knit one street purl one city

edinburgh trams + tesco linwood

This is a tale of two present-day powers in so-called Scotland – one political and one commercial.

Edinburgh’s other Disgrace – The Trams
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Enter stage left Council leader Jenny Dawe and “The Right Honourable” George Grubb, “Lord Lieutenant” and “Lord Provost” of Edinburgh. They may not have much to do with the day-to-day management of the project but as leaders they are ultimately responsible. If you are not a resident of Edinburgh, of course you’ll never have heard of them. Let’s just say… they’re not exactly full of intelligent ideas and nous, right up there arguing coherently with Norman Foster. Just worthies doing their best, but with zero vision or engagement, by all the evidence.

One example of this lazy thinking is the still to be installed gantrys that will carry the power lines for the new trams. These are big, tall, ugly objects and there’s going to be lots of them – and guess what, they will thoroughly pollute the view to the royal mile from Princes street. Thoughtless stewardship and care, when alternatives to a glaringly obvious and crucial issue should have been sought and sorted right from the start – Bordeaux, for instance, has the power in the ground. If any city should reduce its street furniture quota, it’s Edinburgh. The technical difficulties of this power system are minor when you relate it to the unreal amount of money being spent overall – they’re not employing NASA to launch the Scott Monument on a five-year mission to Venus after all – it’s just some trams.

You’ll know who your city’s sockpuppets are too. For Edinburgh, this ill-conceived and wholly unnecessary Tram project has been an utter logistical disaster (um… familiar… how quickly they’ve all forgotten the parliament messups) and will result in the city remaining in yet more serious debt for decades. The contractors Bilfinger Berger are not to blame – they’re the only professionals here – and must be appalled at the mess this over-politicised and underperforming world heritage site has got them into.

Previous post on Leith Waterfront and the Tram terminus at Newhaven here Also an article and googlemap on the Gogar hinterland I did last year.

TescoTown Linwood*
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In the west the rules are broken by Wendy Alexander; mouthy MSP to the beyond-rundown Paisley North constituency. I have to grudgingly say that she is one of the very few political individuals in Scotland (Margo Macdonald is the other) who seem to have a care… and so from trams to tesco.

Tesco Linwood, in Paisley North, is a proposed tescotown, close to Paisley (a once-proud victorian powerhouse south-west of Glasgow). Let’s set the parameters right from the start – there is a large Morrisons at Johnstone and a large Asda at Phoenix park both less than 5 mins away from Linwood – Tesco desperately want a piece of their competitors, not being content with their own supersized Tesco Extra at Port Glasgow, 15 minutes away, or their Paisley Love St fiasco 2 mins away, or their midsize at Kilbirnie 15 mins away (which has completely devastated the local retail community in that small town).

So, what’s a poor megaopoly to do…

Stage One: set up an untransparent Tesco front company – in this case, Balmore Properties – who act as mafia-style landlord to the dwindling retail businesses in the nasty mall you want to flatten and re-develop. Balmore act sluggardly and earn the ire of the business community as well as concerned locals.

Bingo – you have your fall guy.

Stage Two: Oh that’s terrible, we’ll utterly renew the crumbling graffiti-and-crime-infested-nastiness that is Linwood’s centre (Balmore – boo!) and make it all nice and cuddly again. Here’s a really naff website that has been designed to make us seem part of the solution… www.lovelinwood.com – yay, see those hillman imps, makes yer proud dun’t'it.

Stage Three: the public beg you to save them from, er, Balmore. You accept that challenge. Another crap store, a sprinkling of architecturally substandard “affordable flats” and a couple of football pitches should shut them up. Much more importantly – a black eye for asda and morrisons.

HEROES! GO TESCO!! — GO TESCO!!

And now for the bill (stupidity and corruption always costs)

1 Removal of local business economy (re-instatement of some like hairdressers – as Tesco tenants, naturally – trebles all round)
2 Wage-slave economy – x number of part-time shelfstacker jobs at minimum wage – woo hoo.
3 Planning acceptance must-haves – schools, houses, all to LCD standards and with zero morals – this is not a benevolent, semi-intelligent Bournville Village exercise.
4 Another peg down the national self-respect indicator board.
5 Several pegs down the distinctive local flavour indicator board.
6 More proof that Scotland PLC is run by aesthetics-and-morals-free politicos with big mouths and small brains.
7 Oh and the profits? They fly south.

