I’ve heard Edinburgh described as ‘an achingly beautiful city’ and wondered what such an ache might feel like. But that was before I came to live here. Now, I ache too – owing, paradoxically, to the kind of being surprised by joy that brings tears to a person’s eyes, peals of laughter, stunned silence, and animated, deep, and fascinated conversations.
Every single yard one walks, and corner one turns, and flight of steps taken, up or down, there’s so much history, and story, and art and science, and engineering and architecture and craftsmanship, one comes, properly and fittingly, to feel both small and gratefully enlarged at one and the same time.
Edinburgh is, literally, extra-ordinary, and something about its very air imbues confidence. Yes, confidence – all around the city, and in persons; something I’ll think upon, over and over, as I revisit this growing collection of photographs, which, in every case, and in an instant, bring back precisely what it felt like to be there, then, awed, as I pressed the shutter button …
From morning to this late evening I’ve revelled in the kind of day I love best – corresponding with, speaking with, or reading, or holding the work and gift of friends who are able to express themselves exquisitely. Home here, some days, whilst it’s still a bit chilly outside, is a lovely place to snuggle down on the sofa, surrounded by books and letters, phone near to hand – and just ‘hear’ and converse with the life and lives I’m fortunate enough to have a share in.
Today’s family and friends all know who they are, some very near, some very far from here, and I thank them for being who they are, and for the myriad ways in which – expressing themselves through writing, or painting, or sculpture, handiwork, hospitality, culinary skills, or deep, honest, fluid conversation about their passions, their present, their remembrance, their enthusiasms, their histories, doubts, joys, hurts and sorrows, their likes and loves, great giftedness, and so much else besides – they touch my life deeply, and ‘raise me up’ daily.
Oh, how we need each other – and it’s good to celebrate one another, every day …
Next to sunlight-inviting blocks of stone, framed glass is ubiquitous among the architectural features of beautiful Edinburgh. I love it! Windows, like people, are full of stories of past, present and future. And they don’t even have to try to reflect, they just do – everything around them. So here’s a gallery to celebrate windows– our own, (eyes are the windows of our own souls) and Edinburgh’s – in them, out of them; reflections in them, or of them; their size and shape and style and era … which will be added to over time. Most will be allowed to speak for themselves – a bit of additional information provided for a few …
Edinburgh’s giraffes and their reflections. The two giraffes, nicknamed Martha and Gilbert, were made from scrap metal including parts from cars and motorbikes. The inscription surrounding the sculpture is from a poem by Roy Campbell, written in 1946, and reads “Giraffes! a People Who live between earth and skies Each in his own religious steeple Keeping a lighthouse with his eyes.” – from edinburgh.org
Reflections within reflections
Wet paving renders our world upside down
I think this one’s worth a click to enlarge – and a second click to enlarge further if you’ve a big screen. Study the detail closely and stay with each discovery for a while. There’s a story in every square centimetre of this photograph – of a gift of a find in St Stephen’s Street, Stockbridge
What goes on behind the windows, and in front of them? Alexander McCall Smith is here to tell you
Edinburgh’s giraffes: nicknamed Martha and Gilbert, were made from scrap metal including parts from cars and motorbikes
The inscription surrounding the sculpture is from a poem by Roy Campbell, written in 1946, and reads
Giraffes! a People Who live between earth and skies Each in his own religious steeple Keeping a lighthouse with his eyes
from edinburgh.org
Martha and Gilbert
Calton Hill
Evening settles on Edinburgh
The Royal Mile Gallery
Flodden Wall – the World’s End
Part of what remains of the Flodden Wall – bottom of St Mary’s Street / Pleasance, Edinburgh
From an extinct volcano, to the panoramic view of the city and her coastline from Salisbury Crags; to a bookshop that took care not to ‘strip’ the original house that is now its home, and instead built bookshelves around what had long been intended; to extraordinary skies, and sculpture with a back-story; to one of the world’s finest universities; to a modern parliament building whose walls are engraved with poetry; to some of the most elegant residential architecture you’ll see anywhere in the world – that is also home to the echoes of housemaids and butlers, lairds and ladies, surgeons, architects, engineers and plumbers – who loved and sometimes hated this beautifully laid city; gateway to the world for some, too small a world, indeed once the World’s End, for others. Today, Edinburgh has something for everyone, and everyone has something for Edinburgh – for this is a city long engaged in writing the fascinating stories of innumerable people’s lives, now including my own …
The Stevenson Family Tomb – here of the parents of Robert Louis Stevenson
The Tomb of John Drysdale, Builder in Edinburgh (of considerable note), 1829
New Calton Burial Ground Watchtower (see below)
‘resurrectionists’
Edinburgh’s last gas lamp – in its original position, 1839
Spring-looking sky and birdsong
I wake up pretty much every morning in Edinburgh wondering just how many more surprises a day in this city will bring. I’ve long ago lost count – every day is full of them – but in a strange way.
