Save the Caley Sample!
I meant to post on this a few days ago but it was taken off my mind by other events. When my drouthy cronie Gordon and I repaired to the Caledonian Sample Room recently we heard that the Caley Sample (the pub, not the excellent brewery along the road) was in serious danger of closing. This is a huge blow to we beer-bellied real ale drinkers of the Lothians as it is a mecca for us and for me and Gordon it is a really low blow because it also happens to be our favourite drinking hole in this side of the galaxy. If the Caley does go the Gorgie-Dalry-Polwarth triangle in Edinburgh loses a great place. Sure there are other bars nearby, quite a few of which I like drinking in and a couple aren't bad for proper beer (like the Golden Rule) but the Caley Sample is one of the best places to go and enjoy a really well-served pint of Deuchars IPA or Caledonian 80.
I like my favourite local and I like the friendly staff and I like the way they pour the locally-brewed fabulous beer properly and the barmaid will slip out a bowl of dog biccies for Gordon's pooch Bruce and I like the occassional music gig (Thin Lizzy tribute band a couple of weeks ago!! Rock on!). Anyone have a good idea how to save the Caley Sample Room then? Other than regular topless nights, which was my idea but didn't float (yeah, I was slightly drunk at the time but in all honesty I'd probably have suggested that when sober too, so can't blame the ale).
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Monday, May 22, 2006
Blair's Middle-East getaway from it all break
Most news agencies reported today on Tony Blair visiting that fine, sun-kissed holiday destination, Baghdad, where he could top up his tan in-between visits to his regular holidays in Italy. However, only we at the Gazette seem to have picked up on a factual error: the red carpet was not rolled out for Mr Blair's visit. In fact it was the dead carpet. Like the more well-known red carpet it is also a scarlet colour, but the dead carpet's hue is because it is stained red with blood and the fabric of the carpet is woven from threads taken from the clothes of the soldiers and civilians killed in the 'liberation' of Iraq. This allows world leaders to walk across the dead with their feet but allows their hands to appear as if they are not soaked in spilled blood.
Okay, maybe it wasn't really a dead carpet woven of slaughtered people's clothes in reality; it's a sarcastic bit of metaphor. But on another level it's absolutely goddam true. That man should be scrubbing his hands more than Lady Macbeth.
Most news agencies reported today on Tony Blair visiting that fine, sun-kissed holiday destination, Baghdad, where he could top up his tan in-between visits to his regular holidays in Italy. However, only we at the Gazette seem to have picked up on a factual error: the red carpet was not rolled out for Mr Blair's visit. In fact it was the dead carpet. Like the more well-known red carpet it is also a scarlet colour, but the dead carpet's hue is because it is stained red with blood and the fabric of the carpet is woven from threads taken from the clothes of the soldiers and civilians killed in the 'liberation' of Iraq. This allows world leaders to walk across the dead with their feet but allows their hands to appear as if they are not soaked in spilled blood.
Okay, maybe it wasn't really a dead carpet woven of slaughtered people's clothes in reality; it's a sarcastic bit of metaphor. But on another level it's absolutely goddam true. That man should be scrubbing his hands more than Lady Macbeth.
The DNA of writers
Write a fiction story and find the campus rentacops, playing at being real big city detectives, demanding your prints and DNA. This story in Boing Boing just reinforces my views that we can't allow increasingly draconian moves regarding the authorities and DNA records. And before you think if you live in the UK this doesn't matter to you think about the Shirley McKie fingerprint fiasco and how even when totally clearned and indeed publically compensated no action has been taken over senior police and forensics people who were involved in that whole sorry mess (which the government also sat upon). And think on how Blair's Labour Party in England is attempting to bring in a national DNA database by the back door and his cronies in the Scottish executive would very much like to but have been forced to pare back their ideas because they only govern in tandem with the Liberal Democrats who told them no. Never give these buggers an inch and never trust them with that sort of power and assume that all of them will only use it for good.
On another political front, I am still waiting on my MP, Alistair Darling to actually reply to the questions I emailed to him way back on the 2nd of April. A full month afterwards, as I noted here, I emailed once more and asked if I was likely to receive a reply to my email regarding his support for biometric ID cards and my concerns over this. I received pretty much the same reply from an assistant along the lines of thanks, this will be passed to your MP who will reply to you soon, which was the same reply I got a month before. Several weeks on from that and I still am waiting for the man who is supposed to be the representative of the voters in my constituency to actually reply to me (not that I expect much from that reply to be honest, probably bland reasons why I shouldn't be concerned). Obviously I don't expect an instant response and am sure he has plenty of things to keep him busy and other people contacting him, as well as comforting colleagues who have been exposed in various scandals, but it is now the 22nd of May and I am still waiting for my MP to bother replying to me.
