I wonder if, like me, you’ll thankfully feel that this is about so much more than ‘just’ a new year’s eve …
Month: February 2021
Old Town Edinburgh
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 …
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Pedestal table
Odd, and really rather lovely that, here in Edinburgh, I’ve had three separate conversations about Cornwall today – one of which began, ‘didn’t you write a piece about Apple Blossom and Bay Rum?’ I did. The couple are still in my mind’s eye, beloved characters then, as now. So here, as a brief deviation from Edinburgh, let’s head to Cornwall and …
‘Pedestal Table’
A warm sunlit bay-window overlooks the ocean. Between two chintz covered wing armchairs a mahogany pedestal table, sweet smelling, polished daily, is an elegant exhibition stand for a large blue and white striped milk jug, a wedding present filled with bright flowers, daffodils preferred in season, for sixty-seven Springs.
Apple Blossom scent, Bay Rum cologne, Toffee pipe tobacco, baking smells wafting from the Aga in the mornings, casseroles and dumplings in the afternoons. He slept, smiling, thankfully home again, in his beloved chair. She read, quietly, overwhelmed with relief, in hers. Thank God for that lovely young surgeon.
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The kind of day I love
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 …
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Marched them up to the top …
… of the hill
… then marched them down again
And home again at the fireside, mellow and thankful, I’m already planning to be there for further sunrise and sunset, up on Castle Hill.
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Edinburgh windows
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 …
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Edinburgh Towards Evening
Giraffes! a People
Who live between earth and skies
Each in his own religious steeple
Keeping a lighthouse with his eyes
from edinburgh.org
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 …
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Sunday afternoon amble
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 …
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An Edinburgh Festival of Winter
My heart and mind and soul and body are already racing out to meet Spring with enthusiasm and joy. But I’ve been reviewing my ‘postcards’ of Winter and want to bring them together in one place, before I move, perhaps too quickly, onwards. There’s a quite extraordinary beauty to be remembered in this little and local Edinburgh Festival of Winter.
click on postcards to enlarge
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In the wee small hours
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Such a lot of reflection and celebration of the gift of life happens in the wee small hours.
Here, images of the things that matter most to me pass before my eyes – nature, including the still, rooted knowing of plant-life; and the sources, shapes, sounds and touch of warmth, colour, scent, light, shadow, love, nourishment, restoration and rest.
In the wee small hours Edinburgh is largely quiet, and thankfully, and reflectively, so am I …
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Honestly!
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‘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 …
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Portobello light
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.
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Post-Script
All in an Edinburgh day – from sunlit sea, to sunset, to fireside, to candlelight and shadows during our second power-cut of February 😊
Abstract
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.
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The colour in reflections
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 …
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Let there be light
Light and colour everywhere – just look at the colours in these photos – and I am tempted – both by the books and some new and vivifying attire!
Yes! Let there be light …
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wind in my wheels 🌱 