Tag Archives: Scotland
Edinburgh’s London Road like you’ve seldom seen it before.
Lunch-time wanderings again but on this occasion with a twist. The COVID-19 calamity presented the chance to obtain a soulless, way-too-sharp semi-decent snap of London Road from the roundabout. And yes, I was ‘distancing’ as I ordinarily do (for people in this part of the world generally stink), and also donning ‘Corona Clobber’, i.e., latex gloves and surgical mask.
In any other age, the frame would be rammed with our clunky buses. But not today.
2020 is historical.
Slumdog Gorgie.
A (historical) pal of mine said to me the other day that growing up in Gorgie was like “battling through gorilla warfare”.
Very accurate.
There used to be a bingo to the left of the snap. I went to school with the lad who burned it to the ground many years ago. We all know he did it but never spoke about the act to the authorities.
Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.
Lothian Road had a port?!
I did not know until last week that Lothian Road, right where the Odeon Cinema now resides, was once home to a port (Hopetoun), this the start/end of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal. Nor was I aware that Burke and Hare were among the navvies who built the waterway. Cracking article here in The Scotsman: https://www.scotsman.com/heritage/when-passenger-boats-could-dock-at-lothian-road-in-edinburgh-s-city-centre-1-5036076
A 13-hour journey quickly supplanted by the railway, imagine being sat on a barge for that long without the internet.
P.S. No midgets were harmed in the taking of that photograph.
Further reading:
https://canmore.org.uk/site/52712/edinburgh-port-hopetoun-union-canal-basin
Ugly Edinburgh.
The reveal of the buildings on this list wasn’t much of a shock, and I am humbled by the fact that two of them I work in, and another – see photo above – I pass at least four times a day (I even wrote a shitty blog about it a while back).
If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain – someone said that once (Dolly Parton and David Brent). Only through the contrast with the rotten can we appreciate the palatial.
FYI: I presently write this from a building on the list.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 