good things

• making it home before the heavens opened and turned our street into a river today
• the smell just before the storm - like an Auckland summer's day
• schoc chocolate - dark chocolate with cardamom
• strawberries, raspberries, warmed by the sun
• my ingenious new bedside table - a wooden box with a lid that slides. You can open it without moving your books.

pictures and voices

This is a simple idea, but somehow beautiful. Lost, anonymous photos, given life and space to capture new imaginations. One of those nice moments you sometimes find on the web, amongst all the clutter and MySpace badness.

Speaking of beautiful, saw Bic Runga this weekend. She looked like a little doll, with a lolly-pink dress, stylish bob and silver sandals. Last time we saw her it was an acoustic set at the Reid Hall. This time there was a band, plus Annika Moa and Anna Coddington on backing vocals. She did a fantastic version of the Jacques Brel song, Ne Me Quitte Pas, but for me Bursting Through, just Bic's voice and guitar, pure and haunting, was the highlight.

All the festival programmes are out now, so lots of poring over listings to do, important choices to make...

Not-quite midnight sun

But 10pm and still bright enough in Edinburgh. The nights are short, the birds getting louder and earlier every day (3.30 this morning). It's a nice time of year. The weekends, in sharp contrast to last year, have been properly hot and sunny. Not wearing a jumper socks and shoes sunny, but shorts, singlet, sandals sunny. Lying on the back lawn with the newspaper and a cool drink sunny. Heck, even going to the beach sunny.

So, like everyone else in Edinburgh, we went to the beach last Sunday...froze our ankles paddling in the north sea, inhaled a lot of burnt sausage fumes, fought for a car park. Despite all that, and all the people (on what is supposed to be one of the quietest nearby beaches), it was wonderful to lie on the beach in the sun!

We also lunched with the Reeves (Snr) this weekend, and found a not-too-rowdy pub in which to watch the very boring second half of the England match. Always nice to see kiwis in town.

Land of the midnight sun

This in Tromso, in northern Norway, at around midnight. As dark as it gets. Makes going to bed, never mind sleep, challenging. I know, you're thinking "blackout curtains, no problem". Well, you'd think so, wouldn't you, in a place that doesn't get dark.

Apart from the lack of sleep, it was a fantastic place to have the opportunity to visit. I went on a work trip - our film was screening at a media festival up there, and I had to give an introduction. And collect our prize - we topped the TV & video category, much to my surprise, beating broadcasters to win a nice vase and 20,000 euro!

A bit of a frontier town - stuffed polar bears on the street, half-finished pavements, some grim-looking drinking dens. At the reception on the first evening, reindeer heart, reindeer fillet, seal and whale were served! But it's a university town too, so there are nice cafes.

Spectacular scenery abounds - snow covered alps close to midsummer, and serene, isolated fjords. The odd patch of shoreline settlement that makes you wonder what it would be like to live there, so far north and so far away. Maybe it would be worth it for the light - like this in summer, and the Northern Lights in winter.

getting under the skin

Those who have known me a while will be surprised at my interest in an exhibition that is at times a bit gruesome. Anatomy Acts, at the City Art Gallery, explores "the social, cultural and scientific significance of anatomy in Scotland over the past 500 years". Contemporary commissions sit alongside ancient texts, exquisite medical and anatomical illustrations, and plenty of objects to trigger that funny feeling in my legs.

You see, I'm a fully paid-up member of the squeamish society. My imagination runs away with me on matters medical. I even managed to faint in first aid class (giving fellow-students a practical case-study on which to test their new found knowledge of the recovery position). The trigger was nothing more than a photo - quite a famous one - of a long-jumper mid-flight, his fractured shinbone protruding obviously. Ouch!

So what was a wimp like me doing at this medical-themed exhibition, examining with interest the tanned skin of a soldier - gory war souvenir; a collection of delicate, dangerous surgical instruments in a velvet-lined case; elegant drawings of men and women holding open their own chests or stomachs, to reveal the anatomy within? Not fainting, this time. I have recently rediscovered an enthusiasm for science, and especially a fascination for the spaces where art, history and science intersect. Like the best art, anatomy in this exhibition invokes feelings of shock, awe, wonder. It reveals dark secrets, tells us something of ourselves and our past (in Edinburgh, home to Burke and Hare, a somewhat murky one!).

