Starspotting

It was another beautiful sunny and sandaly day in Edinburght today. The warm weather is suppose to last until Wednesday when we happen to be flying to Poland (where it is +10 degrees at the moment). As we are affraid that it might be the first and the last breath of summer in Scotland therefore we decided to spend most of the day outside. We wandered around New Town visiting our favourite coffee hang outs (btw: the waitresses in Patisserie Florentin are all Polish too! Are we Poles such francophiles or what? All the staff at Cafe Rouge were also from Poland!).

In one of the little streets we decided to visit a nice surprise awaited us - a French film crew was filming a 60s comedy with Lambert Wilson - we got suck at the pub when they were shooting a retake after retake desperately trying to cool the French star trapped in his elegant suit between takes. Poor thing - he must have been boiling in these clothes! A nice man from the production team popped into the pub to prevent people inside from coming too close to the pub's windows and we chatted for a while about the film. When he went out a moment later monsieur Wilson waved to us from the street, obviously he was told that there was his fan inside!

I am not a kind of person who would pester favourite actors for a photo or an autograph so we quckly sneaked out of the pub at the first opportunity (I think it must have been after at least a 12th retake as it was the final scene of the film being shot). Mr Wilson was just having his well deserved cigarette while assisstants were trying to cool him off. And who would have thought - a French film star AND in need to cool down in Edinburgh!

The film is out in 2010.

Summer! Finally

I have never thought that a day like this is going to come - I was wearing SANDALS today in Edinburgh! People were occupying with their picniques any patch of grass in the city and I have heard 'What a beautiful day, isn't it?' on my way to meeting with Simon after college, at least three times. To which one could only answer - indeed it is!

Images of a Scottish countryside

We did a lot of travelling throughout last couple of days and we are frankly speaking exhausted - it must be an overdose of fresh air or something along those lines. We saw lots of beautiful places and lots of grim ones - here are samples of what we saw on our way.

Toddlers in space?

Nice area

We are off to Berwick -upon -Tweed tomorrow, so no Edinburgh sights for a while.

Image of Edinburgh by Alexander McCall Smith

I am not very fond of reading fiction which except of great classics like Dumas, Dickens or Tolstoy I usually find unsatysfying and I prefer to read books dealing with history and non-fiction (Claire Tomalin, Jeremy Paxman,Antonia Fraser, Barbara Tuchman, this list could go on and on). In case the book is dealing with fiction it has to be at least a well written crime novel, preferably based in an old, beautiful city like Venice of Donna Leon's stories...

However recently my poor head had to deal with lots of complicated intellectual tasks (writing 6000 words essay in a foreign language about artist as a creator of visual illusions, anyone?) and I have diverted to more so to speak, light literature.

The obvious choice in such circumstances would be Ian Rankin but as I have read all of his Rebus novels already and I had to had an opportunity of carrying a book with me in my bag (one image scanned on a superduper college's Hasselbladt scanner takes aproximately 1 page of a book to read) and I did not want to carry my hefty hardback editions. Therefore I consulted my Edinburgh Literary Companion and settled on another Edinburgh author, especially after reading that he featured Ian Rankin 'as himself' in his novel based in The New Town, my favourite area of Edinburgh.

Being on a tight budget equalled having a deatiled look into some of local second hand book shops (and the best ones in town happen to be situated 2 minutes away from where we live) which handily turned out to be brimming with all necessary paperbacks: all Nr1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, the Sunday Philosophy Club series and the 44 Scotland Street series were there, short of maybe 1 or 2 volumes but nevertheless all at extremely affordable prices of usually £2.50.

So that is how I became addicted to Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh characters.

I have been passing by Scotland Street before on my usually weekly trip to A&M Imaging down through elegantly layed out streets of The New Town but only now I decided to have a look at the books from the series.

I do also happen to do a lookout of some nice places in Edinburgh which I tend to name since 'a McCall Smith's kind' ones.

Last week, on my way back from the Polish Consulate I came across a nice cafe situated in North West Circus Place. It was a sunny morning, people were sipping their lattes and cappucinos while sitting on the terrace. Its interior was warm and welcoming so I decided to have a break in my journey uphill and sit down for a coffee. My new favourite book I happened to have with me.

A moment later, when a sombre Serbian waitress brought my drinks I looked up from my book (Bertie was just escaping Steiner School to become a part of George Watson's College, a very exciting part of the book, just have a look into 'Espresso Tales' for yourself) and saw the world exactly like from McCall Smith's story: a young mother sharing a latte with her little son, elegant eldery lady flicking through latest issue of The Scotsman, a handsome young man with his laptop unconsciously checking his reflection in the cafe's mirrored wall. I took a sip of my coffee and returned to my book knowing that the world described in it really do exists and therefore can be almost qualified as my favourite kind of literature - nonfiction.

Well, to some extent - there is not a house nr 44 in Scotland Street!

(Printing is) hours of fun. Stressful fun.

I really enjoy working intensively - huge responsibility, even bigger prints, lots of meticulous test prints to get the right colour balance but the mounted result simply exceeded my expectations. Have a sneak peek at my work in the college lab: lots of sweat and swearing but luckily no tears!