Edinburgh makes you feel you’ve always known her, whether you’re standing outside the modern parliament buildings or reading the weathered inscription on a grave dating back to the 1600s. It’s as though you keep bumping into people you know, or knew, anyway, at some point in your life – Robert Louis Stevenson, for example, this warm and sunny Sunday afternoon. And a great Edinburgh builder by the name of John Drysdale, who died in 1829. And you’re trying to remember the name of the lamplighter who carried his ladder each evening to clamber up Edinburgh’s last gas lamp, still in its original position. You knew him – could almost smell his sweet (toffee?) pipe tobacco in your nostrils, and you’ve a vague idea that he had an affectionate name for this lighthouse, I mean … ah, that was it! – he called this lamp ‘Lighthouse’ – but said the name was someone else’s lovely idea, a tribute, perhaps, in an island pool of light for some come to pray, and others come to stay (the Stevenson engineers having keen interest in lighthouses). Where does the memory originate? How do I recall the children (of a family of 10 who lived in the Watchtower) calling this illuminator ‘Uncle Lamp’ ? – while their Papa seemed only interested in folks called ‘Resurrectionist.’
One thing always leads to another here, and another, and another. I’ve made so many photographs during the course of this afternoon’s walk ‘n’ talk with my equally enthusiastic (and extremely knowledgable) companion, that I’ve decided to spread them over the coming days here on windinmywheels. As I keep discovering here, one can only take in so much at once – even though, as I’ve said, everything seems not only staggeringly, eye-wateringly beautiful but also, somehow and wondrously, familiar …
‘Where nature’s wild forces collide with rugged landscapes, we are inspired to create …’
Honestly – all you need to do is pen a few poetic lines and you can just reel me in! Possessed of a lifetime allergy to alcohol, this may offer a soothing winter’s evening chest-warming. I hope so. I’ve just ordered a (gorgeous looking) bottle. Photos and report-back to follow (obviously 😉). Now to look for some more Scottish poetry …
Proximity to the beach is among the many joys I revel in here in Edinburgh. A ten minute bike ride from my door and the views of sand and sea and sky – changing colour literally by the second – root me to the spot.
Much, much warmer than in recent days, it’s nonetheless still windy and decidedly chilly (what else, in February? – I hear you reply). But the scent and the dream of Spring is in the air – in children pedalling tricycles joyously along the prom, in couples laughing whilst doing stretching exercises on the sand, and in something intangible in the very space of the place that seems to be saying ‘phwoar, it’s gonna be great to get beyond lockdown!’ And in Portobello light, that’s right.
Out and about on my bike today – it’s much, much warmer – so less opportunity for photos. Here’s an abstract though – posted to remind me that I’ve always loved them as an art form, and of the happy half-hour I’ve just spent ‘seeing what can be seen’ in this, or in any abstract. Wonderful tools for stirring imagination.