Is this what you want? Because that’s what you’ll get.

*Source: Marcus Leroux : retail correspondent : The Times : 31 August 2010

Photo below taken from a bus on west maitland street Edinburgh – Copymade printshop. I think John H might approve of the paraphrase, subject to changing the colour of the additions and the font… not quite right but we get the emotion

Noise and smoky breath

The title above is the title of a poetry anthology on Glasgow published by the third eye centre in the late 80s. Naturally Edwin Morgan featured, and this well mindmapped book has become close to me again in the past month. So it is fitting that the deid poet in word and deed is good-worded and reminisced fondly along with UCS frontman and vocalist (he was a rock star to many) Jimmy Reid this week, well above and beyond the foolishly lame-minded diversionary tactics of the scottish government regarding the very-likely-innocent “bomber” chemo’d up to the gills in the very-likely-not-so-innocent green-flag Maghreb republic.

What be may – it doesn’t do to take things too seriously and Edwin Morgan was an individual I have always looked up to at the back of my mind both in words and in graphics; allowing the death of working class ecosse to soften into the imagination. As a poet of the urban experience in this northern land he always did the right thing by shifting the perspective playfully but truthfully to other worlds and languages.

60s concrete poetry was a sort of banksy-meets-the-ancestors kind of movement and one I’m very fond of. Find out more here.

Hello. I’m Mr Cutler. Nice to meet you Mr Morgan. Shall we sing? You go first as you’re new to all this. I’ll show you around later. You can take your glasses off now.

image from the edwin morgan archive at the scottish poetry library

the prime of miss jean brodie

I’m not, as usual for these occasions, going to repeat the life and times of a well-known creative personality – in this case Scotland’s most influential 20c writer (yes, no pre-qualification) Muriel Spark. The DVD of TPMJB, directed by Ronald Neame, is now finally available in the UK (august 2010) via your local retailer of films – not that Maggie Smith needs the royalties now I imagine! What follows is more alliteration-in-homage, than analysis.

Edinburgh is engine to the film. It is the social serenity of the middle classes that begets Marcia Blaine’s USP. Jean is poppy amongst the educational taliban – necessary but wrong. She is the teacher who creates the female financial director of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Waverley Steps, who essentially tells her boss his time and thinking is over.

This dichotomy of upright bruntsfield and morningside social values remixed with fascist dictatorship is convincing. We believe Jean’s love of both Giotto and Mussolini, as we are part-romanised ourselves. And that is the bomb that Spark throws the reader/viewer, leading to Sandy’s revelation to Jean of Mary MacGregor’s false Cider with Rosie moment.

As with many films of this period, Elstree / Shepperton form the backdrops to much of the drama. But Edinburgh is always properly rendered in spirit – Spark/Smith’s reality and Neame’s visual aplomb bring the 1930s – an era that seems so long ago now, but actually mirrors our own parents’ experiences – in very close.

And that is what is unsettling, and timeless – the issues remain the same, only the geopolitics (and guardian editors) shift.

Borealis by Héctor Serrano Studio

No borealis in Scotland this weeknight but this is nice from last year.

…and Burns’ bit on the lights, from Tam O’Shanter…

Or like the snow falls in the river;
A moment white – then melts for ever

Or like the Borealis race
That flit before you can point their place

And a clip from Daisysaint’s superb YT channel – Tam Lin with Stephanie Beacham and Ian McShane (lovejoy).

The opening sequence here is lovely if you like fresh-minted brutalism seen from quiet motorway via Jensen, Aston and Corniche… (not too sure what the gold droptop is – Wolseley? )

ben okri : a way of being free

//Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the future consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings//

//Unhappy lands prefer utopian stories.
Happy lands prefer unhappy stories//

//The magician and the politician also have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing//

quotes from Ben Okri’s A Way of Being Free : the joys of storytelling III

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So I have only now found out that Uri Geller bought Lamb island in the Firth of Forth. His enthusiasm for the islands’ alleged central part in the Eqyptian Queen Scota / Arthurian legends, and his belief there’s egyptian treasure under Lamb’s volcanic rock is, as usual with illusionists, infectiously wonderous; yet clownishly false when revealed in all its glittering sham-glam.

And in this instance of course, spoon-bendingly daft too – but it’s a revealing look into what makes stories (myths?) so endearing to those looking for “answers”. What would those answers contain? Like the Queen was actually descended from the same familial line as Mohamed al-Fayed maybe? Actually Uri… that one’s been done already…

For everyone else I can highly recommend Inchcolm Island and the Bass rock if you’re looking for an island trip on the Forth – both islands are remarkable. For the scurvy knave though – put awa’ that bucket an’ spade, laddie, ye dinna ken the difference between allegory an’ simon schama…

a change is coming

With the imminent arrival of the PsyGeoEdinburgh guidebook (with app following shortly after), several facets of fromztoa will change to reflect the direction that’s been planned for a while.

Firstly the adoption of a magazine rather than blog format, with limited edition quarterly (or half-yearly) printed issues too.

Secondly there will be more of an emphasis on urban topography and art interventions; and much more variety in terms of location now Edinburgh’s fending for itself!

Thanks for all those who’ve looked in so far. This is just a beginning amongst the endings.

robert burns in edinburgh

The Wonder of all the Gay World by James Barke is a semi-fictional account of Robert Burns’ visits to Edinburgh during the period 1786-1788. The book is part three of a quintet of biographical novels of Burns by Barke, and are being re-issued by Black and White publishing – highly recommended if you’re interested in Burns.

WGW is actually one of the most vibrant books written on Edinburgh’s enlightenment period. It puts Burns beside well-known Edinburgh people like his canny publisher Creech, his darwinian-foxed friend Lord Monboddo – and also contextualises the political issues of his time rather brilliantly. Other people like Jean Armour, Clarinda, Holy Wullie et al are woven in too of course – but its Barke’s descriptions of the dirty, corrupt, poverty-stricken, chaotic Edinburgh scene that is most memorable, not least because Burns’ presence and walking commentary adds such a large extra dimension.

Not being a Burns fan, this book would normally have been vacant on my radar – but having finally decided to wade through it with the promise of a different perspective on Edinburgh, it quickly became evident that Barke had developed a fully rounded critique, including all the blemishes Burns is often accused of by certain (normally polar-opposites) opinionators. What is totally clear is that Burns movingly realised he was a failure, in his own lifetime, as a farmer, father and poet, dying in pain and poverty. Today most of us only really see the steaming haggis through rose-tinted whisky tumblers, thinking nothing of the hardship he endured – this book sets that right. In fact I think there’s a case for saying this book should be read first by all, before any of the poetry.

I have a silly idea of what went wrong – not with the poetry obviously, even from my appallingly limited understanding of it, and that’s with living with the poetry since I could read – but with the lack of opportunity to blossom, possibly into writing plays for example. As Andrew O’Hagan has pointed out here, Burns lived just up the road from James Boswell – that Boswell of Johnson fame. What stopped Boswell from inviting Burns down to London? Was it really just simple snobbery as O’Hagan suggests or was it a problem with Burns’ anti-georgian views?

Oh and this small thought… think on what Burns might have said to William Blake… or what Blake would have done with Burns’ diamond-tipped pen…

nice banksy pastiche from zigzag site

the illusionist

Opening the Edinburgh FilmFest is Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist, set in Scotland with some scenes in Edinburgh. As with his previous Belleville Rendezvous, it looks to be dialogue-free. Interestingly based on an unfilmed script by Jacques Tati. Very keen on seeing how he’s rendered the city (based on his time staying in Edinburgh whilst making it).

Link to Pathe homepage on the film

Thomas De Quincey gravestone

If you’ve reached this post through searching for the above, I’ll get straight to the point on how to find Thomas De Quincey’s soot-stained grave at St Cuthberts church, Lothian road, Edinburgh. Postcode for googlemaps : EH1 2EP

Firstly go to the church’s front door (just in case you’ve come into the graveyard by Princes street gardens or Kings stables road). Then head west towards the Lothian road entrance – the one with the watchtower to the left. At the first steps on your left from the main path, go up onto the southern graveyard platform and walk south across the grass/path. In a few steps you’ll see the gravestone on your left.

