An Alternative Writing Retreat
Edinburgh is perhaps the most vertical of any major UK city. It has ups. It has downs. And sometimes the transitions between the two can be surprising and difficult to parse. As we navigate from place to place we might find ourselves tackling elegant staircases, perilously steep streets, or unexpected bridges…
Picking up a copy of this single-sheet newsletter from a plastic folder sellotaped to a lamppost, in this tense atmosphere, felt like a risk. It was touch. It was connection, of a sort. But it was a risk we took, and it paid off well. As hyperlocal micropublications produced during a global pandemic go, The Usher is in a class of its own…
Turn off Seafield Road onto Marine Esplanade, past the sewage plant’s entrance, and you quickly come to the edge of the Firth of Forth. A wide expanse of water with the glittering lights of Kirkcaldy on the other side. There’s a grass walkway here, sandwiched between the treatment works’ chain fence and the sea wall, that leads down to the edge of what then becomes Portobello beach…
Set out on your government-approved once-daily walk. Go in the evening; fewer people present, less necessity for the awkward dance whereby you slip past one another on a narrow sidewalk, one of you spilling out into the road to keep that space, maintain that gap…
Most will be quick to dismiss Edinburgh’s Ocean Terminal as a mediocre shopping centre… but within its walls there are still phenomena worth observing. This guided walk examines some of the most prominent of them…
A Google search for “Voldemort’s grave” will return more than 100,000 results, most of them pointing to Greyfriars Kirkyard – a modest graveyard in the middle of Edinburgh, best known as the final resting place of Greyfriars Bobby…