Edinburgh is a city with whom I am engaged in perpetual discussion! – with architecture, with colour and line, with suddenly come upon and breathtakingly startling vistas, with bookshops, with birdsong, with history (mine and the city’s), with music (I’ll walk a quartermile out of my way to trace the source of the sound of the Pipes), with poetry, wind, hills, coastline – and anticipated conversations with others who are haunted and delighted and vivified by it as well.
Engaged too with the reflection that settles in one’s soul’s having been calmed, and drawn, and enchanted by her colours and her reflections. Edinburgh may certainly be spoken to, but there’s immeasurable benefit to be celebrated in deeply listening to her too. Hers is a hard won, long won, weft and wisdom. And in such slow contemplation there’s a seeing sunrise, sunlight, sunset, moon and starlit spaces behind – whilst simultaneously seeing sunrise, sunlight, sunset, moon and starlit spaces ahead.
Windows into the soul are so important. Here we find ourselves sustained by what’s behind us, and by what is – here in this city, in this ‘window’, right now, and by the light that calls us forward. All this, so often seen in one and the same windowpane. In a bookshop, or a stationers, or our own home, or our own dreams, or – most beautiful among the firmament of the windows of the soul – the eyes of family or friend or beloved.
All this discussion, contemplation and reflection steadily leads us inexorably to metamorphosis – gives wings to ‘The Extraordinary Life,’ to ‘The Boy (or Girl) Who Loved,’ to what ‘Bunheads’ might think of as the Dance of Life. And a certain being at home with oneself, be the days warm or cold, happy or sad: all the while growing …
McEwan Hall, Edinburgh – of the University: ‘Influencing the world since 1583’McEwan Hall Entrance Pavilion, Bristo Square, Edinburgh
The Library Bar, the student pub at Edinburgh University – ‘I’m in the Library’
Museum of Anatomy, Edinburgh University
School of History, Edinburgh University
Unicorn, at the top of Middle Meadow Walk, The Meadows, Edinburgh
Greyfriars Bobby (4 May 1855 – 14 January 1872) was a Skye Terrier who became known in 19th-century Edinburgh for spending 14 years guarding the grave of his owner until he died himself on 14 January 1872. The story continues to be well known in Scotland, through several books and films. #wikipedia
Greyfriars Bobby – ‘Let his loyalty & devotion be a lesson to us all’
Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh
Merchant Street, Edinburgh
Steps to the Writers’ Museum, Ladystairs, Edinburgh
Cities and their great institutions – universities, houses of prayer, mills and factories, shops and markets, homes and schools, sculpture, memorial, resting places, valediction and welcome, and the public parks and gathering spaces – are ‘slideshows’ in time. They speak of things seen in the gradations of light in the great sky and set before the horizon; they speak of some of what has happened in the past, distant and near, tough and rough and cruel and brilliant and tender and faithful and hopeful; the stuff of idiocy and of genius.
Cities speak of arriving and of going places; of walls that both invite and contain, of the costs of being outside and unaffordable tolls required of those inside; of pathways that turn out to be cul de sacs and of roads that lead everywhere; of what has happened, may happen, does happen, is happening, and did not happen (!) on the ground and under the ground – of the spiral staircases of life, up and down.
Cities speak of education, enlightenment and evolution; of the facile, the festival, the facetious and the febrile; of vivacity, dance and delight, love and devotion, mind-numbingly hard work, inspirationally creative industry, song and silliness, theatre, treachery, tragedy and trial, and of human preoccupation with opinions, felt (and sometimes misguided) ‘certainties,’ personally felt needs and desires, and the detail and consequences, for self and for others, of death.
Cities speak of soaring aspirations, of the sciences, of art, and of the arts, and of order and design – ancient and modern; and of diving, descent and despair, darkness, and the mysteries of the going and of the sudden returns of the light. They speak of brilliance and of ordinariness, of mediocrity and of the magnificent, of major and minor, of the sullen and the lacklustre, and of the searching, smiling and the shining. Of viewpoints and of voyages, of foresight, far sight and hindsight. They speak of kinship and of separateness, of arrivals and of departures, of poverty and of wealth.
