Edinburgh Festival Photos

Edinburgh

Edinburgh without the festival just isn't right. It's like going up stairs when you think there's one more step than there is and you thump down on the flat. I should have, maybe did, get used to it over these last few months, but oh the joy to be back at festival time.

The High Street buzzes with a bizarre army of flyer-pushers working their way between tourists, festival junkies and earnest show-goers. Posters are layered over each other by enterprising groups who vie for the safest top-spot by climbing onto shoulders or leaping wildly with broom-handles. On miniature stages, on bollards and the cobbled road, groups perform tasters of their shows. Basil Fawlty and Manuel saunter down the Mile, passing dancers, wenches, pirates, dead bodies, stilt-walkers and a rugby team whose Hakka holds up the traffic. Pluck perform with such a dazzling brilliance that I immediately buy a ticket. The sun shines. This is Edinburgh.

There isn't enough time to see everything I'd like to, but this year I get to more shows than ever. Choose better. Although I still ended up at at least one cringeworthy failure of a show - but then, that's part of the fun.

I found some gems this year: Pluck, Tony!The Blair Musical, John Hegley (again) and Pericles Redux being the highlights. Pericles Redux was the most unusual and mesmerising Shakespeare you could imagine - original text woven into physical theatre that told the story, grabbed you and carried you away. And a few days later I came across the team performing on the street, a vision of topless muscular strength and elegance.

The energy of the festival is heady. Just sitting in the Pleasance Courtyard sipping a drink is like a show in itself.

Newcastle

Over the years I must have been through Newcastle a hundred times on the train. Well, quite a lot, anyway. And I love it. If I’m too buried in my book to notice that it’s time to look out at the Tyne bridges I feel cheated, short changed. So this week I decided to get off. You hear enough about Newcastle, I know it’s got coast and culture and bridges, and … a certain something. I was here once before, at the start of my Newcastle-Edinburgh cycle ride. I didn’t have time for sightseeing then.

I found myself a B and B in Whitley Bay, and started my Grand Tour with a walk out to St Mary’s Island and lighthouse, reachable at low tide by a short causeway. Fortunately, the tide was low. The wind cut icy slices off my breath.

Over the next two days I visited galleries, museums and bridges – including an extra riverside detour to see the Millennium bridge opening, tipping itself elegantly backwards over the river. I whizzed about by Metro, gaped at sculptures, grand buildings, cobbled streets and city walls and thought of Paul wandering this city and tried to remember what he wrote about being uplifted by it. I walked the seafront from Whitley Bay to Tynemouth and took a trip out to the Angel of the North, sat on its feet and marvelled at both how big and how small it was.

What a city! I can see why it’s been voted the country’s best. Or something like that. It gets my vote for sure. And no paragraph in praise of Newcastle would be complete without mentioning the people. They really are warm and friendly and open, they call you "Pet" and bizarrely this leaves you feeling rather chuffed.

Keswick, Cumbria

I booked a little photography holiday in the Lakes. It happened to coincide with the most amazing week of weather: sharply cold starry nights and bright cloudless days, the morning sun quickly melting the frost.

The photography course was a farce – the tutor did no teaching whatsoever. But the other students were a great group so despite the lack of a course, I really enjoyed these four days. Much merriment and mirth, and if the butt of the humour was mostly the tutor, well… that was to be expected. He was a dithering idiot who only sprang into life when we got off the bus and he legged it off into the distance to take photos on his own. Evening sessions were painful as he tried to get his slideshows to work. After two days he succeeded – only to show us some pretty shoddy images. "The point is," he explained, "these photos aren’t of slideshow quality." Quite why we were looking at them then, we never found out, and he never discussed a single picture he showed. The pinnacle of evening entertainment came the night we slipped out one by one, each new escapee being greeted with applause, laughter and a drink in the bar.

Just so you are warned, this was an HF holiday and the tutor’s name was David White. Some of my fellow students told me that HF’s other tutors are much better, so don’t let me put you off too much – apparently this David guy is well known as a hiccup in the system and yes, a waste of space.

But for me, the week wasn’t a total waste. I learnt lots from other course participants and saw some bits of the Lakes I hadn’t seen before. I made friends with some great people and had a laugh. Tried some very good local beers in delightful pubs. Realized I had learned something – that I’m a better photographer than at least one professional. And when the four days of the course were over I found myself a B and B in Keswick and treated myself to three fabulous days of walking.

Walla Crags, Derwentwater and Skiddaw were all interesting and scenic. Skiddaw was a hell of a steep climb on a very uninteresting path and coming back down was agony on the old knees – I had a sit down and thought of waiting for snow in the hope that I’d be able to slide, but as I said, the weather was just too good.

