More of London, snow

Le Grande Foyles

 

Some fragments – a journey is never really complete when retold.

 

But here they are, gathered a bit.

 

A trip to London wouldn’t be complete without a visit to one of its fine bookshops, and Foyles was the perfect place for a wander on a gnawing cold day. I picked up Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet, her essays/pieces on love in Classical and other literatures, but didn’t buy it then. I’m blessed at the moment with an abundance of books to read. Some old – The Twelve Chairs, which I mentioned a while back, The Polyglots by William Gerhardie, kindly sent by Melville House Publishing when I was stricken with a chest cold – and some new -Errantry by Elizabeth Hand is burning in my TBR pile.

 

The dim unheated grandeur of Westminster Hall

 

On our third day, D and I went to the UK Parliament, and were lucky enough to be admitted to watch Question Time, that day on the subject of Education. We saw Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education (in the Tory/Lib Dem coalition government), snidely and blandly shoot down questions from the opposition and obsequiously respond to the ‘aren’t we great?’ questions from his own side. Education is a devolved issue – meaning that the Scottish Parliament is responsible for how the system is run here, so it was quite hard to care too much about school district issues South of the border.

 

Later on, the big hitters appeared. PM David Cameron made a statement on the Algeria hostage situation, and Ed Milliband, opposition leader, said a few things too. I played ‘spot the politician I recognise’ which was a fairly short game, sadly. Little of any real heft was said, but when I read the newspapers later and found it interesting to see the various interpretations of the puff. Overall, I was very glad to have gone, but the pomp and ceremony does not feel like it belongs to me. The divisions between the nations are there, and though we have a lot in common, I will always hope for Scotland to go its own way. Come the 2014 referendum or later.

 

 

This, if you are unfamiliar with London, the famous Tower of-. We passed it every day before crossing Tower Bridge, but never went in. There was an element of resistance in this – in both our minds, growing up, the tower of London had been – well – a tower. Tall and menacing, with rooks circling the heights, dank cells lining the circular walls. I suppose the Shard filled that imaginative space. You can see it jutting in the background of the picture.

 

 

This is Regent’s Canal where it runs through Shoreditch. D and I went walking along it with London transplant, G. Later we would spend the day inside a cosy pub with her and C (who I’ve also talked about before), to hide from hours of snowfall. I took a fair number of pictures here, the unnatural beauty (I almost said natural, as if anything in London is natural) of the canal highlighted by the wooly skies and frosting of snow. But I’ll save those for another day.

 

The last image I’d like to leave you with is of the English countryside seen from the train North. At times we had white-out conditions, something I have not seen much of, and so still seems magical. A ghosting landscape, seen in passing and without name. That’s what I like about traveling, when you move so fast you cannot commit much to memory, just the flittery glimpses. The other side of that is when you stay so long in a place that every paving stone is mapped out – but that’s Edinburgh, for me. More pictures of that city when the cold and dark release their grip.

 

 

 

Your words for a Shooting Star

 

Some vignettes of Edinburgh – unimportant – but setting a mood, a sense of the season. Also to sweeten a post which is just a lead up to a link. But so worth while.

 

Vintage Books (of the tumultuous Random House, soon to be Penguin Random or Random Penguin, I’m not sure) is offering critiques of the first thirty pages and summary of your novel, either in person (if you live in London and can make it to their charity fete at Whitton Chase Charity Shop TODAY) or by email – in return for a £10 donation, or more, to a local children’s hospice called Shooting Star CHASE.

 

I am not always in favour of charity. Sometimes they come with problematic baggage, sometimes the giving is a form of self-bolstering, of patronisation to developing nations, or to the working class in this country, or else, some arts charity helping the status of the super rich. pseudo de Medicis. Charities in certain areas might be a poor substitute for decent infrastructure that should otherwise be provided by the government. They can mishandle supplies and spend all their money on ‘chuggers’ and ad campaigns. I’m with Oscar Wilde in his The Soul of Man Under Socialism, in other words.

 

But a children’s hospice is one of the least politically charged things I could think to give to. I think of the carers who need caring for themselves. I think of toys given to younger siblings, books to older ones. Little comforts that make the difference. I think, I’d like to support that. Perhaps you’d like to as well?

 

Click here to see the rules and how to give.

 

For those who can afford to do so, why not think about matching your donation to this charity with a donation to a children’s hospice in your area?

