The FOTW, Edinburgh’s own frazzled little riviera.
Leith is classy and colourful.
Category Archives: Leith
The St. James Centre was an architectural crime.
One of the very few cases (I wasn’t alive during the bombing of Dresden circa 1945) of rubble being more aesthetically pleasing than the shopping centre that was previously stood there … gawking at folk. It was Medusa in building form.
A horrible thing.
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.
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.
Crawling about Leith.
As a scion of Gorgie, it is with great reluctance that I have ventured a lot more into Leith these days, and I for a brief moment feared I had gone Full-Anthropologist. It’s not as mingin’ as I initially thought. In fact, some of it is quite lovely.
No junkies were harmed in the taking of this photograph.
Edinburgh – The Fringe is balls.
This video (gone viral) nails the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Whoever made it, kudos.
Personally, I’ve always despised the thing. It’s merely an invitation for dumb-as-a-stump tourists to clog up the streets and gaze at the castle with this eternally perplexed idiotic expression as if it were an alien spacecraft. The drinks prices go up, the shows are a shower of shit, and there’s a 400% influx in the number of scruffy art student wankers congregating on street corners like pseudo-bohemian jackals, sharing their very limited ideas (like taking a dump on a canvas) with anyone who will and won’t listen.
We don’t need them. I am not aware of anyone who lives here who actually enjoys this pish. We just tolerate the circus because apparently it brings the money in. I doubt that.
Persevere Court, Leith.
I was pointlessly waddling around Leith and Newhaven again this afternoon in search of existential equilibrium. Sadly, I did not find such a level of spiritual enlightenment. I did, however, locate another treat that adorns the view from Ocean Terminal. They tell me the bad boys go by the name of ‘Persevere Court’. The first thing that popped into my head was: are sprinkler systems installed? The second: the colour scheme must have been designed by someone who has frequented far too many Ryanair flights.
Outrageous scenes.
Newhaven Quay, Edinburgh.
Snapped from Brewers Fayre. There’s something of the Americana about this chain of venues, with the free soft drink refills and Hooters-esque staff uniforms. I was in Dunfermline’s version of one of these ‘restaurants’ a decade ago and found the experience most distressing; come to think of it, this might have actually been a Frankie & Benny’s. No matter, they’re all interchangeable: tacky décor, borderline violent eaters, screaming kids running amok.
Newhaven itself is a curious mix of the old and new; flats are *always* being developed, little ships will always have their presence, and eateries such as Brewers Fayre will continue to splatter the waterfront.
Bigfoot on London Road, Edinburgh.
I must confess I found this most amusing – three seats symmetrically arranged for the grand spectacle that is a foot sculpture in a park. Is the purpose to sit there and stare at it? Amidst the dog shit and the litter, the football casuals and the junkies, this monument to the human foot is the regal gateway to Leith.
Wee drizzle on London Road.
I’ll never understand why the alleged ‘hard-as-nails’ denizens of Edinburgh shit their nappies when the rain arrives; you’d think it’s a hurricane descending upon The Burgh, Bill Paxton en route with his gear.
Here is a standard ‘thunderstorm’ … and a pale local (based on physiognomy most likely a junkie) with an umbrella eyeballing me as he sucks on a lollipop. Wanker.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 