50-odd days so far. I think that is long enough for him to reply to one of his constituents, don't you? I wonder if anyone knows if there is a website with statistics on how well our so-called representatives deal with their constituents' concerns and problems, which is, after all their actual job, not playing party politics. And politicians wonder why the electorate are so apathetic that many no longer even bothering to vote anymore...
Write a fiction story and find the campus rentacops, playing at being real big city detectives, demanding your prints and DNA. This story in Boing Boing just reinforces my views that we can't allow increasingly draconian moves regarding the authorities and DNA records. And before you think if you live in the UK this doesn't matter to you think about the Shirley McKie fingerprint fiasco and how even when totally clearned and indeed publically compensated no action has been taken over senior police and forensics people who were involved in that whole sorry mess (which the government also sat upon). And think on how Blair's Labour Party in England is attempting to bring in a national DNA database by the back door and his cronies in the Scottish executive would very much like to but have been forced to pare back their ideas because they only govern in tandem with the Liberal Democrats who told them no. Never give these buggers an inch and never trust them with that sort of power and assume that all of them will only use it for good.
On another political front, I am still waiting on my MP, Alistair Darling to actually reply to the questions I emailed to him way back on the 2nd of April. A full month afterwards, as I noted here, I emailed once more and asked if I was likely to receive a reply to my email regarding his support for biometric ID cards and my concerns over this. I received pretty much the same reply from an assistant along the lines of thanks, this will be passed to your MP who will reply to you soon, which was the same reply I got a month before. Several weeks on from that and I still am waiting for the man who is supposed to be the representative of the voters in my constituency to actually reply to me (not that I expect much from that reply to be honest, probably bland reasons why I shouldn't be concerned). Obviously I don't expect an instant response and am sure he has plenty of things to keep him busy and other people contacting him, as well as comforting colleagues who have been exposed in various scandals, but it is now the 22nd of May and I am still waiting for my MP to bother replying to me.
50-odd days so far. I think that is long enough for him to reply to one of his constituents, don't you? I wonder if anyone knows if there is a website with statistics on how well our so-called representatives deal with their constituents' concerns and problems, which is, after all their actual job, not playing party politics. And politicians wonder why the electorate are so apathetic that many no longer even bothering to vote anymore...
Musical interlude
Quite a musical few days recently - checked out the Jazz Bar on Chambers Street, just across from the Royal Musuem and enjoyed some good, smooth jazz in a nice subterranean bar. Much as I love being able to breathe in pubs now the smoking ban is in effect for some reasons an underground jazz hole doesn't quite seem right if it ain't smoky. Perhaps, as Gordon suggested, they should install a dry ice machine so we could still have a smoky-looking, dimly lit jazz venue but without the carcinogenic side-effects.
A good bit of acoustic gigging later on in the weekend as well in Sandy Bell's, a well-known venue for Scottish folk music. I think at one point there were four fiddlers bowing away to the beat of the bhodran, while Mel was very taken with the chap who was playing the double-bass and the way in which his leaning over the instrument meant his bum was sticking out. Women, treating men like they're just a sexual object, tsk, tsk - men have feelings too you know, we're not just sex objects. Sometimes I get tired of being treated just as a sexual object. At least I think I'm being treated as a sex object... Does being called a dick count???
Anyway, the music also took the form of a cool jazz CD by a 50s and 60s trumpet player, a guy I came across after finding him via Google a while back. A lot of his work was import only but I found one which was more easily available and was also one of the first major discs he cut after putting together his own band. The jazz musician is called Joe Gordon :-). Of course I had to hear it! And it is a pretty good bit of jazz, man.
Quite a musical few days recently - checked out the Jazz Bar on Chambers Street, just across from the Royal Musuem and enjoyed some good, smooth jazz in a nice subterranean bar. Much as I love being able to breathe in pubs now the smoking ban is in effect for some reasons an underground jazz hole doesn't quite seem right if it ain't smoky. Perhaps, as Gordon suggested, they should install a dry ice machine so we could still have a smoky-looking, dimly lit jazz venue but without the carcinogenic side-effects.
A good bit of acoustic gigging later on in the weekend as well in Sandy Bell's, a well-known venue for Scottish folk music. I think at one point there were four fiddlers bowing away to the beat of the bhodran, while Mel was very taken with the chap who was playing the double-bass and the way in which his leaning over the instrument meant his bum was sticking out. Women, treating men like they're just a sexual object, tsk, tsk - men have feelings too you know, we're not just sex objects. Sometimes I get tired of being treated just as a sexual object. At least I think I'm being treated as a sex object... Does being called a dick count???