But the most stunning walk I could have hoped for was Wythburn to Rosthwaite - a route I conjured up from a promising bit of map combined with a bus timetable. My path followed Wyth Burn, climbing steadily over long grass, frozen bogs and the open landscape of the wide valley, with not another person in sight. The burn was half frozen, icicles hanging from every little drop and fall while the water rushed over or behind them. The crust cracked on the ground where I trod, steps crunching into softness. Leaving the burn, a steeper climb took me to Greenup Ridge, where the views both behind and ahead down the other side were breathtaking. There were quite a few people about on the ridge, breaking up my perfect solitude and silence, but even so the route down Greenup Gill could hardly be described as busy. The burn was frozen here too, as was the path wherever the water poured motionlesslessly down it.

This was my last day, appropriately, as I would have been hard pressed to better that day’s walk. A stunner.

View back down Wyth Burn, looking towards the start of my walk. To see some more of my Lakes photos, go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geckozo/sets/72157604140160557/ for a slideshow.

Winter in the Scottish Borders

The novelty of cold wears off fairly quickly, but not the novelty of frost or snow. What is it about snow that brings out the child in us? Or at least in me... and makes me rush to pull on boots and dash outside to kick through powdery piles of the stuff, scoop it into my mouth , take pleasure in leaving the first set of footprints.

We had a few good snowfalls over the new year and I enjoyed hours of peaceful solitude walking by the Tweed, listening to the tight brief creak of my own footsteps.

Stranger in a strange land

A lot has changed in the five years I've been away from the UK. Little things. Every now and then I found myself feeling much as I imagine a stranger would feel, or an old person who suddenly finds they haven't kept up.

In London I tried to board a bus only to find I should have bought my ticket from a machine behind the bus shelter. In a shop I tried to pay with Switch, then panicked when I saw that my card no longer bore the Switch logo. This was alright though, but then the cashier pointed me to a card reading machine on my side of the counter. Only on my third attempt did I get it in the right way round, then was asked to enter my PIN. "Is that the same as the one I use in the ATM?" I had to ask. It struck me as funny, but I've a feeling I just appeared rather stupid and confused.

Luckily I was taken step-by-step through the self-check-in process by a charming young man at Heathrow - see, now I even sound like an old dear. The new security measures in the airports were easier to deal with, as there were plenty of instructions for the uninitiated.

Nobody had told me that mobile phones were 'locked' into one network. And that was after I'd remembered not to call it a handphone. And so on. There I was, old before my time, a stranger in a familiar land.

Night bus to London

Edinburgh, 10pm, and Princes Street is teeming with half-naked children tottering about on stillettos. These girls are so young that the boys with them are still at the age where they're smaller than the girls. Nobody looks over thirteen, many look slightly drunk. Cheery barrel-chested policepersons stand in twos, flourescent yellow beacons attracting tourists who ask for directions or photos. More kids continue to carry each other, squealing with laughter, up the Waverley Steps from the station, spitting themselves onto the street, before slipping back into cool and mooching across to McDonalds. Suddenly I feel very old, and feel that I have been away for a very long time. Finally, I feel relieved to see at last the UK I have always known was lurking here, beyond, behind and within all the lovely places I have been to.

Compared to a bus trip in Africa, it was a doddle, but I have to say I expected it to be comfortable rather than just bearable. I will save the details for the letter I'm writing to Megabus and just tell you that I arrived dazed and delirious at Victoria at about six-thirty on Saturday morning.

The Falkirk Wheel

This is a really fascinating piece of engineering. The Falkirk Wheel is a rotating boat lift linking the Forth and Clyde canal with the Union canal near Falkirk, as you might have guessed. The canals have been reopened and renovated fairly recently, but the flight of eleven locks that previously joined them had mostly been destroyed and built over, so this boat lift was created to replace the locks. Apparently it used to take a whole day to navigate the entire flight of locks, but the new method takes less than twenty minutes.





Mum, Dad and I went for a look, read up a little in the information centre, then watched the wheel in operation. We declined the opportunity of a boat trip up and down again, and instead watched the workings which would not have been visible from the boat. The upper canal has been built out from the hillside, through which it has passed in a tunnel, onto an aqueduct that juts out over a large pool beside the lower canal. The boats enter the wheel area, which is then completely sealed before the wheel rotates, bringing one boat up to the top while another comes down.


We walked up to and through the tunnel and along the canal a little way, passing a couple of locks and a pair of very cheery lock-keeper types who chatted about this and that. I thought briefly about walking back all the way to Edinburgh along the towpath, but instead opted for a ride in the car, including a stop off and Marks and Sparks where we indulged in an orgy of biscuit buying. A grand day out.