This part of the graveyard was expensive to be buried in, as it receives the most sun throughout the year. Safety at St Cuthberts is absolutely fine during the day, the opening of the new pathway from Princes street gardens to Lothian road via the main path means constant footfall 10–4pm. The gates are locked at night.

De Quincey, both as a central figure in western psychogeography and as a much-feted Edinburgh resident in his final years, is not so much featured as alluded to in several places throughout PsyGeo Edinburgh. If you’d like to be informed regarding the imminent arrival of the guide, you can pre-order here. One image of St Cuthberts that I’ve taken for the guide is on my flickr site.

Gravestone image below photographed Friday 7 May 2010

new labour – born in edinburgh

Thirteen years ago on 2 May 1997, Tony Blair ended the Thatcher years by defeating John Major. Thatcher’s period in office brought huge transition to the UK, both for country and individual; a transition that we still haven’t fully absorbed.

But it was clear to everyone thirteen years ago that this wasn’t going to be a re-run of James Callaghan’s ficticious “crisis what crisis” denouement. No – we all smelt the good times, Did We Not.

Then Diana died on 31 august 1997. But it was OK – we found that grief unified our sense of britishness; like any family, there were disagreements, yes; the Queen’s apparent reluctance to grieve confused many, for instance.

The many turned to money soon after – easy credit and a necessary inflation in the value of property to feed it… but yeah, we know how that one worked out.

So where did this golden age for the middle classes begin
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Firstly, the US
The Americans, through Blair’s more experienced doppleganger, Bill Clinton, became a dominant influence after the groundwork done by Thatcher and Reagan. The Simpsons had just started to gain an audience in 1997, and the corporate-owned internet was about to happen (these pernicious, high-consumerist, untouchable ad-vehicles still thrive today; it’s not all about physicalities like cola and starbucks and the baseball cap – that perennial sign of US cultural hegemony).

Secondly, society
Blair’s attempt to engender a fairer, more liberal society sadly resulted in a compaction rather than an enema of Thatcher’s policies – if you thought the inner city was grim in the 1970s, the 2000′s version… but yeah, we know how that one worked out too. The main problem was that the working classes (yes – working classes – this never was a flat society), demoralised by the decimation of the UK’s manufacturing base, took the liberal-left’s handout and never got up again. The Guardian newspaper then flourished as an enormous wave of social problem-solvers were recruited to look after the sub-working. But don’t shoot the messenger – I’m a guardian-reading chablis-sipper myself…

Lastly, the plot unravelled when most people – at last – at least subliminally – realised the purpose of fighting pointless, unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oil.
Insert your favourite Charlie Brooker-ism here.

Well just let me correct something there. Like the guardian, america is a hugely diverse collection of individuals and I do enjoy it. The “america” talked about here is of course our old 20c friends – corporations; unelected power brokers; their kissing cousins running the mainstream media channels.

So how come new labour and Edinburgh
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Fettes College, where Tony Blair was educated.
Edinburgh University, where Gordon Brown was educated.
Loretto School, Alistair Darling…

…and so on. The links with other heavyweights in the edinburgh firmament are manifold and eclectic.

So how come Edinburgh does London and ends up in bed with the US
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The answer is that the dynastic chain needs to remain intact, and flourishing. Cameron, Cameron, Cameron… isn’t that a Scottish name?

This reality is connected to Stephen Hawking, who said this week in connection with light-speed colonialism –

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans”

Despite the fact Hawking has contradicted himself, there is a clue here. We – as in the UK, Germany, France, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Russia, et al - would fail the DNA test if implicated in what our relatives have done since 1776.

An Old Day Has Set, Has It Not – the end of an era
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So… as mentioned in a previous post… who are you going to choose tomorrow – Diana, or Jessica?

image : Scots Dragoon Guards Museum entrance, Edinburgh Castle