Framed

She's been framed :-)











For some reason this just seemed like one of these street shots that worked better in monochrome. I don't know why, but some pics just work better in black and white.

Nocturnal cycling piano player

A couple of evenings ago I was drinking in the city's Grassmarket, an area I rarely drink in these days - its mostly tourists and first year students who go there - but I was meeting some friends who have been working abroad and arranged to meet several folks there. The whole square has been done up recently to make it more open; if you don't know the city its a square behind and below the imposing bulk of Edinburgh Castle in the Old Town, one side lined with pubs and inns, some of which are very old (going back to the 1500s), some of which, when they were actual coaching inns, played host to Robert Burns on visits to Edinburgh. And as we sat outside on a warm evening we heard music. Not unusual in a public square, especially during the Edinburgh Festival. And we all turn to see where it is coming from and we see a man in evening dress and top hat cycling his piano through the Grassmarket as he plays. When I told other people of this the next day I got the 'oh, Joe's off on one of his magical fantasy land tales again' looks, but I have documentary evidence:







I must apologise for the low quality of the pics, but shooting freehand (not that a tripod would have helped if I had it since he was moving most of the time) in a dark square at night is never going to give crisp, clear pics and the flash wasn't much use in that situation either. But I had to try and grab some pics because even in Festival time Edinburgh you just don't see a man cycling a piano through the city streets at night all that often. It was all wonderfully eccentric and delightful and magical and I loved it. Little bizarre delights like this that the city sometimes just throws up to you are part of what makes life fun. And here's a very short video clip - its brief and even darker than the still pics, very murky night-time streets (and far away from the street lamps) but it was the best I could do on the spot to give you a tiny taste of this piano moving through the streets as he played:

The Ukulele Lady sings!

And here, as promised, is the short video I shot of Amanda Palmer singing us all an appropriately sci-fi themed song with her ukulele before her book signing yesterday:

The Ukulele Lady

Amanda Palmer warming up in the basement of Forbidden Planet in Edinburgh this afternoon before a signing (and singing!) session for her and Neil Gaiman's book "Who Killed Amanda Palmer". Amanda has a music gig later this week as part of the Edinburgh Fringe (and is doing smaller gigs during the week as well), Neil is in town shortly for the Edinburgh International Book Festival, we're helping her sell the book while she's here and today was a nice chance for the fans to come and meet her - really good turnout, city centre buzzing with Festival goers plus a big line of fans waiting to meet Amanda adding to it all. This was Amanda getting into her zone before meeting the fans by performing a song for us all; I've videoed her performance (with her permission) and will add it here once I have time to sort it and upload it to YouTube.

"Check yer baws!"

In a window festooned with men's health advice, specifically about checking the old undercarriage regularly to detect early onset of testicular cancer, on Cockburn Street I see this cartoon image - yes, it is indeed a giant, hairy bollock encouraging men to check themselves by declaring "check yer baws!" (a literal take on the old phrase 'talking bollocks'). Cracked me up, much to the bemusement of some passing Spanish tourists who not knowing Scots didn't understand what I was laughing my arse off about; once I stopped giggling I had to take a quick snap. Apologies for the reflection, no way to really avoid them; for film fact fans the street side reflected in the window is the side where Sophia Myles' character lives in the film version of Hallam Foe: