It’s not been pretty; in fact, it has been rather harrowing. Tornado season is now over, however, and we can now look forward to the Coronavirus.
Storm Dennis strikes Leith.
Tag Archives: Scotland
Johnnie Walker fantasies at the West End.
Formerly the House of Fraser, this prime slice of real estate will now allegedly house a rooftop cocktail bar. It won’t happen for two reasons: 1. The men in white coats don’t think that Scottish folk can be trusted to imbibe on rooftops; 2. We can’t be trusted to behave ourselves on rooftops, especially after a gin & tonic served in a slipper or whatever the fuck the Hipster zeitgeist utilise as highball glasses these days.
Bye for now.
Further reading:
Fountainbridge, Edinburgh.
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.
Inverurie getaway.
Secluded Aberdeenshire bantz this late January, which was another excuse to sit in Guinness pants and watch a batch of movies with a side order of multiple episodes of The Chase, intermittently knocking back ersatz Baileys sourced from Lidl. Every cottage/lodge on my ‘adventures’ up north I ascribe the moniker ‘The Palace’, and this was another plush compound I’d gladly return to.
Doing nothing in the middle of nowhere is a treasured pastime of mine; I’ll never understand bungee jumping or snorkelling or any of that stuff. The perfect trip I would define as sitting on my arse and not having to smile through silly activities, so this jaunt ticked all the boxes. I was even mildly active in my own limited way on this occasion, conducting daily jogs to ’90s trance and ‘conversing’ with some local sheep.
I said to myself, “It must be awful to be a sheep.” But then I concluded they don’t know they are sheep and this is a universal metaphor. It was my profound thought of the expedition. Other highlights include smoking a Cuban cigar, alphabetising by title the dwelling’s book collection, snapping a rainbow, and operating binoculars for the first time in two decades. I spotted a bird which wasn’t a pigeon or a seagull but I don’t know what it was.
A good time was had.
Welcome to Edinburgh.
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.
Mandatory Gorgie Road Xmas morning snap.
No caption necessary.
I thought I was Deckard once.
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.
Leith wanderings.
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.
St. Andrews ‘bantz’.
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).
The Edinburgh Christmas Market is back with a vengeance.
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
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 