As reported yesterday, The Store is closing down today. The bread was wonderful and the croissants were great but, apart from that and sentimentality aside, the stuff they sold was mostly expensive and non-essential. It's really no surprise that they're closing. Still sad, though.
I'm hoping that we have a good connection at the hotel so that we can continue blogging. Now to think about packing...
For those who are unfamiliar with Edinburgh:
- it's a night club
- that arrow is pointing west, which is exactly the wrong way to go if you want to get from Edinburgh to Germany
Today's bad news: the shop on the corner, purveyors of wonderful sourdough bread and almond croissants, is closing. Tomorrow. Apparently the staff only found out today. That's lousy for us and even lousier for them :-(
I've been called worse ;-)
The thing-on-a-railing shot is a cliché, but I quite like this one.
Not an easy day today. At work, aside from being stupidly busy (nothing new in that), I found myself involved in a ludicrous telephone conversation with a particularly unpleasant civil servant. I'm sure it's unprofessional to tell a representative of Her Majesty's Government to fuck off, so I didn't do that, but I came mighty close...
At lunchtime I met a very dear friend who is currently having to deal with four separate very difficult situations. Any one of these would be stressful enough on is own, but having to endure four of them at once is quite unreasonable. I wish I could make it all better, but I can't, so I listened and administered emergency hugs. I hope that helped.
This evening I'm going to pull up the drawbridge and think of holidays!
Well, a bit of a tram... This particular tram fragment recently appeared outside the Caledonian Hotel.
We really are a bit obsessed about the tram business at the moment. I think it's something that people couldn't understand unless they lived here.
Not long till the weekend :-)
I'm quite fond of this sign. I like the way it teaches a useful phrase in five different languages. Though I must confess that I'm having trouble with my Japanese pronunciation...
Tuesday came and Tuesday went. One day closer to our holiday!
If you weren't following the adventures of Rae Macintosh when I was posting at another place, compare the above with this, taken on 23 June:
and this, taken on 1 June:
Survived Monday, which always counts as a result.
I'm all in favour of civic art and if it's useful, then so much the better - but I'm afraid that to my eyes that thing looks like it was conceived and designed by a not-very-talented ten year old. It seems to be quite well constructed, though...
Sunday evening. Ugh.
That's how I'm feeling today. Still not right. Never mind, there's nothing seriously wrong with me and I'll feel better soon enough :-) The weather was a bit crap today too... and the clocks go back tonight, which means it'll be dark by teatime from now on...
But we're going on holiday next weekend! Hooray for that!
Bus up to George Street... walk along to Waverley... snap Jenners' window... train to Glasgow... bus to Imp's place. It was good to get out again, having spent the best part of three days indoors. And it's good to be in Glasgow now.
George Square looks like this:
Happy Christmas everybody!
Still feeling sorry for myself. Today's photograph is another one out of the window. I do find it very frustrating when I don't feel well.
I'm hoping that I manage to stay up for Question Time tonight. I don't watch it often, but it would be good to see the rest of the panel and the audience making mincemeat of the guy from the BNP.
This feels like the same bug I had three weeks ago. I slept for about 16 hours last night. Today, pretty much all I've done is point my camera out of the window and take this photograph. An evening in front of the TV beckons, and possibly an early night.
I did the usual stupid thing of not realising that I should have stayed at home this morning. Went to the office, catching this shot on the way. Hung around for a couple of hours till I came to my senses. Came home. I shall spend the rest of the day drinking plenty of fluids and feeling moderately sorry for myself.
I did stay at the office for long enough to receive a link to this video, which one of my colleagues sent me. Never, ever did I think I would find myself agreeing with Hitler...
I haven't been documenting the work at the Usher Hall, mainly because there hasn't been a great deal to document in the past few months. I think most of the work must have been going on inside. But I did quite like the reflection in the new bit today and the way it blended into the grey sky at the left hand edge.
My work day went quickly and relatively painlessly. A good result for a Monday.
Yes, another market shot. The weekends go far too quickly. Still, we'll be on holiday in two weeks, so that's good :-)
A quiet day, a lovely evening with Leonie, Griff, Anne and Tommy, a photograph of a street lamp.
for all humanity
That's jolly nice of him.
Wishing everyone a divinely lovely weekend :-)
I haven't been down to Princes St in a while. Today, I saw that there are five empty shops in a row towards the West End. The biggest of them used to be Zavvi (for a short while) and the Virgin Megastore (for many years prior to that). It closed about a year ago. The rumour was that it was going to be an Apple Store, but the latest gossip seems to be that Apple wouldn't be interested in opening in Edinburgh anytime soon, not until the tramworks have finished...
The shop to the left of this is also closed, but there is shopfitting work going on.
The three to the right are vacant. I think they most recently sold tourist tat and other varieties of crap. One of them had a planning application notice in the window, suggesting that the building might be converted into a hotel...