Anyway, the music also took the form of a cool jazz CD by a 50s and 60s trumpet player, a guy I came across after finding him via Google a while back. A lot of his work was import only but I found one which was more easily available and was also one of the first major discs he cut after putting together his own band. The jazz musician is called Joe Gordon :-). Of course I had to hear it! And it is a pretty good bit of jazz, man.
Old friends gone, old friends you meet again, new friends come to visit
This weekend was pretty packed since a friend of Mel's cousin in Norway was over visiting, ahead of actually moving here for a year this summer, so as well as showing him round and taking him out we were also taking him round properties to see what was available to rent, good spots to live, what it costs etc. And as we're having some food in the Filmhouse's cafe-bar I notice a woman looking at me and she seems familiar, she's thinking the same... Yep, its a chum I've hardly seen since college, where she too was in Shiona's classes and all this time later we run into each other in the same building where Shiona had her base.
She had been at Shiona's funeral - she told me that the music was very Shiona (so yes, apparently there was Abba) and that Shiona had arrived in a horse-drawn hearse. Was it one with glass sides, I asked? Yes, it was the one I had photographs of on here a couple of years ago. I was about to half-jokingly, half-earnestly say that they would have replaced the long, black plumes the horses wear with brightly coloured ones when she told me that was exactly what had happened! I wish I'd known about it in time to go along myself, but hearing about this did make me feel a lot better.
This weekend was pretty packed since a friend of Mel's cousin in Norway was over visiting, ahead of actually moving here for a year this summer, so as well as showing him round and taking him out we were also taking him round properties to see what was available to rent, good spots to live, what it costs etc. And as we're having some food in the Filmhouse's cafe-bar I notice a woman looking at me and she seems familiar, she's thinking the same... Yep, its a chum I've hardly seen since college, where she too was in Shiona's classes and all this time later we run into each other in the same building where Shiona had her base.
She had been at Shiona's funeral - she told me that the music was very Shiona (so yes, apparently there was Abba) and that Shiona had arrived in a horse-drawn hearse. Was it one with glass sides, I asked? Yes, it was the one I had photographs of on here a couple of years ago. I was about to half-jokingly, half-earnestly say that they would have replaced the long, black plumes the horses wear with brightly coloured ones when she told me that was exactly what had happened! I wish I'd known about it in time to go along myself, but hearing about this did make me feel a lot better.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Sudden passing
Tonight I went to do something I do often, check the Edinburgh Filmhouse website. A pretty normal thing for any movie lover in this city to be doing, as the Filmhouse is a mecca to us. Except tonight that quick visit to check film times has left me utterly shocked and terribly saddened. On the front page is the news that the incredibly vibrant Shiona Wood, education officer at the Filmhouse for many years, had passed away a few days earlier from cancer, aged only 57. I'm gobsmacked.
Shiona was a movie lover, a person who encouraged others to enjoy and partake in the cinematic arts, brilliant fun to be around in the Filmhouse bar and a friend since my college days. When I was at Queen Margaret studying Shiona became a regular, agreeing to take some of the film classes, especially those dealing with gender topics. Our lecturers were actually a nice lot and we got on well with them, but Shiona was a welcome breath of fresh and colourful air from the regular academic tutors. For starters she didn't have a beard and she didn't favour corduroy. And she loved cinema, culture and she enjoyed getting other people not to see it as a dry, academic study to write an essay on but as something alive, interactive and above all, fun. We hit it off quite quickly and for years afterwards some friends and I would often go along to the film courses at the Filmhouse which Shiona organised, with public screenings followed by lectures and Q&As. We all went as much for the enjoyment of watching and discussing good movies as for the social aspect as we'd all end up in the comfortable environs of the Filmhouse cafe-bar afterwards, Shiona among us.
When I left college and was scraping a basic income as a part-time bookseller Shiona would always stick me down as a student for the film courses (which left more money for the drinking afterwards of course). I hadn't seen her in weeks, not since last bumping into her as she was coming up from the Filmhouse and I was heading down. I was thinking about her as I enjoyed a drink there the other weekend when waiting for Buster Keaton to begin. She was such a wonderfully friendly, colourful, vibrant person and I can't believe that even cancer could take her from us and way before her time. It's just sinking in that I'm not going to bump into her at the Filmhouse bar or a Film Festival event again.
