Blogger Pal Indigo Roth is here with us again just now. He was here for a week in January and didn't seem put off by the weather so decided to come and have a look in some better temperatures. While it's nowhere near as warm as recent weeks and the wind has been more to the fore, we've had a few nice days.
It's nice to see familiar places through the eyes of someone seeing them for the first time. When we do have visitors we have a few places we always like to take them to see. At this time of the year it's Edinburgh in festival mode - we're leaving shortly to spend the rest of the day there - and this week we were lucky to get tickets for the preview night of The Edinburgh Tattoo. Our friend appeared to have a ball. At this rate he might be going home wearing a kilt!
Although I've had to work a couple of days I've also been able to spend time out and about with our friend. Luckily like me he enjoys photography and again, it's nice to see familiar places interpreted by someone else in their photos. Somehow it gives you a wider perspective when you realise they often see things you don't in your well known places.
Concentration.
It will be interesting to see how he views the crowds and places in Edinburgh today. I can hardly wait.
Lindisfarne.
The photos here are some taken over the last few days. Some of Indigo's can be seen here.
Well, it's here at last! My favourite time of year in Edinburgh - festival time!
I had the chance to spend a couple of hours in town the other morning so I took along my camera to see what was going on. These are some of the photos. I never got the chance to spend much time there and the sky was very overcast which blew out any detail in it so not much of the wider views' I focussed mainly on the performers who were giving out flyers and trying desperately to attract attention for their shows in the main tourist area of The Royal Mile.
Today I find I’ve got the time for writing a blog as I’ve been down to Liverpool for a training course on writing and reviewing fire risk assessments. This means I’ve a few hours to kill on the train and for once I’ve brought the laptop with me so I’m sitting at a table as I whizz backwards through the countryside in the gloom of a Scottish summer at 70 or 80 miles an hour, typing away and listening to some great music pouring out of my headphones.I’m not sure but from some of the glances that have come my way I may have been singing along. It’s not a pretty thought, so if you’re reading this and have just spent three hours beside a nutter singing out loud on the train from Preston to Edinburgh then I sincerely apologise
It’s not like me to be organised but for once, after just 53 years of practicing, I have my act well and truly in order, at least in one tiny way. I’ve made use of some odd bits of time here and there to organise scheduling of ‘The Sunday Post’ poem blogs right through to Christmas and have several more sitting ready to schedule to start off 2013. It felt very odd to be sitting here in July posting a blog for Dec 23rd even if the weather is more reminiscent of early winter with the last few weeks of record rainfall.
The poems are the only bit of the blog I’ve consistently planned in advance and usually I manage to keep a week or so ahead, but for once I found myself with a list of poems in mind and some time to both get them transferred into blogger and to organise them into a preferred chronology of sorts for scheduling. Not that the order makes any sense because of structure or anything like that. I like to be organised with the poems so that there is always a regular posting to cover the event of work interfering with blogging or, as is sometimes/often the case, I find inspiration has deserted me. As far as ‘normal’ posting is concerned I tend to just bash away with whatever is in the brain cell at the time. That seems to work for me for the most part. The only exceptions to this are the Scots history tales as they tend to need a bit more in the way of research and structure is more important to make sense. These have been missing of late because they tend to take a while to research and organise and I find myself writing and rewriting to make things clearer or to flow better.
Time for blogging has been sparse recently and has coincided with one of those spells where inspiration has been posted AWOL too. I’m not a naturally ‘creative’ kind of writer so imaginary tales or situations aren’t really my thing even though I do like to read a lot of fiction. In the past I often posted tales of interaction with Jess our cat, which proved popular, but work has separated Jess and I to a fair degree and she now spends much more time with The Lovely G so I am bottom of the list of preferred partners. Being bottom of a list of two isn’t too bad I suppose in the big scheme of things. I suppose there are tales to be told of working with Autism Spectrum disorders but I have hesitated on this so far. Beyond the obvious protection of privacy and dignity I’m not sure if that’s a topic I want as part of what’s been to date simply a personal blog. Actually, having just written and read that off the screen, I’m pretty sure I won’t be writing about that. The potential pitfalls may be just too great.
Despite the bad weather, the summer {?} is marching on and the annual cycle repeats itself as Edinburgh braces itself for The Festival. Venues are beginning to put out hoardings and billboards are jumping up all over promoting everything from circus acts to ladyboys or the huge influx of comedy shows. For me this is the best time of the year to live within easy reach of Edinburgh. I love the city at festival time and, while normally I would grump for Scotland about queues or rude tourists or shop assistants or creaking public transport or a myriad of other things, I will happily choose to spend days among the crowds, put up with being jostled while queuing for anything from tickets to drinks to a place at a public convenience and happily point lost souls in the direction of castles, toilets, pubs, clubs or shows and revel in making conversation for a while with people I would never normally talk to or may never meet again.
