Follow the blue metal road:

Husband comments

Simon went through my latest post (below) and commented that if this shopping list of mine has anything on it, it is indeed unrealistic...

Sunny days are gone

It has been a while, the Pope (the Pretender one) went back home (Simon managed to catch a glimpse of his vehicle disappearing up the Lothian Road) and it is raining now a second day solid. Luckily I have my special sturdy shoes though I do not really have to get out today at all. Simon is having a well deserved lie in while I am trying to decarnage my desk, finish some work tasks and perepare endless lists of things I cannot afford to buy on my trip to Paris in November (my lovely parisian friend Aurelia has agreed to put me up at her place again! Thank you so much My Dear! One stressful thing off my head. Now I have to stress over the price of the air tickets and the lenght of my unrealistic shopping list...). So a moderate yay!

Meanwhile here are some pictures from our visit to Dunblane, on a chilly but sunny day last week. (I think I prefer this combination to warm, wet and extremely humid that we are having now. The light has to permanently on the whole day, even though usually when it is sunny I have to pull down the blinds to take the brightness one mark down.).

We had a lunch in the famous Dunblane Hydro and had a look inside of the cathedral (because of having a cathedral Dunblane is a city!). We have also bought two tasty steak pies from a local butcher and read this interesting plaque about a chap who wore his gloves on top of his head:

A postcard from Stirling

From a train to Dunblane:

Can you get a vintage coffin?

A charity shop's window in Dunblane:

Temptation at Haymarket

Resistance is useless...

I want to live in Peter's Yard!

Well, not in the cafe itself but rather in the area attached directly to it which is being refurbished by Sir Norman Foster (& his design office): Edinburgh's Quarter Mile. This nice cafe with a scandinavian style bakery and delicious cardamone hot chocolate would be just a part of the deal. I went there for the first time with a German lady living in Edinburgh whose portrait I was commissioned to take and we met there to discuss the details - if it had not been for that meeting I would have been still on autopilot straight to a nearby Starbucks. What a waste of a perfectly nice afternoon in a corporate surroundings would that be.

Now I am dreaming about a nice airy flat in one of the cubicles of the Quarter Mile, full of light, near a hospital turned into an exclusive building developement. Actually Simon was born in that building many winters ago. Maybe one day he will wake up with a view over the Meadows again?

Signs and posts

My Korean friend and fellow photograher Sejin is featured this week on The Asian Photography Blog! Have a look here. Congratulations girl! I hope you have had a minute to have a look at it before flying off for a short and well deserved weekend in Italy!

I have spent last couple of days working on two new illustration commissions (well, not allowed to post them on my other blog befor the editors give them a final nod so bear with me), which was a nice time off from the camera for a change. This Autumn looks busy again with work commissions, two portfolio reviews (Bratislava and Paris) and a lecture for The Stills photographic community that I am preparing for November. I will soon post more about that when I know some more details. I have had a really weird idea for this lecture so we will see how it goes as I have to now stick with it.

Some other signs I have recently came accross in my journeys:

New shoes, new hair

I have ventured to the hairdressers this week with a dose of trepidation because they are really not good here and very very expensive for the standard of their service. This time I was lucky and did not have to chop it off myself with a craft knife later...

I have also indulged in a bit of shopping, not too much as I am hoping to get some nice things in Paris later on in the year (I have received an email from FotoFest today about the portfolio review but have not had time to answer properly yet) and as usual I will be on a tight budget which means a careful spending. So instead of light grey high Converses I got... Dr Martens, much more suitable for coming wet and wild season. I wore their shoes more than a decade ago and they have not looked anything feminine as these!

A! And my cousin Maciek is getting married today! Congratulations, my old chap!