The Film Fest will be a little quieter than usual without her presence this year and I think I will be only one of many people who are going to miss her. Film critic Mark Cousins has written an obituary for her on the Filmhouse site. God, that sentence makes me feel worse - colourful Shiona and the word obituary just don't go together. On Saturday 1st July the Filmhouse will hold a special memorial for Shiona, screening Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce with an introduction by Mark Cousins and profits going to St Columba's Hospice. That little magical moment when the lights go down and the projector's whir is hear in the sudden silence won't be quite the same in the Filmhouse again; I think I'll find myself looking for her out of the corner of my eye in the flickering light. I saw some movies and thought about media in different ways than I may have otherwise if it hadn't been for Shiona and I'm sure I helped finish off more bottles of wine than I would have otherwise because of her too. She made a difference and she was loved.
Shiona and I glamming it up at my graduation ball in the 90s.
Tonight I went to do something I do often, check the Edinburgh Filmhouse website. A pretty normal thing for any movie lover in this city to be doing, as the Filmhouse is a mecca to us. Except tonight that quick visit to check film times has left me utterly shocked and terribly saddened. On the front page is the news that the incredibly vibrant Shiona Wood, education officer at the Filmhouse for many years, had passed away a few days earlier from cancer, aged only 57. I'm gobsmacked.
Shiona was a movie lover, a person who encouraged others to enjoy and partake in the cinematic arts, brilliant fun to be around in the Filmhouse bar and a friend since my college days. When I was at Queen Margaret studying Shiona became a regular, agreeing to take some of the film classes, especially those dealing with gender topics. Our lecturers were actually a nice lot and we got on well with them, but Shiona was a welcome breath of fresh and colourful air from the regular academic tutors. For starters she didn't have a beard and she didn't favour corduroy. And she loved cinema, culture and she enjoyed getting other people not to see it as a dry, academic study to write an essay on but as something alive, interactive and above all, fun. We hit it off quite quickly and for years afterwards some friends and I would often go along to the film courses at the Filmhouse which Shiona organised, with public screenings followed by lectures and Q&As. We all went as much for the enjoyment of watching and discussing good movies as for the social aspect as we'd all end up in the comfortable environs of the Filmhouse cafe-bar afterwards, Shiona among us.
When I left college and was scraping a basic income as a part-time bookseller Shiona would always stick me down as a student for the film courses (which left more money for the drinking afterwards of course). I hadn't seen her in weeks, not since last bumping into her as she was coming up from the Filmhouse and I was heading down. I was thinking about her as I enjoyed a drink there the other weekend when waiting for Buster Keaton to begin. She was such a wonderfully friendly, colourful, vibrant person and I can't believe that even cancer could take her from us and way before her time. It's just sinking in that I'm not going to bump into her at the Filmhouse bar or a Film Festival event again.
The Film Fest will be a little quieter than usual without her presence this year and I think I will be only one of many people who are going to miss her. Film critic Mark Cousins has written an obituary for her on the Filmhouse site. God, that sentence makes me feel worse - colourful Shiona and the word obituary just don't go together. On Saturday 1st July the Filmhouse will hold a special memorial for Shiona, screening Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce with an introduction by Mark Cousins and profits going to St Columba's Hospice. That little magical moment when the lights go down and the projector's whir is hear in the sudden silence won't be quite the same in the Filmhouse again; I think I'll find myself looking for her out of the corner of my eye in the flickering light. I saw some movies and thought about media in different ways than I may have otherwise if it hadn't been for Shiona and I'm sure I helped finish off more bottles of wine than I would have otherwise because of her too. She made a difference and she was loved.
Shiona and I glamming it up at my graduation ball in the 90s.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Cutie pics
Dizzy decides tip-toeing through the tulips isn't as enjoyable as simply cat-napping under them.
Her cousin Pandora finds herself a nice warm sunbeam to repose on. And yes, that white furry bib on her front is as soft to the touch as it looks.
Bruce finds himself something other than other dog's bums to sniff on the beach. For those intersted in aquatic lifeforms I can confidently tell you that this is the kind of fish naturalists normally refer to as a dead fish.
Dizzy decides tip-toeing through the tulips isn't as enjoyable as simply cat-napping under them.
Her cousin Pandora finds herself a nice warm sunbeam to repose on. And yes, that white furry bib on her front is as soft to the touch as it looks.
Bruce finds himself something other than other dog's bums to sniff on the beach. For those intersted in aquatic lifeforms I can confidently tell you that this is the kind of fish naturalists normally refer to as a dead fish.
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