My personal highlight to The Festival is the Edinburgh Book Festival, the world’s largest book festival and destination for literally hundreds of authors of all genres to come and meet the public. British authors are a huge part of the book festival and I enjoy going to see a few regulars every year: Ian Banks, Ian Rankin and Christopher Brookmyre. These Scottish authors are constants at the festival and are some of the hottest tickets for us parochial Scots. Luckily as a ‘Friend of the Book Festival’ I’m able to get tickets in advance of public release which guarantees me two tickets at any 10 events I want to see. These three are always the non-negotiable first on the list as they are some of the finest raconteurs and ad-hoc responders to unexpected questioning from the audience. Ian Rankin and Christopher Brookmyre have particularly Scottish voices compared to Ian Banks but he is probably the best of them all in terms of what he is willing to give to the audience. One of those people you would love to spend an evening in a bar with – although he could probably drink me under the table. We share a love of single malt whiskies and his book 'Raw Spirit' - about touring the distilleries of Scotland on assignment to find ‘ the perfect dram’- is one of my favourites as it’s a highly personal tale of the jaunts and japes that often took place while enduring the hangovers that attention to detail in an assignment like that seems to have demanded and covers not only his love and knowledge of whisky but of his love of Scotland and its 'great wee roads', for cars and motoring, family and friends and all in his unique style of inquiry into those crazy trains of thought that sometimes come through in his writing.
This year the festival has potential to be extra fun as I get to go exploring with my new telephoto lens which promises to be ideal for some of the candid people shots that I love to take. Since getting my newest addition to my camera kit I’ve not really had the chance to get out and about and find out exactly what my 150 – 500mm telephoto lens can really do. Weather and work have conspired against it.
Oops - time's marched on - and I've been goofing off doing other stuff as well as writing a bit now and then - and the train is coming into Edinburgh. Time to pack up and get on my way home.
Last night we went to see the Edinburgh Tattoo. This is one of the highlights of the Edinburgh Festival and is - I am reliably informed by My Lovely G - the worlds top tourist attraction and we love the festival in all its guises. Why not? And after all Edinburgh is only a short drive from the house.. She and I had been to the Tattoo about 20 years ago but had never been back. Last year, we gave my brother two prime tickets as a Christmas present and he invited one of my uncles, who had always wanted to see it, to go with him. They both enjoyed the show so much and were so enthusiastic in telling us about it that we decided that this year we should treat ourselves and go back.
We decided to go to the late show, which takes place on a Friday, starting at nine p.m., as it incudes a firework display over the castle as part of the finale. The show lasts for two hours and, as you would expect, is an incredible spectacle and is watched by a crowd of several thousand appreciative people. The weather was quite mixed across the show with a couple of showers of rain, which swirled in the wind around the stadium on the Castle Esplanade and made taking photographs difficult at times. Here though despite that, are a few photos I managed to take during the performance as well as a couple of video clips from You Tube showing this years performance.
The word "Tattoo" is derived from "Doe den tap toe", or just "tap toe" ("toe" is pronounced "too"), the Dutch for 'Last Orders' Translated literally, it means: "put the tap to", or "turn off the tap". The term "Tap-toe" was first encountered by the British Army when stationed in Flanders during the mid 18th Century. The British adopted the practice and it became a signal, played by a regiment's drums or pipes and drums each night to tavern owners to turn off the taps of their ale kegs so that the soldiers would retire to their lodgings at a reasonable hour. Later in the 18th century, the term Tattoo was used to describe not only the last duty call of the day, but also a ceremonial form of evening entertainment performed by Military musicians.
A lighter moment - visitors from Holland - and of course with bicycles
I can be fairly cynical about the way Scotland, or at least its tourist industry, choose to portay everything here as being tartan - and certainly when you come to something like the Edinburgh Tattoo you could be fooled into believing that Scotland is tartan from end to end. Despite that, we both had a fantastic night and thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle. Aye - and the tartan too!
The performances were flawless and the staging of the whole show was excellent. It is difficult not to be impressed with the backdrop of Edinburgh Castle against the evening sky, lit spectacularly and decked with flags flying in the breeze. Watching some 250 tartan clad, red coated, gleaming specimens of manhood marching up and down the Esplanade it was difficult for me with my interest in Scottish history not to think just for a wee moment or two about the reality of why Scots have been such a huge part of the British Army - a fact born out of huge adversity and manipulation. I thought too, about the tragic armed mutiny that took place right there on the esplanade when the Seaforth Highlanders turned against their officers and marched off down the Royal mile and out onto Arthur's seat where they took up defensive positions against their commanding officers who they believed had betrayed them and were about to send them to India to serve there. Something I posted about here.
