sunset in Edinburgh

Crossing North Bridge a few days ago after work, the setting spring sun splashed across these statues with a lovely, warm, copper light:

Spring blooms

As the burst of warm, spring weather suddenly fades back into being cold and wet, a little reminder of the nice weather last week and the sudden burst of colour as flowers emerge from the thawed soil seeking the light again:

Drink

So now there are rumblings in England as there have been in Scotland to introduce minimum pricing on alcohol as the nanny state decides to tell adult citizens once more to behave as they wish. I really don't see why the majority of adults should be penalised in this manner; yes regular over-drinking is a big problem in the UK, but let's be bloody honest here, hiking the prices up will just penalise most citizens who enjoy a drink but don't binge, don't get into drunken, violent fights and end up in casualty at the weekend.

While over drinking can be a problem in all levels of society if we're all really honest we know full and fine well the vast bulk of drink related problems, both health and crime related, are caused by scumbag neds (or chavs as they call them in England). So we should instead tailor any such legislation to penalise ned drinks - whopping tax on the odious Buckfast tonic wine (and perhaps firebomb the monastery that makes the bloody stuff), alcopops and Carlsberg super. While that wouldn't completely wipe out alcohol abuse in the UK I suspect it would cut it down enormously. Or we could just cull neds. But since booze is already hugely taxed (and going up above inflation every year) why should I get screwed for the sake of these idiots?

Steam power

Here's what my dad and I went to see arriving then departing from Edinburgh the last couple of weekends, a brand new steam locomotive (built to the old designs, but new build), the Tornado, created by the A1 Steam Trust. Not a static museum piece but a living, breathing, working locomotive, undergoing her shake down runs, here steaming through Edinburgh hauling a huge line of passenger carriages with utmost ease due to the raw power of such a huge locomotive. She drew a fair crowd and made quite a sight, steam whistle blowing, the roar of the engine and the sheer power and elegant beauty...

Watchmen Saturday morning cartoon

Happy Harry reworks the Watchmen in the style of a Saturday morning kid's cartoon, all happy and shiny (brutal, obsessed Rorschach is now 'friends with animals', Ozymandias and Bubastis are Shaggy and Scooby) but with nice nasty touches sneaked in like Doc Manhattan giving a criminal cancer to kill him. Genius.

Bach

One of my favourite pieces of classical music, some of Bach's beautiful cello work performed by YoYo Ma:

ahhh, Paris je t'aime

This time exactly a year ago I would have been sitting at pavement table in a brasserie in the Latin Quarter of beautiful Paris. I think that was the last time I can remember being really happy, blissfully unaware of what was waiting for me just a few weeks down the road. I don't mean I've been sitting around in sackcloth and ashes since we lost mum, I've gone out, I've done things and even laughed, but its all like little distractions and the great, dark centre is always there waiting and not a day goes past that it doesn't hit me like a hammer a dozen times and I don't feel like I'm really me anymore or will be again, just someone who looks like I used to going through the motions. And Paris has become larger in my head, not just because I love the city and its culture (of the two places I would most like to live in the whole world one is Paris, the other is right here in Edinburgh) but because it is that last time when I felt so freely happy and with what happened so soon afterwards Paris has come to mean something more to me emotionally, a precious space where everything was alright. Which probably sounds daft but its what I feel. Oh to be back not only in Paris but in that happy space instead of feeling like I'm going to fall apart endlessly through each, long day.