Happysad

// September 9th, 2011 // No Comments » // Edinburgh, Misc.

My tolerance for the kind of weather which afflicts this country of mine from September through until May gets eroded a little further with each passing year. In my younger days I would be spending rather a lot of my time with jovial drunken friends in the many wonderful bars of our capital city and the inclement weather outside was rather incidental as a result. As a home-based worker and 40-something stay-at-home father I spend rather less time in those bars now and am required to soberly face the dreariness of our climate with metronomic grinding monotony. What colour is the sky today? Oooh, it’s grey again! There’s also drizzling rain for texture. My PC desktop-borne climatic temperature gauge reports 12°C but I know that to be one more in a series of filthy lies.

The thought of living further north has sometimes flitted through my head, in much the same way as a thought such as I wonder if it’s possible to survive the 40 metre fall from the Forth Road Bridge into the freezing waters of the Forth Estuary?. Sometimes, while staring out into the half-light of yet another blanket-grey morning, I chill myself by imagining what it must be like to live on the Shetland or Faroe Islands. Perhaps such places are studded with windowless pubs, filled with intoxicated inhabitants.

It cheered me to read the story of one such inhabitant on today’s BBC News website …

Drunk Swedish elk found in apple tree near Gothenburg

I know how that elk feels.

[Full BBC News story]

Nostalgia and national pride. A potent mix.

// November 17th, 2010 // No Comments » // Cycling, Edinburgh, Misc.

This morning I watched a video (available below) showing Scottish mountain bike trials pro rider Danny Macaskill performing all manner of jaw-dropping stunts during a journey from Edinburgh to Skye and it evoked some strong emotions within me. Not only is there the warm nationalistic pride in seeing familiar areas of my beloved (but mainly cold and grey) country shot in HD video but there is also an aching nostalgia for all the carefree time I spent as a teenager on a Haro Master BMX bike. A Haro Master bike not dissimilar to the one pictured at the top of this post (click on it to enlarge). (more…)

Malcolm Middleton, Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh (27th Aug 2009)

// September 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Edinburgh, Music Reviews

It has actually been a fairly good year for gigs in Edinburgh so far. Scotland’s capital city has long been living in the shadow of Glasgow when it comes to live music, both in terms of the venues available and the calibre of artists those venues tend to attract. This year I’ve seen superb Edinburgh shows by Antony and the Johnsons, PJ Harvey and John Parish, Elbow, Nick Harper, Kristin Hersh and also, last Thursday evening (27th Aug) Malcolm Middleton.
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If you prefer a milder comedian, please ask for one

// August 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Comedy and Satire, Edinburgh

Stand-up “veteran” Stewart Lee has been doing comedy for over 20 years and during that time has found both general popularity, as one half of the Lee/Herring duo who fronted Fist of Fun on Radio and TV in the early 1990s, and more specialised rejection after the broadcast of the Jerry Springer – The Opera stage show he co-produced with Richard Thomas on national television in 2005. The rejection came, almost exclusively, from religious protest groups lead by Christian Voice UK. I think Jerry Springer – The Opera is about the only thing Stewart has been involved in making that I haven’t seen. This is not because of any deeply held religious beliefs I might hold and, after the heated “discussions” that resulted from enquiring into the subject of seemingly (to me anyway) unreasoned and yet unyielding belief with people I know and like, I’m not going to be commenting any further on the subject here in a public space.
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Elbow – Live at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange (06.03.2009)

// March 8th, 2009 // No Comments » // Edinburgh, Music Reviews

This would be the fourth time I’d seen Elbow playing live and based on previous experiences I knew this crowd would not go home disappointed. Support was provided this time around from Canadian indie folksters, The Acorn. Their latest album, Glory Hope Mountain, was released in 2007/08 and singer, Rolf Klausener, informs us that it’s “about my Mom” before adding, self-deprecatingly, “manly, huh?”. The album is well worth tracking down and is available on Bella Union Records from “all good stores”.
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