All in all, it was a great spectacle and an event well worth going to see. I would recommend it to anyone. It's impossible not to feel moved as you watch nearly 300 bandsman marching and feel the wave of sound from all those pipes and drums. The live performances of military bands from the UK and around the world have always been a huge hit and sell out well in advance. The Tattoo runs throughout August. More than 250,000 people see The Royal Edinburgh Tattoo live each year and 100 million see it on television around the world.
Last night was the first visit to the Edinburgh book Festival this year. As has become customary I took my brother-in-law, Tony, to see one of our favourite authors, the Scots writer of fiction and science fiction, Ian Banks, or Ian.M.Banks as he's known as in sci-fi circles. We've both seen Ian Banks at events several times over the years, usually here in Edinburgh. Tonight, Scotland’s first Minister, Alex Salmond, interviewed him. It's unusual to have such a well-known figure host the event and I hoped that it would make the evening even more special. Tony and I had arrived at the venue good time and managed to get seats in the front row only a few feet away from the action.
Alex started off his introduction to the session by admitting that he never fully read Ian's last sci-fi novel, but he also said that if anyone was going to ask questions on a topic he knew nothing about and hadn't thoroughly researched, then a politician was probably the best person to do it, given that this is what they do for a living, and with his vast experience he hoped he would be able to muddle through. He also admitted that due to an administrator error, both Ian and himself had actually been arranged and had attended the night before by mistake. Luckily, both he and Ian were available for tonight as well, although he had cancelled his attendance at the big football match in the city tonight. "Not," he said, "that this was a problem, as I am delighted to attend the book Festival event instead, despite my well-known support for the Edinburgh team playing tonight." He continued, "and I have assured the director of the festival that the unfortunate error will have no implications on the funding for next year's book Festival!"
His handling of the event over the next hour continued to be confident and affable as you would expect from a polished political performer, but it was obvious that he knew very little about Ian Banks, particularly his science-fiction writing. This did impact the flow somewhat but he did well to keep things moving on at a pace and to keep the tone light-hearted and focused on the author rather than himself. The evening usually follows a set agenda; an initial interview with the author, usually about his current or latest book, followed by an open mike question-and-answer session between the author and the audience.
As usual Ian Banks was highly animated, engaging and thoroughly entertaining. Throughout the questioning he wasn't averse to turning a question into an opportunity to explain his own left-wing political views and use these to have a good natured poke at Alex Salmond or the Scottish political scene. As Ian doesn't have a book launching currently it was a good opportunity, well taken by Alex Salmond, to have a much longer question and answer session which allowed the audience to take a full part in the evenings proceedings as well as cover-up his lack of background knowledge. This allowed many of the sci-fi fans in the audience to ask technical, or more detailed questions about various facets of his sci-fi writing (You know how some sci-fi readers can be right geeky so and so's) which seemed to go down well with the audience.
As is usual in these events the hour passed very quickly and soon we left the main hall and stepped out into one of those rainy Edinburgh evenings so typical of any Festival event. It was a grand way to spend an hour in the company of my brother-in-law and one of our favourite authors and left me looking forward to the next event, which is again something that's become customary – an evening with Ian Rankin, the well-known Scots crime writer, another cracking raconteur. Before then, tonight in fact, the Lovely G and I will be walking up to Edinburgh Castle and the spectacle that is the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, something we've been to once before but many years ago. It's probably the number one tourist event in Scotland and runs to packed audiences every night during the International Festival.
I'm hoping for a clear night but I better look out the wet weather gear for us just in case!
A Scots 'close' is a narrow alley between tenement houses.
They run off the Royal Mile like ribs off a spine.
In old Scots a close might also be called an entry, wynd, court, vennal, gate or gait.
Hullo ma wee blog,
I recently posted some reflections on being in Edinburgh during the festival and said that I would have to take my camera in with me for a bit of a hoof about the sights of our wee toon in full tourist mode. Although the weather today wasn't the best to show off the town in, being a bit dull and overcast with only occasional glimpses of blue skies, I decided to give it a go as who knows what next week may bring. Although I didn't get round everywhere that I had hoped I took a fair few photo's and it should give some idea of what the place looks like just now. Hopefully I'll get a chance to catch the Grassmarket and Cowgate areas some time next week.
The population of Edinburgh doubles in August as visitors flock in to see not just a festival but the festivals, a there is the International Festival of the Arts, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival of music, theatre and comedy, The Edinburgh Book Festival and the Film Festival. The atmosphere is incredible with 2300 shows available through 3 weeks, 7 days a week just in the Fringe alone.
Writing workshop tomorrow which I'm looking forward to.
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