The highlight for me, though, was the exhibition of commissioned poems by the fabulous Kathleen Jamie (her Findings was my favourite book of 2005) alongside the objects that had inspired them. I can't find any of them online, though. You'll just have to go see the exhibition for yourself...

If you're too far away, there are some Renaissance drawings on this site.

culture old and new in ultramodern Seoul

I'm just back from six days in Seoul - a city I liked enormously. It's full of juxtapositions and incongruities that make it fascinating. Here are just 2. The first is in downtown Seoul, but its name escapes me. Ancient monument of some sort, modern skyscraper.

The second is a Buddhist temple that was just across the road from the COEX exhibition centre where our conference was, and one of the few old things in an otherwise relentlessly modern (and consequently not so appealing, although there was some spectacular architecture on display) glass and concrete part of town.

Last is the recently reclaimed Chonggyechon, an inner city stream that used to be covered by a road. Quite an improvement. It's a popular haunt of courting couples - a frequent sight throughout the city.

in Seoul, hello

This is just a quirky building opposite the collosal COEX behemoth in Seoul, where I'm attending a conference about science communication. I arrived yesterday, but haven' t had a chance to see much yet, outside of the conference venue and enormous shopping mall/foodcourt that lies beneath. Everything in this part of town very modern, except the buddhist temple across the road in amongst all the skyscrapers.

Garden of Cosmic Speculation

Third year lucky. I've wanted to visit Charles Jencks' Garden of Cosmic Speculation ever since mum told me about it a couple of years ago. It's only open one day per year, which this year happened to be today. The first rainy day in a week, sadly, but I couldn't be put off. In 2004 I was working, and last year, it was Shane and Steph's wedding. In fact, A. telling me that they were away this weekend to celebrate their anniversary was a lucky prompt on Friday to check the dates. So, rain or shine, today was the day to make the trek out to Portrack House.

When we left Edinburgh we could barely see in front of our bumper through the smirr. Heading west, things remained damp but clearer and brighter. I wished I had worn my pink wellies!

The garden was well worth a bit of dampness, though. The intricate details of the DNA garden are thoroughly engaging, from the palindromes in the paving to the wave forms in beautifully wrought gates. Six sculptural pieces combine double helix forms with representations of the senses. Outside these gates, your senses are called into action as scale increases exponentially. You get to clamber over Nonsense, wonder about quarks, smell heady scents that more botanically minded folk could no-doubt identify, reel at the riot of rhodedendron colour, hear how the Crow Wood got its name, and walk up spiral mounds and down again, wondering how come you never bump into anyone travelling in the opposite direction. It's a place of beauty, stillness, activity, wonder, marvel, colour, texture. There are more pics here, but here's one of my favourites, part of the "Scottish Worthies" railway walk:

would you like starch with that?

For the first time in what feels like forever, it's been a normal week of home, work, no travels or filming, just regular Edinburgh life. It's been great! The sun has been shining - hot enough for lunch in Princes St Gardens and a picnic on the Meadows this evening. There are people outside everywhere, every eating and drinking establishment in the city has found some outdoor furniture and a patch of pavement, Auld Reekie feels surprisingly continental. And everyone's happy.

The evenings are long and light too. Soccer (or here, football) started up this week, and unlike last year, I was brave enough to go along. Also on the Meadows, near where we've been playing golf and picnicked this evening, it's an informal affair, with jumper goalposts and teams arranged by t-shirt colours, mixed guys and girls. It's the first time I've played soccer in at least 5 years, and the first time in as long that I've really used a lot of the muscles in my legs, judging by the discomfort now! It was fun, though.

I called A. on my way back from soccer, to see if I should pick anything up:

"I don't know, maybe some dinner."
"I thought you were making dinner."
"I did but it's pretty bad."
"It can't be that bad."

It was, actually. Up there with the broccoli stalks incident. He's not afraid to be experimental in the kitchen...not always a good thing. Found come cannelli beans in the cupboard, and looked up a recipe for them. Cannelli bean puree, that sounds good. Missed part 2 of the recipe, which suggests serving with "the copious juices from sloppy stews". That's kinda different to pasta, which doesn't come with it's own sloppy juices.

So the dish: some slightly over-sauteed garlic and suspect bacon, mixed with aforementioned cannelli beans (pureed with some week-old white wine), served with (adhering firmly to) rigatoni. The adhesion applied to anything else it came in contact with too - the roof of my mouth, throat, ribs, plate, fork...you get the picture. Sticky and starchy. But excellent pizzas yesterday, so all is forgiven.

