Category Archives: Scotland

Persevere Court, Leith.

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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.

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Gorgie spring.

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It’s official – spring has hit Gorgie. Cue shirtless chavs, the foreboding jingle of ice cream vans, rammed buses, and a general increase in noise levels. I prefer the ghetto in winter because it sends these things back into the woodwork where they should remain. Happy Easter.

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Newhaven Quay, Edinburgh.

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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.

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Shell Garage, Dalry Road. Memories.

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This used to be the home of the infamous Shell garage, a post-3:00 a.m. drunken haven. There was nothing quite like their chicken stuffing sandwiches, especially when one was off one’s proverbial tits on a Smörgåsbord of £1 voddy and cokes from Rush Bar in the Cowgate. And how I miss the mangled chat with the bloke behind the glass. He clearly wanted to die but I still bombarded him with my life thoughts. 2005-2013 was a good fucking time in my life.

Greenpeace protesters at Shell

Greenpeace protesters are protesting at Shell garages in Edinburgh as a result of Shell exploring in the Arctic 16 July 2012

Now it’s an empty space. Sad. The land that is; not my existence. These days I get free Wi-Fi at work. 24/7 Clockwork Winning.

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Modern living.

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Basking in the glory of an e-cig USB plug-in on the No. 16 bus.

Doing this grandiose act in Newhaven, I felt as if I had summited the bus experience, charging and vaping on the peasant wagon the apex of the commute.

#Rebelwithanecig.

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Writing anything is torture.

Writing is waterboarding of the mind, such is the rolling artillery barrage of stimuli out there. As a part-time aspiring Gonzo in the knock-off Hunter S. Thompson mould (I don’t do drugs for fear of dying before the real-life Matt Damon lands on Mars), I cannot construct a sentence if there is a Wi-Fi connection. Why pen anything when there is Wikipedia and a mammoth page dedicated to the Battle of Austerlitz (1805)?

One must be unplugged from The Matrix.

Here is my photographic … representation of even an attempt to write anything with a correctly placed comma. And all music must be Enya or Enigma or any other kind of chillout music, nothing too high-tempo.

Writers Block

This photo ripped an hour from my life, by the way.

It’s how I imagine F. Scott Fitzgerald carved his stuff when Zelda was out in Lalaland off her tits on cocktails galore.

 

 

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In a nutshell. Leith, Edinburgh.

Rambling around Leith today taking snaps. The port district is ugly but it has character. I would wager it has the highest concentration of junkies and creatives per square mile than anywhere else in Scotland. Everyone knows someone who’s on the smack, yet conversely their next-door neighbour will have aspirations of being this generation’s Bukowski.

The pubs also ‘suffer’ from deflation.

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Adjuster – a cheeky short.

A shitty wee movie I have made. Uploading the beast took longer than making the actual thing (seven hours of shooting). The sound ‘design’ is fucking awful, but some of the visuals look decent.

 

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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).

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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.

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Aldi was drama-free today.

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Where are the tracksuits?

No chavs, no nutters, no shoplifters, no screaming kids, and not a single person this evening decided to whistle at the top of their lungs (vile behaviour which should be a private avocation).

What a rare day of serenity in Aldi.

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