Wanderings and ... wonderings.

Apr 11 2019

Architecture, Building, Construction, Tourism, Travel, Uncategorized

Brande skyscraper.

Brande in Denmark has a meagre population of 7,000 and there is very little to distinguish it … until now.

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The Danish clothing company Bestseller, its headquarters in the town, aims to put Brande ‘on the map’ with its construction of a 320-metre skyscraper, newspapers mockingly referring to it as the Tower of Sauron, this an all-seeing ‘evil thing’ in the Lord of the Rings works that didn’t quite make sense. And that wasn’t the end of the nonsensical with those movies – one could have summoned an eagle and had the fucker drop the ring in that volcano.

Anyway, back to Denmark. The skyscraper will house offices, a hotel, and some shops. More shite, just what an unspoiled landscape needs ….

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Architecture, Building, Construction, Edinburgh, Photography, Uncategorized

Hutchison House, Edinburgh.

Grim as fuck, this one. It smacks of the ’60s – poverty and deprivation in the so-called swinging era. It’s the type of building a skag head would chuck himself off. Some things need demolished; this is one of them. Yuk.

Tagged Architecture, Building, Edinburgh, High rise, Hutchison, Scotland

Apr 07 2019

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Edinburgh, Music, Photography, Scotland, Technology, Uncategorized, United Kingdom

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.

Tagged Edinburgh, Photography, Snaps, Writing

Apr 04 2019

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Architecture, Building, Canada, Construction, Tourism, Travel, Uncategorized

Habitat 67.

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I squirm at this but can’t stop staring. 146 apartments in Montreal, a breathing Lego kit with its own ecosystem. Designed by Moshe Safdie, this was meant to revolutionise affordable housing but its legacy is the opposite – a unit can set you back up to $1 million.

I guess it looks better than most dilapidated high-rises but for fuck’s sake, your crib is a tourist attraction. Every time you look out the window an army of Jimmy Stewarts are outside looking in, a Rear Window (1954) role reversal. Disturbing. What if you’re caught with a prossie?

If this is a glimpse of the future, I don’t wish to stick around for it.

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.

Tagged Architecture, Building, Edinburgh, Leith, Mural, Scotland

Apr 01 2019

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Cats, Photography, Uncategorized

Boris in close-up.

New camera, same cat. Meow.

Tagged Boris, Cat

Mar 31 2019

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Britain, Cinema, Edinburgh, Film, Movies, Music, Uncategorized

Edinburgh in a standstill.

A snippet from Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend (1967) came to Gorgie today. An eerie stillness, a surreal chav-free mise en scène. And one car was blasting out ‘The Boys of Summer’.

Traffic jams aren’t always rotten.

Tagged Edinburgh, Godard, Gorgie, Scotland, Traffic jam

Mar 28 2019

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Malta, Photography, Tourism, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

Throwback Thursdays – Malta.

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Sliema was a cracking wee jaunt – booze, sun, pigeons. My personal highlight, though, was a troupe of clueless Yanks asking the bus driver for directions to a “fish market”. The bloke behind the wheel took off his sunglasses, looked the ringleader of the muppets up and down, and retorted “Nah” before closing the bus doors.

Epic.

Tagged Malta, Mediterranean, Sliema, Tourism, Travel

Mar 26 2019

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Cinema, Edinburgh, Film, Movie, Movies, Scotland, Uncategorized

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.

Tagged Amateur filmmaking, City Centre, Edinburgh, Film, Movie, Short, Short Film

Mar 25 2019

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Architecture, Building, Norway, Tourism, Travel, Uncategorized

Straight Outta a Bond Villain. Under, Lindesnes. Norway’s underwater eatery.

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Lindesnes, Norway. A meal at ‘Under’ can cost up to £350, this Europe’s first underwater munch den with 100 seats available for diners. Food has never interested me much (unless I’m pished and craving kebabs) save the architectural design of eateries; I suppose the idea behind this venue is that it’s an ‘experience’. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) comes to mind, the only decent Roger Moore number in the Bond canon. Though the restaurant is only five metres under the sea, it’s a step in the right direction, the ultimate aim a Pot Noodle in the wreck of the Titanic.

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