shite, but it lures in the tourists and scares away the junkies because they get too confused by bright lights and the smell of warm food.

Tagged Christmas, Christmas Market, City, Edinburgh, Market, Princes Street, Scotland, Xmas

Nov 02 2018

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Britain, Cinema, Film, First World War, Germany, Movies, Photography, Scotland, United Kingdom, World War One

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) – colourised reality.

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Viewed through the prism of black-and-white, Charlie Chaplin-speed film footage, it’s axiomatic to view actors from the past as otherworldly, alien even, and simply not blessed with the smarts and skills we believe ourselves to possess. We forget they are people of their time using that era’s technology and science and its harnessing of military doctrine.

Then the grainy kaleidoscope of war gets colourised to the max and all hell breaks loose. You’d think this is GoPro stuff sent back to Flanders in a time machine and then propelled back to the future by Marty and Doc, such has been the collective hyperbole over Peter Jackson’s colourised tribute to our great-grandparents.

And that’s the thing – as the red, green and blue is blitzed the more we can relate. Yet war today is some distant thing we flick through on CNN or whatever. Fully realised 3D depictions of car bombs and RPGs ambushing armoured personnel carriers we have decided are too graphic, this in an age when students find clapping traumatic. But the carnage of the Somme is somehow acceptable because it’s a centenary old. Weird.

Perhaps we need a WWIII to make reality (people die, war is hell) more palatable to our viewing tastes.

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Britain, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized, United Kingdom

Berwick-upon-Tweed.

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A secluded beach in Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is I have been told the northernmost town in England. It’s alright; the Morrisons is large and there is also a McDonald’s. And this wee beach is sort of cinematic. The locals speak funny – a bit like Gazza but slightly more coherent.

Tagged Berwick-upon-Tweed, England, Northumberland, Tweed

Aug 22 2018

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Britain, Edinburgh, Leith, Scotland, Tourism, United Kingdom

Newkirkgate – the jewel of Leith.

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I’m not gonna lie: that tower looks like hell. The first image which comes to mind is of tinned sardines on an Aldi shelf, or the whole budget aisle of canned fish, and not of the John West kind. Home is an island, a getaway from the loonies out in the wilderness. I don’t think anyone, in social housing or otherwise, should have to live like a sardine. Architectural abominations are omniscient in Alba.

Tagged Edinburgh, Flats, Leith, Newkirkgate, Tower

May 22 2018

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Britain, Cinema, Film, Germany, Movies, Transport, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, World War Two, WWII

France, 1940 – debunking the ‘Halt Order’.

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Up until last year and the release of Dunkirk (2017), it was generally assumed by the layman and amateur historian that the successful evacuation of Dunkirk was due to the lax, complacent attitude of the German Army, this a direct order from Hitler to halt the armoured divisions as a benevolent peace offer to the British. Only now has consensus gathered amongst us part-time carnage bookworms that this is nothing but a fallacy. Myths are embedded within official military narrative and it happens because they are convenient, an easy answer to overwhelmingly complex logistical and political issues. The laziness, with exceptions, of the modern historian is so rampant that contemporary sources are taken as gospel, i.e., works by peers. It’s as if the archives don’t exist.

James Holland’s recent digging into this seemingly forever contentious event now appears to have silenced the Hitler apologists (that he didn’t want to intensify war with Britain, bla, bla). The order quite simply came from the frontline generals, and Hitler’s subsequent involvement was as an intervention between competing branches of the German military. For an in-depth anatomy of the whole mess, I highly recommend this piece on Holland’s own website: http://www.griffonmerlin.com/2016/07/17/dunkirk-1940-hitlers-halt-order/

Fittingly, the Russians just this past week let forensic experts analyse Hitler’s teeth, dispelling, one would hope, the belief that he fled to Argentina in a U-boat or emigrated to the Moon.

Wanderings and … wonderings.

Category Archives: Britain

Trying to capture album covers.

HS2 is coming.

Princes Street wasn’t always a toilet.

The Great War (1964).

O2 outage – premonitions of Skynet.

Edinburgh Christmas Market.

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) – colourised reality.

Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Newkirkgate – the jewel of Leith.

France, 1940 – debunking the ‘Halt Order’.