AN EDINBURGH CHRISTMAS

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DECEMBER 18 2014

“There were... seven days till Christmas and my footsies said to me: let’s go see a Christmas tree. Or twenty.”

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WONDERS OF THE SEASON:

My barely-contained excitement as I watched the creation of the Christmas Market on Princes Street, five weeks before the big event. And not a moment too soon, I thought!

Choirs decked out in red robes, and singing 'Good King Wenceslas' by the National Gallery.

Hot apple toddies.
Hot beverages of any kind, for that matter. 

The first bout of snow: 
it came upon an evening cold,
those glorious stars unfurled.
From angels bending near the earth,
To blanket it with pearls.

The decorations, and oh! those twinkling lights, and ribbons, and all those windows bedecked with tokens of the season.

The wonderful assortments of sweet meats, candies, lollies, cakes, mince pies and puddings on the shelves of the supermarket. All winking at me.

The days getting shorter, with night descending at 3:30 pm, one cannot help but dream of firesides, books, and pints at a warm pub.

The wonderful revelries throughout the city, and not least of all, that now-bustling market on the Princes Street where it is possible to buy a crepe and wander around inspecting wooden spoons all evening while being serenaded by all manner of Christmassy songs. AKA heaven on earth.

All those moments spent with friends, they become even more frequent around this time of year. You may find me of an evening at the library or at the pub, talking with my peers.

DEAN VILLAGE

SPACES BETWEEN

I have always been fascinated by those spaces that exist in a kind of in-between. Back in art school, I made two small studies on the notion, and conducted original research by walking around my hometown to find those in-between spaces: a hidden garden on an island in a golf course; a small bench beside the river behind the University buildings; a walkway linking two streets, passing through the old churchyard. I love that these places exist only because of the negative space created by the buildings around them. They seem to be cut off from our own world - walk into one, and you pass beyond a barrier of time. 

My search is ongoing.

One of the most glorious spaces I have encountered was the tiny town of Dean Village. Walk only five minutes past the shops of Princes Street, and turn down the right road, then you may find the village. It is hidden from plain view, behind a jumble of roofs and bracken.

LINLITHGOW

CHIVALRY'S TOMB

It is December, and a cold wind shrieks through the town, 
unheeding of the walls and windows that once formed
such a noble
Palace of Queens. 

Not a soul but my own
to wander the passageways, 
to walk the rounded stair
till I reached the place where the roof caved in, and the sky
had formed a dismal second ceiling.

All the time in the world, I had
to read the signs of chivalry
carved up-on the portal and all about the fountain.
Pondering my most recent classes which touched on the use of Chivalry
to order and control a society, bringing it under one symbol,
one allegiance.
Where before the clans had paid fealty to none but their own,
they now stood proudly under the Order of the Garter.
The thistle.

It is a wild thing, no?
The thistle, I mean.

But the castle had fallen, the wild enters in again,
in the forms of tiny weeds,
which blow their seeds into the cracks
and crannies
of the paving stones.

Is there any difference now
between the inner courtyard,
and the lake around the outer walls?
The same rain falls in both.

I sat a while, 
talked to an older gentleman - a grandfather,
about the town and its inhabitants.
there were sheep grazing on a hillside
and there were swans.

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