The city centre is such a bloody mess at the moment.
I bumped into Tonto on the way back to the office. If you're reading this - great to see you again! We really must do it properly sometime.
I don't think it's quite as bad as this. I've rotated the image and squinted at it and the best I can come up with is "Tragic Disc 1975". Which makes no sense to me. If you have nothing better to do, you could click on the image, which will take you to my Flickr page, where you can download a larger version, then rotate it and squint at it too. But I'm sure you have better things to do. I know I do.
Still feeling uninspired. I don't think the dark evenings are helping. Hibernation feels like an attractive option.
Time for another cuppa.
That's how I've been feeling recently. I took this shot at lunchtime and almost immediately forgot that I'd taken it. Turned out to be the best of the day...
Still, I'm going through the motions. One shot a day. The good stuff will come round again, sooner or later :-)
There was a long queue outside HMV in Buchanan St this afternoon. (HMV is just out of frame to the left.) I have no idea why. The shop was open, there were people inside, I couldn't see or hear anything unusual, but there were security men on the door and a long queue. Just a little Sunday afternoon mystery for me.
Now for an evening in front of the TV. Weekends are too short.
A long sleep last night... no motivation to go out today... so we've been vegging... faffing... pottering... taking pictures of each other... A fine way to spend a Saturday :-)
It's Friday evening, I'm in Glasgow, I'm sitting on the sofa and I'm knackered. Imp is pottering in the kitchen, so something tasty will be coming my way soon :-) Hooray for the weekend!
... but still not what I would describe as a good day at work. Oh well, it's almost the weekend, so hooray for that!
The likelihood of my taking a photo of the Castle is directly proportional to the shitness of my day. For those who don't know (which is all of you apart from Imp), I should explain that if I walk out of the office and look up, I see the Castle. If all I have the time, energy or inclination to do is walk out of the office and look up, I take a photo of the Castle. Today, I walked round the corner first. So I suppose things could have been worse... I hope the rest of the week is better, but the omens are not good :-(
It's the Odeon now, but I still think of it as the ABC.
A dull shot for a dull day. What's that you say? It's almost the weekend?
October 2009 is Mental Health Week. That's what the mural says...
(I checked: Mental Health Week is actually this week; but if they want to raise awareness of mental health issues for the whole month, that's fine by me.)
Today wasn't as bad as I had feared. I managed to get through the working day without falling asleep or suffering complete brain shutdown. And now we're a day closer to the weekend, which is a result :-)
If it's Sunday and we're in Edinburgh, it must be the Sunday market. We are creatures of habit.
I'm pleased that opinions were divided over yesterday's shots. It feels like that vindicates my indecisiveness :-)
Trying not to dwell on the fact that it'll be Monday soon...
Weather: sunny and windy. Me: tired and indecisive. Such freedom, to be able to post three photographs on day of indecision!
Today's excitement consisted of a walk to Caffe Nero, a coffee and a walk back. With Imp, of course. A lovely, relaxing way to spend an afternoon.
Here are the other two shots. As ever, they look best big. (If you haven't figured it out already, just click on the image and it will take you to Flickr, where you can choose your size.)
I'm feeling a bit better today. Still not great, but better than before. Another day indoors... so I put a carrier bag on my head and took a photograph of that. Which reminded me of a song.
Off sick again today Scrabbling round to find something to photograph, I pulled out my M2. Out of curiosity, I looked up the serial number online, to discover that this particular camera was made around September/October 1959. So, Happy 50th Birthday (approximately)!
The lens is, apparently, about a year older.
This combo was my tool of choice back in the days of film. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. Everything is manual, no batteries. Exposure is by external meter or guesswork. I tended to use guesswork, which worked just fine once you got the hang of it.
Sadly, it is now to all intents and purposes useless.
This camera is the reason why I want an M9. The lens would work just fine on the M9, which would save me about £1,000, but it would still be £4,850 for the body only. There are three problems with that. First, it's a heck of a lot of money, even if I could afford it. Second, I can't afford it (though that has never stopped me in the past...). Third, for that kind of money I could buy a D700 for me and a D700 for Imp and have enough change left over to pay for a jolly nice holiday for both of us.
Oh well... I shall just have to content myself with caressing the M2, focusing on things near and far, gently pressing the shutter release, listening to the soft "click", stroking the film wind lever...
Not only was I sick yesterday, so was my internet connection, which is why I'm writing Wednesday's blog on Thursday. My internet is better, but I'm not.
This is a very annoying sickness. I'm not coughing or sneezing or shivering or limping or falling over or oozing noxious fluids or showing any outward symptoms at all; but I feel crap and all I want to do is sleep. Which is pretty much all I've been doing. The chances of finding a more interesting shot for today are slim.
