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!

What was going on last week

Last week was extremely busy therefore I did not have much time for sleep not to mention blogging!

We went on a two day trip to Oxford to meet with our chaplain (more of it later) but after the return I really had to speed up with preparing my assesment for the college.

It were hours of fun - I have managed to prepare all written things during our train journey so just the printing and mounting of resolved prints was left to do. As usual it took much longer than expected but turned out reasonably well - the prints were of fantastic quality (vivat Epson large format printers, though be carefull with the magenta levels!) and after a brief tutorial I hot pressed them and mounted them all on my own! All the things got ticked off this morning so now I am free to meet Simon's cousin who is coming to Edinburgh for a weekend with his wife! Have a great weekend all!

Edinburgh ZOO - picture heavy!

Obviously the Edinburgh ZOO pinguins were the biggest hit today - though we have managed somehow to miss the famous pinguin parade by 15 minutes! I have also liked Mercedes - the only polar bear kept in Zoo in UK - she will be soon moving to a bigger place so it was a last chance to visit her here. Wonderful afternoon!

Oxford revisited

We are heading to Oxford in the morning!

To get ourselves in the mood we were watching 'Brideshead revisited' with Jeremy Irons, Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud - a true British classic. I was at first sligtly sceptical towards the film (but the book is one of Simon's favourite novels ever) which was unveiling itself at a pace of a grazing cow but after the second part I fell in love with this story of 'posh, mad, long established, catholic toffs' and it's deliciously decadent characters of two Oxford students. The part happening in Venice won my heart over. I was in Oxford 15 years ago on a beautiful sunny day in the summer and I am really looking forward to visiting it again.

There are obviously going to be some chores: we have to find a florist, order a cake (probably from Maison Blanc) and book tables for the meal in a restaurant - all that with at an extremely steep budget. Let's just hope that the weather and the chaplain are going to be on our side.

Downpour outside, hot latte inside

There is nothing better than sitting inside a cafe (with a magnificent view to the castle) hugging a warm boyfriend and a big cup of hot latte while wind and rain are rageing outside. The lady in the picture nicked a very nice spot by the window (Simon got there jus 2 seconds too late) which we were eyeing from the queue by the counter but she was forgiven since it was mainly for a picture she wanted to take. I hope she managed to get her image all right!

Sejin's rear view mirror

Dreaming about summer

http://www.toast.co.uk/content/zephyrandblueSS09.htm?menu=media

I love the music and the way of filming with the 8 mm camera - but I like the straw hat the most!

Graduation time is comming!

A bit of Paris in Edinburgh

We were sending the first part of our wedding invitations today and just across the road from the post office in Frederick Street we discovered a very parisian place indeed. There is undoubtedly a very strong French vibe in Edinburgh, maybe descending from Mary Queen of Scots' French legacy so the cafe where we had our afternoon cafe creme (no, we have really had cappuccinos) was called 'Cafe Rouge'. Luckily the coffee served there was actually dark brown and strong as it should be.

The interior of the cafe is really grand and very parisian with beautiful Art Deco posters dotted on the walls but today all the clients were fighting to get a table at the sunny terrace in front of the cafe. To our surprise all the staff were Polish but as well there were many of the clients! I really liked the toilets signs which I dutily photographed for the sake of this blog to a grande surprise of one of the Polish waiters.

P.S. We are much more relaxed these days since Lev is feeling much better now, thank you!

To improve the mood - a cute house in the very city center

Scare and worry

What are you biggest fears?

Mine are: first a scare of loosing my eyesight. I had a brief but very dramatic sample of the feeling couple of years ago when my retina got detached and I was the best candidate for an eye patch. Luckily it all got sorted out by a fabulous eye surgeon in Krakow and I am still seeing with both of my eyes. But I have to be very carefull...

The second fear is of a destruction of my little status quo in the family life: my Dad died 6 years ago and I do not think that I will ever really manage to overcome his disappearance from my life. Things are not going to be the same again. it took me couple of years to delete his mobile phone number from my mobile.

I am currently living in my own happy bubble, surrounded with fabulous, loving people - I will do anything I can not to destroy it but some things just happen independantly of my own will.

Therefore we got frantically scared today when we received a call from Haddington that Lyovka had been whisked off to intensive care in the night! The image featured to illustrate this post comes from our visit from just two days ago (we all went to the Gallery of Modern Art to view their expo 'Artist's Rooms') and now his life is threatened seriously!

He woke up in the night and was not able to breath. He went all violet so Simon's parents called for an ambulance. He was given shots of adrenaline and steroids and the whole IC section of the Sick Children Hospital in Edinburgh were there desperate to help him. Luckily his condition stabilised but a lung specialist said befuddled that they had no idea what it was. 'That really gives me cause for hope' commented Lyovka still breathing with difficulty.

We had barely the time to put our coats on when we rushed to hospital. Apparently Lyovka's symptoms were simmilar to ones of the much dreaded krup virus which usually does not attack children of his age. Couple of hours later he was transferred to a regular ward and after having his lunch let off home. I just hope he is going to have a nice calm sleep tonight, breathing healthily in his own bed.

Artist's thought

Picture taken at ECA's lecture hall - someone must have been a bit bored while listening to a lecture?

Piggy weekend

*The formatting of text in Blogger really SUCKS.
I have been editting this post about 20 times an it still comes back to the stage where I started the necessary improvements. So just read it please the way it is, I am not able to change any more the html coding in it, sorry.

Today is a bank holiday in Britain. We were able to come back home a day later than usual from our great weekend in Haddington.

Liska baked these delicious rock cakes, I managed to meet our friends from next door while Simon went to support Lyovka (only morally) in his rugby tournament. Did you know why the rugby ball is shaped the way it is? Now I know: it's eggy shape so that you could hold on to one end with both hands while you are kicking it at the same time. I am ensuring you - it sounds more complicated than it actually is!

Swine flu seems to be slowly pushing to the number two in the main headline news, with some more cases discovered in Scotland. We were coming back on a bus and we were desperately trying to move away as possible from a guy who was carellessly sneezing over other passengers and spitting on the bus' floor. He was obviously not wearing a sombrero but he also clearly did not hear what Sandi Toksvig said on 'News Quiz' radio show last Friday: 5 is Pandemic, 6 - pigs take over.

There was also a more reassuring comment that pigs are very intelligent - should not we hope that they are already working on the vaccine?

P.S. Listen to the programme for 4 more days here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006r9yq

or have a look at Sandi's columns in The Sunday Telegraph (beautifully illustrated every week by Brett Ryder)

Weaverley

Yesterday I was having a Skype discussion with a friend from Paris, who tried to take a picture of a beautiful sunlight in his appartment. I was really envoius when I saw this warm glow in his flat while it was raining here every 15 minutes and the sun never emerged from behind the clouds.

These pictures were taken while I was passing by the Weaverley Station today. The bridge you see it is the North Bridhe which I was mentioning in a winter post here. I had to cross from Princes Street to the Old Town and the fastest way was to cut across next to Scott's Monument via the street which lays on top of the train station (well it is actually called Weaverley Bridge). The light was simply amazing and I took a picture of the opposite bridge bathed in light and then I tourned around just to see a huge black cloud burgeoning with storm coming towards me fast across the sky.You can see the clouds gathering in the middle image .

Then the strom started - I quickly went down into the covered space of the station to browse at WHSmiths. Ten minutes later when I emerged with a new issue of I-D magazine, it was bright again and I could continue my journey up the hill when the sun was out again and the storm gone.

It is the only sure thing about Scottish weather - it never stays the same for too long.