 

Hallowe’en behind glass

 

 

There are displays of Hallowe’en spookiness on the streets today. The air prickles with stories, and with rain, of course.

 

 

 

Little children pasting their hello hallowe’ens to the street. The best perhaps are the charity shops in my local area, who have been trying to outdo one another. The blood covered fox-headed bride and penguin-headed bridegroom were a favourite. But I think I’ve found the most frightening display ever:

 

 

 

I can name one film reference here, in the little child’s red coat – Don’t Look Now (one of my favourites). Or perhaps it’s little red riding hood. The strawbodies, I’m not sure. Bogles of hay. Farm ghosties.  An open ended fairytale it is indeed.

 

What will you be doing for the thinnest night, where the ghosts can slip through like glints of a knife?

 

There are plastic buckets of pumpkins, there are wee neep lanterns and pumpkin behemoths being carved as I write this. Wee children anticipating parties and dooking for apples, biting hanging treacle scones, anticipating, like me, being safely scared.

 

It’s an X-files marathon for D and I, a hit of nostalgia. I haven’t seen it since I was what, 16? I remember being unsettled, and thrilled. I do love to experience the uncanny, the creeping, but carefully delineated dread of ghost and horror stories. And this October has been so deliciously misty and liminal and dark. I’ll hold today tight. I’ll write and I’ll pretend that the fears in my story are of entirely natural kinds. But my eye will be turning to the margins, to the shift of shadows. The inflection of the ghost in the text.

 

After all, I live in Edinburgh now, how can I do any less?

 

 

Season of -

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Days for

Days when the streets seem older than they are, set back in decades before this one.

Days when you cannot make your vision square with the haziness of the weather, or the pace of things.

Days when the herb and weed filled spaces are more useful to you than the spaces where business is being done.

Days where nothing is inscribed clearly, even in stone how something is left out.

Days when you will walk through the dry cold air and turn your head and catch sight of ways up, ways into spaces that belong to others.

Days when you should be at peace with the peace and find it all coloured strangely and suspended as if time itself has stalled and no one has the heart to tell you or acknowledge this.

And so keep on walking, and doing and making, all the while a burn in their chests, from the chill.

Grounds

 

Here is the youth hostel at Loch Lomond, seen in the day right before we left. One of those places that’s hard to photograph inside, all tall ceilings and dark, paneled wood hiding secret rooms (at least, in my imagination), High stained glass windows and paintings that glow in the dimness, their subjects women with eyes that follow you, enigmatic smiles.

 

Today I am a little uneasy, there has been an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease across Edinburgh, and no one knows the scale of it – incubation is from 2-14 days. It’s caused by a waterborne bacteria, and the authorities have not found the precise source. In a few days, we will see more people fall.

 

So I look out for gentle images, as I normally do. Hoping for the best for all, and trying to keep my mind from abject things and towards the greenery and fresh air we had at the weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

Mother Night

 

We walk the dusk, the gloaming, cuffing The Meadows, watching the sliver/slipper of the moon evading all attempts to capture it on film. We walk past the gable-ended houses, the closes, the fringes of the university.

 

 

We note the places where the light gathers like dust in the overshadowed courtyards.

 

 

We see the old hairdressers that has been there since I can remember, Violet in the violet hour. Kitsch becoming something else, more elusive. An old photo of yourself as a child, with relatives now dead, a time you can’t remember.

 

 

We walk past modernity, symbol of the New Scots settling in. The lighted windows, the rushing cars.

 

 

Above are the gardens you cannot get in to, looking out on the field (below) that belongs to everyone.

 

 

 

We cut a path into the new development on the park, the looming offices, mostly empty. All lights on here, ready for some bright future pre-recession Edinburgh seemed to hold.

 

 

And there is space for the dark too. And it all soon passes, and we walk back to our flat, and into our own box of warmth and light, however parceled and temporary.

The (semi) secret garden

 

Thanks to some crossed wires, D and I thought we would be viewing a flat off the Royal Mile today (turns out ‘next Monday’ was the Monday after next). It happened that the flat overlooks Dunbar’s Close Garden, a beautiful, peaceful courtyard modeled along a traditional 17th century Burghal design – somewhat Italianate, with herbs and hedges arranged in symmetry, surrounded on all sides by old town houses and walls. While we were walking, we noticed a few visitors, obviously locals, popping in to have their lunch, escaping the bustle of the Canongate outside.  They sneaked out as slyly as they arrived, glaring a little. Obviously intruders are rare beasts here.

