Strangers
When I walk down our very long street on my way home from work, I first pass grocery stores and bus stops which eventually blur into Victorian tenement buildings and small businesses. Walk further along and the other end peters out into vine covered bay windows, rose gardens and a huge wildlife preserve. I find … Continue reading
Travel Tuesday: Amsterdam
When I think of Amsterdam I usually think of its airport. I’ve been in it more than a dozen times and it’s hands down my favourite airport (though Charles de Gaulle’s atrium inspired terminals give it a run for its money artistically). It has a stunning fireplace and grand piano lounge. And a library. And … Continue reading
Travel Tuesday: Santorini
I once spent a few weeks backpacking in the Greek Islands. It was utterly blissful. Or I remember it as blissful anyway. My foggy, wistful brain likes to leave out the bits where we tried to sleep on the deck of an overnight ferry full of partiers and hounded by sub-zero sea breezes. The part … Continue reading
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Have you seen the Lizzie Bennet Diaries? This show is AMAZING (and I don’t use caps lightly). Now if I gave you the 30 second pitch normally ascribed to such projects, you may rightly balk: a modern Pride and Prejudice adaptation told through video blogs and social media. (The website is also quite hideous.) But … Continue reading
Burns and other legends
If I were to describe the delicious, wonderful, humble sausage — all juicy and tender and flavoursome — as a pig’s grissle-bits stuffed in its own intestine, you would probably curl your lip and shudder slightly. Likewise, if you ever give serious thought to deep-fried chicken livers or steak and kidney pie, noses would wrinkle … Continue reading
Darkness & Light
Today, 21 December 2012, in Edinburgh the sun will come up at 8:42am. It will go down at 3:40pm. According to people who know such things, I will have 6 hours, 54 minutes and 33 seconds of day. It is easy to feel panicky this time of year. With shopping and parties and frantic getting-ready-ness. … Continue reading
The Holiday Spirit : Music
In my ongoing quest to encapsulate our varying British and American Christmas experiences, I’m mulling on seasonal songs. There is nothing that says Christmas to me so much as carols and festive tunes. There is a great tradition, both classical and pop, in both our adopted countries, and it always amazes me that nary the … Continue reading
The Holiday Spirit
While Christmas is constantly bemoaned as overly commercial and increasingly homogenous, I still thrill at little peculiarities, personal traditions, and culture clashes when it comes to St. Nick. I’m not the first, of course. May I strongly suggest you listen to David Sedaris muse on Christmas traditions, particularly in the Netherlands. 6 to 8 Black … Continue reading
Mixtape Memories
In a world of mp3s and Spotify, I may be showing my age, but I’m still a sucker for a mix-tape. It’s easy for us Gen X – Gen Y bods to be overly nostalgic. I know this. I am not even the first to wax poetic over the nuance and romance of curated musical … Continue reading
GiftED – paper sculptures on the road
If you troll about the literary world, you may have heard of Edinburgh’s mysterious sculptures, their delicate carvings found anonymously gifted to libraries and museums. (I briefly mused on the escapades at the time) The beauties were found stashed around cultural venues last year, leaving the city and the literatti abuzz with speculation. Who could … Continue reading
Que Sera Sara? 