Another day, another castle

Ahhh...

J'adore

Time to kill in Leith

I have had an hour to kill in the Leith area yesterday and I have ended up walking until I reached the Great Junction Street with it's intriguing mural - I wonder why this girl is asleep in her bed while the parade is taking place?

August in Edinburgh

I was recently grumbling about which month is the worst to survive in Edinburgh - August or December. With winter still so far away I am more and more inclined to decide that it is August aka The Festival month, which is the winner with it's packed cafes, hordes of tourists, mess of discarded leaflets and airforce jets flying above our little flat with a terrible noise every evening around 10.30 pm for the duriation of the famous Edinburgh Tatoo.

I must say that I grumble a lot these days but if you would have to put up with all that on top of unpredictable weather, crowds and coos upside down and too much neverending work, you would feel a bit down as well. What will I do when December comes?

Fahrenheit and photography

I would not have believed it if I have not have witnessed it with my own very nose and ears as I was sitting right next to Simon in Tea Tree Tea this morning, desperately trying not to inhale too deeply...Agata had once a student who when entered the room, filled it up with their own mixture of sweat and perfume. Overwhelming experience, especially when one is not a smoker.

In my opinion this boy was using Fahrenheit , which one of the most invasive male frangrances I came accross in my life but that is not the point. Have a read here and please try not to pull your hair out or use any Dior male edts:
http://simoncroftsphoto.com/blog/?p=327

Fellow photographers

Joe and Dave in action (on the way to the WPP exhibition in the Scottish Pariament building) last week. Joseph was explaining something vividly to David, I think:

Francophile strikes back

If you are one of my Parisian friends reading this, look away now! I went today to see a French comedy L'Arnacoeur with superkooky Romain Duris and gaptoothy Vanessa Paradis, which I enjoyed very much, though I have a strong feeling that the bag of the main female character was not by Hermes as stated in the film but by some other designer, well - nevermind.

The Edinburgh Filmhouse offered a lesson in a French vocabulary featured in the film so I have ended up with a bunch of eldery Scots speaking French literaly like that:


Interesting experience nethertheless.

St Andrews part 2

^ The flag states a strong westerly wind so no inflatables, otherwise as Simon observed, you might find yourself on your doughnut flapping towards Norway...

^^ Our image courtesy of some unknown American gentleman on the harbour pier. Thank you! I do not have such a long hand!

A Mystery of the Sport called Golf

Last weekend we spent with a work related purpose in St Andrews where students of one of the oldest universities in Britain mix with golfers who come especially to play on one of the most prestigeous golf courses in the country.

Luckily none of us is into golf so these acres of plain green grass interested us only from a photographer's point of view (Simon waited for ages so that someone came into the compositionally right end of the course so that he could take a picture). And even that turned out to be dangerous as when we were walking down The Scores, a street situated just past the golfcourse by the sea, something whizzed past my left ear and landed on the tarmac next to me. I presume you have guessed already what it was! So I picked up the golf ball, much to Simon's dissaprovement (apparently one is not supposed to do that - a golfer is supposed to whack it back into the course). So I left it where it landed, just behind a street bollard and picked it up on our way back, 20 minutes later it was still there!

What a narrow escape I've had - these balls are quite heavy and extremely hard so being hit with one at high speed might create a serious damage. Who would have thought that golf is such a dangerous sport. Especially when one is a wife...

A.R. Rahman

BBC4 broadcasted again an interesting insightful programme about an Indian composer A.R. Rahman.
I have never had much patence to watch bolywood blockbusters but this sequence sets the song to it's best:



First time I have heard that song was here ( a very good film btw with a surprising finish!):



The most interesting part of the programme was however a description of how Mr Rahman works in his studio - he is a devoted muslim and as he says, music is only filling the gaps [between the prayers].