wild weekend in edinburgh

wow,... edinburgh nightlife hit me with a bang this weekend. everything looked tame when I got to Baraka and found little Miss C making knitting a scarf and joined in to help her finish it. But, that grandmotherly start to the weekend was certainly no sign of things to come.

We took advantage of cheap drinks offers, mated with our general enthusiasm for the time of the week, and became very jolly and silly indeed. From Baraka we went to Opium (following a little detour via City Cafe, where we couldn't get in cos one of our party was too drunk!). Opium is a rock bar, so we had to get down and dirty with all the other revellers. In sharp contrast to her sedate knitter mode, Ms C became an animal - biting people left right and centre, including a poor 18 year old architect from my course, who didn't know what hit him. News of this spread around college like wild fire and now I seem to be known for having the whackiest friends.

After meeting a small band of Shetlanders in Opium we moved on, probably to find food, but we stumbled instead upon an irish pub that none of us had ever seen before. So, we ventured in, thinking it might be some sort of strange portal to another world occupied by leprachauns. What did we find? Yet more Shetlanders,.... in abundance! Live music was still blaring loudly, so we danced that off in style (with Magners in hand) until it was time to leave there too.

By this time fast food establishments were drawing down their shutters and we were hungry. We wandered kinda aimlessly (losing more and more of our party) until we came upon a dapper young man in an elegant suit (which was what caught our eyes). Moments later we were sipping a nice red wine in his flat, which just happened to be nearby. Oh what a pleasant, if slightly unusual ending to what was a rather bizarre night.

(PS,... there is masses of stuff that I can't possibly write about here. So, you'll just have to use your imagination and read between some of the lines, somewhere)

Saturday was mostly spent in bed until it was time to meet the motly crew for drinks again,... this time in the convivial surroundings of Cafe Royal. Dearest A from Cambridge was up, which was a delight. And we enjoyed a humourous evening of talking utter bollocks. It would have been a nice pilot for my new TV Show, "Bringing Out the Bollocks in You"... a nonsense-speak chat-show, hosted by yours truly.

Sunday was the healthy part of the weekend (apart from the wine with lunch and the pint with dinner). A nice day trip out to N Berwick to stroll around by the sea and take in the country air.

Mmmm,... its nice to be back in Scotland!!!

Feerie settin' in...

I think I'm coming down with something - a feerie, as we call it in Shetland. A flu, or a "bug" of some sort, I suppose you might say. I feel cold though it is warm, my eyes smart and sting a bit, my back and neck is sore, and i feel generally listless and disjasket. Too much revelry at the weekend? Perhaps, but you don't usually pick up a flu when you go out for a pint or three. I suppose it depends who you end up snogging at the end of the night!

John Schneider...!!!

Is his man a god, or what?

Soft Parcels and Birthday Thanks

Many of you have been writing to me and asking about how my birthday went. So I'm posting a short response to you all.

Firstly, my birthday this year fell in the middle of week two of the term - a week busy with lots of unfamiliar work and highly important getting to know each other type activities. I decided to play my birthday fairly low-key amongst all this (partly didn't want to draw attention to my age amongst all the youngsters on my course). So I celebrated my birthday on Tuesday night (after midnight) with course-mates down the pub, after an Architecture night out. And on my real birthday I joined Nick and friends for a pub quiz down at the Blue Blazer. No real parties, no real attention drawn. But pleasant, nonetheless. Also, Carlos (a friend from Cambridge) and I had celebrated heartily the weekend before, so I was partied out.

A few notes of thanks are appropriate though. To mam for the very generous cash gift which I will spend wisely on sensible clothes purchases (plural intentional). To my flat mate for the very nice bottle of wine (which we are in the middle of drinking). To friends who bought me drinks on my birthday, especially Ro and Nick. To Þórhallur for all the cards from Iceland, including the prestigious message from the "icegays". And finally, to my sister and family for the "soft parcel" they sent. My sister has a tendency to send me soft parcels which can often cause me concern. "Soft parcel" is code for "I've got you something to wear, and I hope you'll like it". Anyone who knows mean will understand how much of a risk this is. Nine times out of ten it has to be swapped for something else. I'm afraid this was one of the nine, dear sister. But it's the thought that counts!