Free golf, 24 hrs in Sweden

It's taken us three years - can't quite believe that this May we'll have been in Scotland for three years - but we have at last played a round of golf on the world's only free course. The Bruntsfield Links are just a 15-min walk from our flat, with a backdrop of Arthur's Seat and 36 pitch-and-put holes. It's a bit lumpy sometimes, but hey, it's FREE!

When Caragh was here last September we bought clubs and balls from the local op-shop. For a princely sum of £8 we were fully equipped, but the weather conspired against us. Winter has since passed, and spring has definitely sprung now. Daffs and hyacinths are in full bloom around the surprisingly dry course. My technique is poor, but I hope that by the end of summer it will be less so!

*********

A small passport problem took me to Glasgow yesterday. When I flew to Copenhagen last week, an overzealous check-in assistant (at 6am!) threatened to cancel the trip, because my passport only had 6 weeks of validity left. In Brussels, apparently, that would be a problem. I protested that we weren't flying to Brussels, and after much colleague and computer consultation, she discovered that Copenhagen has no such regs. Still, I'm off to Korea in 2 weeks, and will need a valid passport, hence my trip to the passport office for "fast-track" service.

It was nice to be in Glasgow, especially on such a hot sunny day. Much wobbly flesh was on show, plenty of dodgy orange tans, and a general air of celebration. The sun was shining. At the weekend!

My 24 hrs in Sweden was somewhat hectic. We were filming 3 interviews, with a neurologist and a couple of ethicists, as part of our film on the ethics of stem cell research. A 7am flight saw us arriving in Lund (via the Oresund bridge) by 11.30. We found our filming studio, local sound guy, equipment, and left the boys to set up while we scouted our 2nd locations for each interview. The persistent rain made exteriors impossible.

Lunch was quick and tasty Thai (canteen-style), and then I had to find the hospital locations my director had her heart set on, plus secure permission to film there. Fortunately my local contact plays golf with the head of the neurology clinic, and Swedes are more relaxed about filming than in the UK. Several schedule changes and some great interviews later, we wrapped at about 6.30.

Next stop, check in. Rooms in Lund are scarce at this time of year, so we were booked into the Patienthotel (where mothers and their families stay after giving birth). There were a lot of babies born that day, and we found ourselves bumped to some decidedly more spartan cells further out of town, complete with lights that didn't work. Ah well. We were hungry, first and foremost.

After a few "sorry we're fully booked"s, losing our cameraman, finding him again looking somewhat bewildered, all the while dodging the rain, we settled on Bantorget 9 - a gorgeous little house that looked cosy but with seriously good food. Our starter of wild nettle soup with salmon roe, quail egg and crispy bacon confirmed the hunch.

By the time we got back to our rooms, the lights were working. But by then, I just wanted to sleep.

Everywhere you go...

Saturday, 0720 hrs
"ugheghlo"
"What's the weather like in Edinburgh?"
"uh, just let me open my eyes and see...not very bright, yeah, grey."
"Give me a call back in half an hour and let me know if it's still grey."

Saturday 0750 hrs
"Do you think it's going to clear?"
"Dunno, it's patchy"
"I'll get the paper and look towards the castle to see"

Saturday 0800 hrs
"There's some sun, but cloud too. Do you need 100% blue?"
"Yes, definitely, or it won't work. Let's try for tomorrow."

Saturday 1300 hrs
"Is it sunny now? In the Borders it's beautiful."
"Yeah it looks OK."
"Do you think we should try for an end of day shoot instead?"
"Maybe tomorrow."

Saturday 1700 hrs
pouring with rain
"Glad we're not trying to film now."

Sunday 0730 hrs
"ugheghlo"
"Is it sunny?"
"I'll just look...sort of, not 100%..."
"It is here, let's go for it, see you in an hour."

Sunday 0830 hrs
"What happened to the sunshine?"

Spring weather! By the time we were rolling, though, the sun was shining again, and we got some purty shots at the Camera Obscura. Which is lucky - I'd already started having weird dreams about the filming (somehow the cast of Dallas - soon to be a movie - were joining me in my weather angst).

Otherwise Easter was fairly low-key. Lunched at VinCaffe - a tasty reminder of Italy. Watched Junebug - a movie of delightful simplicity, space and honesty. Walked along the Tweed, whooping at the gambolling lambs en route. Tucking in to succulent chops from aforementioned babes. Simple pleasures. Just the thing, after a weekend of more excessive ones in Bellagio.

