Posts Tagged: edinburgh
Nursery School – 13 February 2014
For one and a half hours I had a shot at being a nursery school teacher. They knew I was coming so made it like the day job: we drew what we wanted, then we built it.
Two castles and a treasure map, then some dragons. Then, like actual lunchtime CPD, they watched a programme about bricks: grow you’re own clients. Great fun, and thanks to the kids who chose not to bully me at all.
A cyclist turns up at the consultation – 12 February 2015
For the first time this year, the sun has made it over the horizon in time for my morning commute. The number of cyclists seems appreciably up from the dark winter months.
In the evening I popped passed Grosvenor’s smart consultation event and had a chat with a fellow user about annual Brompton mileage: 1,300 for me, 2,000 for our local green councillor. Better try harder.
Waiting – 30 September 2014
It’s nice to go to Barcelona, but the lessons for what we do are all around us. I spent a day closer to home looking at some good and bad places in Edinburgh. A sample illustrated here.
Foster at Quartermile. Head and shoulders above the other places we are making.
Some recessed entrances for the enquiring PfP by Cooper Cromar.
Nice ground floor, generally, less successful deck detailing.
Another, neater, deck at Westfield, left. Edinburgh’s least successful public space: Festival Square. We went and had a look to try to deduce what was actually so wrong.
I’m sitting somewhere near the Scottish border, Edinburgh side. Someone in front has been hit by a train. We’re waiting for the police. After seven years of working across the border I notice this happens when we move into Autumn and it’s darker longer, and then, most notably, as we approach Christmas. For a while, it makes a difference to how I feel about everything. But after less of a while than I’d like it seems like an opportunity to get something done, like this.
In Between Days – 25 July 2014
“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle I no longer despair for the human race” said HG Wells. This is the first step on my post surgery recovery: learning how to get around when you aren’t allowed to cycle. Everything takes ages.
Also I’m not allowed to travel. In Edinburgh in August that’s not a problem as the world comes to you. This year, alongside the festival, it’s the Commonwealth Games. The divers are in Edinburgh, staying at the hotel by our office and surrounded by a surprising number of policemen. 
Where there are crowds there are people pretending to be statues and, oddly, other people filming them. This is a real statue of Kirkcaldy hero Adam Smith, in the Royal Mile. Smith was famously odd looking but Sandy Stoddart, the sculptor, has sorted that out. 
I don’t know what this self determining free marketeer might have thought about independence.
After a couple of weeks I was back to working and travelling, chatting to artist Chris Jones:
https://www.facebook.com/chris.jones.3954?ref=br_rs
Recovered, we went to Liz & Simon’s and then to London, which is rapidly, and pleasantly, becoming the home of the cyclist.
HG Wells would be pleased.
Edinburgh Castle- 26 May 2014
Edinburgh Castle: a painful place to visit the day after you’ve run the Edinburgh half marathon. The half marathon route is down hill, and you feel that in your calf muscles on the countless castle steps.
Below is the Edinburgh 10 mile four weeks before. It had a much better route through the middle of town, starting and ending in the same place. The finish is overlooking Holyrood House, where the royals went when they realised the houses being built in the new town had better rooms than their old home in the castle.
Lot’s of exercise in the last few weeks and I’ve learnt that a strict rule of running is that the ladies wear lycra and the boys don’t. Perhaps cycling could learn from that.
Fraser feeling better.
Valentines Day Drawing
A Valentine’s Day scene: flowers, love hearts and tortuous poetry.
The close opposite, with the poppies, is where Adam Smith used to lived. Later, Lady Haig’s poppy factory was here. At the parliament across the road each MP gets an office with a space for one person to think alone.
Earlier I went for a meal for two
I like to draw columns while I’m waiting. This one’s in Perth station.
The meal resulted in sore foot (the colours are a little exaggerated).
Scottish Parliament Lobby 4th February 2014
These people are here for the cross party cancer group. I’m not, I just sat down to sketch this interesting lobby when they began turning up, so I am happy to draw them instead.
The space could feel like a theatre lobby or an airport departure lounge, but it doesn’t, it has a different atmosphere. The architecture contributes to that, but it’s largely the fact that people are here for serious business. Up in the chamber (where sketching is not allowed) they are voting Yes to gay marriage.
Same folk, different jobs 10 January 2014
Edinburgh’s cafes survived the recession I think. They’ve got the same people in them talking about the same stuff, they’ve just survived in different ways and ended up in different jobs.
Coming back to work after two weeks off, my colleagues look like Dracula.
Edinburgh Skyline 1 January 2014
Miroslav Sasek, author of brilliantly illustrated children’s books about some of the world’s best cities, said: “Few cities in the world have real skylines. Edinburgh has a very lovely one”. 
It’s a great view. Most of the interest comes from church building 200 years ago, so not sure what lessons it has for today. Alan Bennet said the trouble with Leeds was that it was always in too much of a rush to get to the future. We may have the opposite problem. Something to think about on the first day of our referendum year.
Fraser & Isla 15 December 2013
Short days in mid December mean more time in. I’ve never watched a whole film with Isla before, so we watched Beauty & the Beast from the comfort of the couch. 
She used a cushion for help with the scary bits, I just concentrated on the Christmas tree and accepted that I can’t make ‘Beauty’ a beauty, which might be some consolation for the (actually quite handsome) Fraser.
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