Category Archives: Photography

I thought I was Deckard once.

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A thoroughly miserable mise-en-scène in Gorgie yesterday, though I don’t mind the deluge as the chavs stay indoors (mostly). Armed with a stolen umbrella, I for a very brief epoch possessed Blade Runner (1982) visions – Vangelis, Film Noir, a charismatic Dutch antagonist, 2019 premonitions vs. present day shenanigans.

Then I arrived at my conclusion: 2019 didn’t witness flying cars and robots you can have ‘life moments’ with; it was some berserk ginger midget in a 1997 Kappa tracksuit bolting up Gorgie Road with a stolen toaster, three tubby cops in tow.

That’s life.

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Leith wanderings.

 

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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.

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Easter Road.

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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.

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Leith Walk. Trams to shit on here by 2023.

Trams are a nuisance, a conduit for cretins.

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St. Andrews ‘bantz’.

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I’d never been here before until this weekend yet have lived in Scotland (on and off) for more than two decades. Apparently they play golf in this bubble and some ‘Royals’ got into the local university despite possessing mediocre academic qualifications; is this what they call ‘privilege’? I once lived in student digs with a stripper from Wigan and we had a spare room; this geeky fucker from St. Andrews turned up for a flat viewing. The pole dancer looked at him and within four seconds concluded he was a cretin. He didn’t get the spare room. That’s most likely the reason I didn’t visit until now.

Anyway, it was a nice wee place. Nothing special. Nothing bad. Just politely bland. It reminded me of Last of the Summer Wine but without Compo and Nora Batty. I was fucking raging at the £15 train fare back to Edinburgh. I once purchased a flight to Stockholm for £2.

Welcome to Britain (it’s fucked).

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The Edinburgh Christmas Market is back with a vengeance.

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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.

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One day this is going to end. Best to savour it while it’s here.

Further reading:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/23/edinburgh-christmas-german-market-splits-opinions-local-residents

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-50446733

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Six days in Barcelona.

Barcelona was fine. I couldn’t be bothered seeing Las Ramblas or the Camp Nou, preferring the boulevards of Gràcia and its surfeit of supermarkets and bars – the district didn’t strike me as a ‘tourist trap’ even though it might have been. Most of my time was spent either there or ‘exploring’ the metro system. I am a geek for anything ‘Trainy McTrainface’, especially of the underground variety, so this pursuit I found most arresting.

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The holiday apartment building, however, was the noisiest place; someone inhabiting a room on the floor above would turn on the shower and subsequently the building would shudder. I barely got a wink of sleep because of the noise. In addition to this din, renovations were being done all day. I almost expected a wrecking ball to crash through our living room. Absolute fucking racket.

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Trip highlight – a midget sold me a cheap bunnet.

Trip lowlight –  Ryanair at Barcelona-El Prat charging me €25 for a too-big bag, even though it could clearly fit in the overhead locker. I’ve been on almost 50 flights with that bag (I call it the ‘Big Bag’), and this is the first time it’s been picked out in the queue.

Fuming.

P.S. Here is Homer and Marge Simpson in Gràcia.

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Edinburgh’s own winter wonderland.

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Meadowbank/Abbeyhill is drab and dreary for much of the year, and during the summer months approximates ‘peak chav’ when they all crawl out of the woodwork and luxuriate in the sweltering heat.

Winter on The Ranch is tolerable, however. The season has a calming effect on the locals as ‘Cloud City’ acts as the temporary backdrop.

Environmental determinism is real.

 

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Somewhere over KFC.

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A rainbow above KFC at Meadowbank. This is quite the surreal moment.

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Edinburgh congestion is torture.

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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/

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Three days in Belfast.

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A wee jaunt here for a wedding and an excuse to watch Titanic (1997) for the 169th time because of the Belfast connections; I couldn’t be arsed with the museum because I refuse to pay for anything that I can see for free on Google Images. I did, however, do quite a fair bit of wandering around the Titanic Quarter for some amateurish snaps on a fucked Android that has somehow managed to pap seven midgets in five cities.

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I like Belfast. The history of the place is not a nice bedtime story but that doesn’t enter into my evaluation of its pubs and of course the Titanic connection, which is all that matters when it’s all said and done, eh.

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Highlights: The airport bus (No. 300) driver calling a daft bloke driving the wrong direction down a one-way road a “gobshite”; the hotel receptionist asking me where and when the Titanic foundered (people really should know this); the Titanic Hotel charging a ridiculous £5.70 for a pint of Diet Cola (staff were awful as well), and, inevitably, watching Titanic (1997) in my sweatpants with a bottle of Peach Schnapps. Billy Zane is what it’s all about.

Not too shabby wall art, either.

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Edinburgh – winter is coming.

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Princes Street is ghastly – chavs galore and feckless tourists – but every Christmas it’s almost bearable. Because it rains and snows and people look fucking miserable. I like misery and I enjoy seeing people miserable. Great.

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