Famous for being the birthplace of Sir Sean Connery, and that’s about it as far as historical significance goes. The area has gone through such transformations over the past decade or so it’s unrecognisable from the Noughties. The pub ‘The Fountain’, for example, was in recent times popularly compared to Vietnam in the age of Presidents Johnson and Nixon; today it is thoroughly hipster and you need to venture elsewhere to witness a glassing.
Tragedy.
Perhaps one day it will happen but I very much doubt it – a lauded director decides to use Gorgie Road as a seedy backdrop for a modern noir. I imagine a jaded Bogartesque PI stopping off at Aldi for a few cheap beers after a draining day spent with myriads of local scum.
In fact, I’m going to have to make this motion picture, the drama shot on a battered HTC, Gorgie City Farm the site of the climactic shootout.
Edinburgh January blues in a snap (the roundabout connecting Elm Row with London Road). It’s not exactly Chernobyl circa 1986 but mornings in this part of town are certainly fucking grim.
And the wind broke my umbrella.
No caption necessary.
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.
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.
Easter Road.
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.
Leith Walk. Trams to shit on here by 2023.
Trams are a nuisance, a conduit for cretins.
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.
One day this is going to end. Best to savour it while it’s here.
Further reading:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-50446733
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.
A rainbow above KFC at Meadowbank. This is quite the surreal moment.
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/
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 