Cities speak of what has been said and of what has been left unsaid. They speak of the cartography of life; of governance, of justice and of injustice, of love and of hate, of forgiveness and of punishment, and of tenderness (like leaving sticks at his grave for a beloved and faithful dog, Bobby, whose very own tombstone at Greyfriars was unveiled by the Duke of Gloucester as testament to his own watchful and abiding faithfulness.)
Cities speak of you and me, of what we hear, feel, aspire to, long for, believe in, want to eat, touch and be touched by, smell, reach out to, and see. We do well to try to read cities like Edinburgh – and to walk well, with good friends and family, in and around and to and through and returning to them. My thoughtful companion today asked me to reflect with her upon the power and the wonder that lies in what we, human city builders, both do and say. These things may well be remembered. How many decades have passed, she wondered aloud, in which the words of John Barbour, who lived between 1320 and 1395, have been thought sufficiently important that they should be passed on – some day to be inscribed in stone, in Scotland’s glorious capital city?
City ‘slideshows’ of history, present, and aspired to future – together with our words – matter.
Don’t ever come to Edinburgh if you don’t want to be smitten by it, big time! Thank you, Tracy – charismatic and knowledgeable Edinburgh enthusiast and super conversationalist – for the wonderful tour of Stockbridge you gave me this morning, braving the beautiful but treacherous ice and snow to do so!
My first reader at primary school was a book I loved then and treasure yet – more than half a century later! It featured a dog called Tip and a kitten called Mitten. I’ve since encountered many a Mitten but never dear old Tip, until this morning in Stockbridge – long retired now, obviously. Warm and contented today, and becushioned on a wonderful sill with an interesting view, I fancied he was glad to see me. I thanked him for teaching me to read, but forgot to ask how he wound up in Scotland. You’ll have spotted Tip on your way down here. And I imagine you’ll also have smiled a greeting to a Stockbridge-Scottish Snowman who’s hoping, post-lockdown, to catch the first flight out to Hawaii. And you’ve almost certainly slowed a couple of times to gaze into wonderful bookshops, and – because who could be without one? – the most glorious old oil-lamp shop you’ve ever seen, or could have imagined.
Who was it that was telling me a day or two ago that Edinburgh is mysterious and enchanting and beguiling? She may, perchance, come to read this, and be glad, too, to have met up with Tip and a Tartan-Capped Edinburgh Snowman who hopes to be headed for some sunshine. To her, because she was and is right; and again now to Tracy; and to properly socially-distanced hosts at The Howdah; and to one of the city’s friendliest taxi-drivers; and to snowy Edinburgh her glorious self: thank you!
happy 85th birthday today to my dear and youthful Mum
The wind in my wheels has brought me to living for a space in the tower of a former school in Edinburgh – part of which accommodated the headteacher’s study. The building was seconded for military use during the Second World War. Today it houses comfortable homes on the very edge of Holyrood Park beneath a long extinct volcano, close to one of Her Majesty the Queen’s fine residences, and at the heart of one of the most beautiful and beguiling capital cities in the world.
And the staircases echo. The ‘eyes’ of the huge, tall windows have been gazed into and gazed out of by innumerable people before me: schoolchildren who learned here that Edinburgh has survived a history of thousands of years. There’s been wealth and poverty, sickness and strength, vivacity in all forms – and vivid architectural imagination. And there have been soldiers on these stairs. And now there are writers and engineers, students and visionaries, a cosmopolitan mix who, were we all able to assemble in cheerful conference tonight, could tell a million stories of our shared contemporary life to add to the detail – some still sharply remembered, much more lost in the mists of time, of the echoes in this place.
How privileged we are. How very fortunate I am – given serendipitous opportunity to soak it all up as I tramp the cobbled streets with gladness and delight. Sunshine, deep snow, reading, crisp, brisk bracing walks, painting, poetry, watching, meditating and waiting, and an Edinburgh-evening wander likely after supper tonight. In these locked-down times, soon to be absorbed into history, one may hear history’s echoes while we both create, and anticipate making some more …