 

We moved further into the garden, cold in the sun, the air full of the smell of sage, I think, or young rosemary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you’ll forgive me for flooding this post with images. And if you are a native Edinburgher, forgive me for giving this sort-of secret away. Perhaps you’d like more? If you’ve never heard of the garden and you are still more in need of images, Vivian Swift has a lovely post on Dunbar’s Close garden, and the site, Nothing to See Here gives a little more background of how this place came to be made.

 

We really hope that the flat near here works out (find out next Monday, all being well), although two more viewings, both in distinct parts of the city, have been added to the list. One, we struck off later in the afternoon – another damp ground floor flat to the South. Onwards though. It’s easy to keep our spirits up in Spring, with still more to see, more disappointments and small joys, ahead.

 

In keeping, one last sight today. Up a little way from Dunbar’s Close is a whisky shop. Walking home, we saw this old gent sunning himself by the malts:

 

 

He shuffled himself down on his four paws, quite ready for a good long snooze. And home it was for us, to rest (though sadly not to write, with my head fuzzy with a bad cold) and to plan.

Small studies

 

dark/day/dusk/keep/space

 

 

 

musculature/decay/wooden/follow/distort

 

 

 

Coil/colour/pulse/modest/looped

 

 

 

Copper/pair/choreography/white/rooted

 

 

 

flutter/panel/hung/await/spring

 

The green floor of the loch

Sadly, D and I were caught out yesterday by the infrequency of buses out to Cramond, where the tidal island can be reached by a causeway I last crossed when I was 3, on my father’s back (as he knows well).

Instead we went through The Meadows, along the former floor of the drained Burgh loch (pronounced, as the burgh in Edinburgh is, ‘Burra’) that once covered 63 acres in what is now the centre of the city. It’s still large enough to breathe in, and though full of people never felt truly crowded. It was drained fully in the 1700s and transformed into a place of leisure for private citizens, later into the public park, free tennis courts, links golf course, haphazard footie pitch and scenic picnic spot  it is today. And the fighting ground for my old school, and at night, mugger’s paradise, but we won’t talk about that.

It seemed like summer, with the drift of smoke from mingling fires – from those little disposable tin-tray barbecues people buy here, one use only, because there are usually not enough days like this to warrant the investment in something that will last.

Various paths through the park have acquired names over time.  This one made D chuckle – but I told him it’s named that way because there is a jawbone at the end of it. He looked at me skeptically. The jawbone of a whale! I insisted.  Really?

And there it was:

The jawbone of a whale, erected as part of the 1886 International Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art (as wiki tells me), and moved to the walk after that was over.  D still was not convinced. It looked awfully like wood to him. Thank goodness the internet was there later to back me up.

We walked into Marchmont, a lovely part of the city, all bay windows and sandstone, where there are many student homes. Then on into Brunstfield, a more wealthy part of town, where the houses start to expand and have ‘danger: guard dog’ signs, or the offices of chartered surveyors, or gates that come security locked against the curious (or thieving, I suppose). Excepting a few. And in particular, this house:

It called to us. We went in through the open gate. Weeds growing through the path. Plastic rubbish strewn around. No one lives here – the rooms are empty excepting an orange bucket of what looked like old plaster, a crusty metal trowel for laying it on. Through a front window, peering, through the open door beyond, I see another window, see through the heart of the house to the back garden. High grass and bushes. A sense of waiting. Or emptiness that feels like something long immanent and never realised. As if the repairers won’t be back, and only time, not people, can now touch the house.

We continued on our way after a while – and after spotting that someone had tipped a bag of potatoes onto the lawn at some point, and that these were now wrinkled, trying to grow through the soil. Later we came back along a side route, heading vaguely for home but had to take another look:

The day had turned cloudy, a little colder. Rain that is falling today gathering above us then. But it wasn’t a sinister mood we felt, but curious – of the stories behind this house, marooned on a rich street facing the Bruntsfield links (a former golf course, somewhat an extension of The Meadows), the Castle beyond on its dead volcanic plug. Emptiness, suspension, decay.

The possibility of stories to come.