Moses would have creamed his toga (is that what they wore or was it a Roman invention?) at such scenes. When the Red Sea was split into a peak John Woo movie did the bloke (Mr. Moses) ever witness a sky like this? Gorgie is an Old Testament in the present. I believe this scenic occasion was a riotous football game. History repeats itself and all that.
Gorgie Road in April – spring doesn’t exist here (and never will). Gorgie is the dark side of Dickens, but with an inordinate volume of shitty cars, manky kebabs, and unwashed tracksuits. The pubs are usually okay if you leave before sundown. Nothing else to see here.
Snow is hell. As Scots, you’d think we would be able to cope with the scenario but evidently not. The whole country is static, with bewildered cattle stocking up trolleys with bread and milk.
Anyway, sometimes there are serene scenes. It looks lovely out there.
This park is usually frequented by mutilated junkies off their tits or those wee post-Noughties hipster kids taking selfies on the swings (the Decline of Western Civilisation). You are, however, blessed once in a blue moon (Definition: informal, very rarely) by these kind of vignettes. Silence. No one in sight. Lovely.
Some eerie, bittersweet photos in The Scotsman newspaper today of shopfronts in 1981 Gorgie and Dalry, all snaps taken by then-art student Catherine Stevenson.
Link to article:
https://www.facebook.com/lostedinburgh/
On most mornings I look around my Slateford surroundings and utter “What a shithole” under my breath. A combination of festive ice and a dearth of commuters gave me thankful chills this Boxing Day. And I didn’t slip on my arse. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
Gorgie has finally approached full Ice-Mode so it is therefore officially winter in ‘God’s Country’. There’s nothing quite like the sight of a tracksuit-wearing ruffian bolting for the bus and slipping on his/her/its arse. In a rare Vanilla Sky-esque snap, we here witness the ghetto at its most pacific.
It’s here once more (with feeling). The Christmas Market on Princes Street has been setting up shop every November for what must be the last two millennia. There’s not much to it but tat peddled from wooden shacks, and a sickly, premature jingle bells atmosphere. One can hit the mulled wine and warm ciders, though. Any excuse for a piss-up. There is also an imposing fuck-off ferris wheel if you fancy gobbing on someone from an advantageous peak.
Edinburgh does have its wee accidental allusions.
Gioachino Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie enters my noggin every time I slo-mo stride along ‘Fountainbridge Marina’, a singular image of Alex DeLarge and his droogs syncing to another Kubrickian vignette. Kubrick infects everything, cinema’s supreme stylist.
‘As we walked along the flatblock marina, I was calm on the outside, but thinking all the time. So now it was to be Georgie the general, saying what we should do and what not to do, and Dim as his mindless greeding bulldog. But suddenly I viddied that thinking was for the gloopy ones and that the oomny ones use, like, inspiration and what Bog sends. For now it was lovely music that came to my aid. There was a window open with the stereo on and I viddied right at once what to do.’
Watching this short Pathé feature I’ve seldom recalled so many conflictingly good and bad memories inhabiting the same space. In almost every image here I ludicrously time-travel to a kaleidoscope of experiences and the Sartrean depths of the moment, something about the temporality of being-for-itself.
The singular power of images, for me, is that they transcend the ‘shadows-and-dust’ narrative we direct. A memory of a place or person is just a memory – it’s the image that validates our longing for the past experience.
It is odd how little Edinburgh has changed architecturally since 1931 – it’s one of those cities seemingly impervious to redesign (a Venice of the North?) and this is imbued in its dormant volcano. People come and go, the landscape watches on.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 