Aberdeen

Aberdeen is a strikingly attractive city. Perched on the edge of Scotland, stacked full of grand granitic architecture, it gleamed in the sun. Big business-like ships somehow managed to dock right in town next to the bus station, and a ferry waited to set sail for Shetland. The grey North Sea bravely sparkled when it could, dog-walkers strolled along the beach, even the big oil-related installations sat benignly on the harbour front. Out by the beach the city gives way to a tiny old fishing village of tinier houses, small and bright like beach-huts. Walking the narrow paths between them felt like walking through private gardens, amongst the barbecues, potted plants and washing.


Of course, I'm sure Aberdeen has rougher edges, but everywhere I went was simply the epitomy of couth.
In honour of the city's grandeur, I have penned a wee poem with some help from the famous poet, Adrian Mole:

Oh, Aberdeen!
I had never seen
you before.
Your granite glistened grandly
in the Scottish summer sun.
So did the sea,
till it rained.

I had only gone to spend a couple of days with my friend Shona and her family. Then somehow managed to stay there a week. In fact, it was so nice I'm surprised I'm not still there now. In all the time I was travelling, there was always the issue of "Going home" - an issue that I had trouble dealing with, as I had and have no home. The home I pictured as I travelled was the flat in KL that is no longer mine. But at Shona and John's, I found myself at home.

It was great to chat, or relax with a book, or a glass of wine, fun to do homework with the kids, walk along the railway line, and specially to go and watch Maxwell play his rugby match. And that's despite the shock of being reminded that I am old enough to be mistaken for the parent of a 13 year old! I even braved my way through Lucy's seventh birthday party - possibly a rather more contraceptive experience.

This was not only a lovely slice of Scotland, but also a lovely slice of family life. Not to mention a wonderful chance to catch up with people I haven't seen for a year. Now I'm just trying to work out why I decided not to apply for that job there...

All roads roam to leeds

Mum, Dad and I headed to Leeds to see Simon and Ping. So here we all are, apart from Mum who must have been taking all the pictures. Small niece is Sophie, aged about 3. Smaller one is Catherine, who has been around for about a year. They live somewhere near Leeds, and we took an afternoon walk from their house, past the sewage works to some scenic village which is home to the Woolpack pub of 'Emmerdale' fame:

Now that I have met these new relations, I can disappear again to distant continents, safe in the knowledge that everyone needs an elusive aunt.

Edinburgh

While not technically a part of the African continent, Edinburgh is an obvious stop when you think about it logically. So, with hopelessly directionless meander from one far-flung Heathrow terminal to another, I arrived in Edinburgh's swanky new 'I'm the capital of a nearly independent country' airport.

The differentness of the familiar never hits as hard as it should. But one thing did strike me as we drove south towards Peebles - despite the late hour it was light, a perfect summer sun shone over the evening hills, as if switched on by the Scottish Tourist Board, making ludicrous my parents' claims of having endured the worst summer ever. Hadn't every day had been like this?

It's always rather pleasant to stroll through Peebles, the river Tweed gushing its shallow water and numerous ducks through the town towards first the border then the sea. This is real small town life, where most people seem to know half the people they meet on the high street and butchers and bakers are still family businesses. Add to this a nice line olde stone buildings, meagre traffic and a public library (oh the joy of such an establishment after five years' absence!) and life seems pretty good in such a place.

I managed to get up to Edinburgh twice for a dose of the festival. I love Edinburgh at festival time, the gracious buildings plastered with gaudy posters, performers accosting you on the street to persuade you to come to their show later, dozens and dozens of student-types trying to out-whacky each other but mostly achieving more tacky than whacky in their bid for attention and audiences. There's plenty of good stuff to see, and I was lucky enough to see John Hegley at the Pleasance. I'd loved his show five years ago and this was just as good. His chat and poems had me chuckling aloud, the humour intelligent, spot-on and always delivered dead-pan dry. Check him out at: http://www.johnhegley.co.uk/networds/docs/poemdeterre.htm

Hiking over the hills somewhere near St.Mary's Loch reminded me that the UK isn't all dismal at all. This is a beautiful area and I enjoyed joining the 'Ramblers' for the day, especially up on the tops where the moorland looks so big and empty, the shadows of clouds scud rapidly over the heather-covered hillsides and the ground is boggy enough to absorb the unsuspecting hiker up to his thighs. Like all good walks, this one ended at a country pub where I enjoyed a drink or two with the lads while the old and/or ladylike went off to a caff for tea. Hard to believe that it's probably ten years since I last met these guys... makes me feel much older than any of them looked... anyway, they're a damn fine bunch and great company. Lesson for life: stick with the beer-drinkers.