Win over GNER!

Travelling home from Iceland to Shetland this summer involved a long and slightly convoluted journey. Þórhallur and I took Árni's car to the bus station in Reykjavík, where I caught a bus to airport at Keflavik, and from there I took a very comfortable flight down to Glasgow with Iceland Air. I went through to Edinburgh by first taking a bus to central Glasgow and then a train to Waverley Station. I needed to swing past a friend's place to drop off luggage, so I took a taxi to his house.

After a pleasing al fresco lunch with Nick I began my journey north to Aberdeen to catch the 7pm ferry to Shetland. I took a taxi to Waverley to get a train. Up until now, everything had gone perfectly according to plan - no delays. But GNER let me down royally. The train was late in arriving at Edinburgh and continued to experience further delays all the way up the NE coast, such that we arrived in Aberdeen some 90 minutes late - and only 10 minutes after the ferry to Shetland had departed. (We pleaded with Northlink to wait for us, but they wouldn't budge!)

GNER put us (myself and lady going home for a funeral) up at a hotel in Dyce so that we could fly home the following morning. They met the hotel expense, but wouldn't book us on flights - we were told to do that ourselves and present a claim to GNER. We did this (thanks to a free wireless connection in my hotel room, I was able to book us flights online for 6am the following morning). The flights were a reasonable £145 return. I filled out the complaint form, wrote a long letter, included my receipts and waited patiently.

GNER have just reimbursed me this very week, some two months later. Hence the celebration! To mark the occasion, I'm going to swing down past Princes Street and do a little autumn wardrobe shopping this afternoon! I should also point out that GNER were kind enough to give me a compensatory £8 voucher for use on their services in the future. How nice!

Gripe of the Week: Round Taps!

Ok, as a grumpy old man, I'm going to start reflecting on things that annoy me. I expect I will have a design focus, being as that is what I'm concerned with at the moment.

This week I'm picking on the rounded tap! Britain doesn't really do plumbing fittings very well, in my experience. The Scandi's are great at it, as are the germans and italians, of course - famed for it! But we get it wrong, left right and centre. Not only are round taps quite ugly, but they are also really impractical. Try gripping and turning on a sticky round tap with wet or slippery hands. Nightmare!. Its a bit like round door knobs - I think they are problematic! So, bug thumbs down to the round tap! As an Architect, I won't be specifying them!

Fuss About Nothing

I don't want to start some kind of a rush on tickets to Iceland, but has anyone out there realised how cheap it is to fly with BA when you book well in advance? I have just checked flights to Iceland for next summer (for Reykjavik Pride) and return fares with BA, inclusive of taxes are currently a mere £78 return!!! This is about half what the Iclandic companies are charging. Lets get booking!

Settling In

Well, three weeks have passed since I arrived in Edinburgh, after a hectic week in Malmo which ended with a very drunken night out in Copenhagen with Arni Gretar which resulted in the loss of my phone! Don't worry - Mr Vodafone kindly supplied me with a new sim card (for free) which I stuck in an old phone that I had lying around. Some of you may remember the old ericsson with the "active flip technology". Pórhallur, you were very familiar with it - well now it gets yet another lease of life.

Week one here was taken up with Fresher's Week and lots of rather tedious introductions to Edinburgh College of Art life, facilities, etc. I couldn't wait to get started. And in weeks two and three (one and two of the course) we have launched right in. We get lectures in design, materials, sustainability, and visual culture. In addition we get a whole day of drawing classes each week, and about 2 days of studio time where we play with materials and build models. Its going great! I actually feel like I can become an Architect. I'm dead interested in the work, and I'm discovering expressive, creative and drawing capabilities that were previously untapped. This is a relief.

Excitingly, I've made contact with an architects practice nearby, which is quite well known in Scotland, indeed, across the UK. I'm very hopeful that this might lead to some part-time work, either during term or perhaps in vacations. I will keep you posted on this.

I feel like some nice Scottish porridge now.