Bloody good site

I promised an eh10 plug for A's latest venture on the web, stop-nosebleeds.org. He's a man on a mission...to rid the world of bad techniques for stopping nose bleeds.

So, why did he start this site? What's it all about? Here's the reason, from the man himself...

We've travelled all over the world and encountered people with nosebleeds in all sorts of places. Almost all the people we've met with nose bleeds had their own method of stopping them. Mostly, however, these were bad and/or slow methods - like leaning back and letting the blood flow down your throat. When we first show people the Thumbs Up method there is often some resistance - perhaps it's just too simple - but once they've tried it, people swear by it and never look back. This website is dedicated to spreading this simple but important knowledge and thereby making the world a (slightly) better place.

There you go. Plus he gets to use all sorts of dodgy puns like the one in the title of this post, and of course the IT fave, "bleeding-edge" (like leading edge, only more so). Make his day, take a look, change your technique!

Bella Bellagio

Since being back in Edinburgh, I've hardly been here.

I had an overnight in London less than a week after we got back - 1st class train-ride down, a lovely dinner with Fern that night, and a workshop in the hallowed halls of the Royal Society the next day, along with lots of medical men in suits.

A visit from Josh & Helen made the next weekend fly by, and a flying visit to Manchester for a conference followed hard on their heels.

Early last Saturday morning (550am flight!) came the highlight of my work year - our annual meeting at the luxurious Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, on the shore of Lake Como. The location is stunning (especially at this time of year when there's still snow on the Alps, on the days when the lake isn't shrouded in mist), the hotel suitably grand and the food gourmet. Most of us (scientists not known for being well-paid, especially junior ones) felt like impostors on the first day, but had settled in and were reluctant to leave by day 4. It's amazing how quickly you can get used to 3 course lunches, 4-5 course dinners, live music every night in the "salon" by an accomplished Belarusian trio, and of course that amazing lakeside location!

I'm back in Edinburgh for a quiet Easter weekend - catching up on sleep, kicking the cold I've had for the past 10 days (hopefully), eating well. The only intrusion is some weather-dependent filming. Every morning at 7.30 the director calls me from the Borders to see what the weather's like here. Hopefully I'll be able to say "gloriously sunny" tomorrow and we'll go, get our shots and be done by 10am! Fingers crossed...

Auckland special

from the Waiheke ferry, taken by Andrew. Dramatic weather, anyone?

late summer in new zild

Saturday afternoon, 2 pm, Waiheke
Lazy days on the island - Fayth and I test drive the Taylors' new hammock.




Friday morning, 7 am, Mangawhai estuary
The perfect start to the most perfect day of our trip. Warm enough for an early morning swim (if you're crazy and go by the name of Caragh). The rest of us waited till it got really hot. Not a cloud in the sky, all day.


Thursday night, 8pm, Tinakori Bistro, Wellington
Andrew's birthday dinner, cheesy grins all round





Friday afternoon, 3pm, Civic Square, Wellington
The big fern ball in civic square and a big ole Wellington sky.






Saturday morning, 10am, Mangawhai golf course
Check out that swing! A. makes like he was born golfing.






More pics on Flickr.

Two and a bit weeks passed in the blink of an eye. The sun shone, most of the time. We swam a few times. We drank excellent coffee every time. The company was excellent and food delicious. Sights were familiar, friendly, nostalgic. All good.

Listening to: The Return of Fly My Pretties
Reading: An Unexpected Light, by Jason Elliot

being back

It's 6am, I've been wide awake since not much after 5. Doesn't bode well for my participation in a role-play (I know, but it's work-related) this evening. The jet lag is still hanging about - sending me to sleep while eating dinner, waking me early. A positive benefit is I get to see the pre-dawn snow, which is blanketing my world in white as I write. It's beautiful.

I had been expecting spring to have sprung by the time we got home. Sure, there are crocuses, but today they'll be buried by the snow. Before today, Edinburgh's just had that matt, flat grey light that doesn't much change from dawn to dusk, accompanied by cold to chill the bones.

Our flat seems really small after 3 weeks away in NZ-proportioned spaces, but cosy and warm thanks to insulation and central heating (I wish NZ had the plot on this).

Listening to: Fly My Pretties, No. 2 Soundtrack, Loop compilation and assorted other soundz of home.

Wishing I was: on the beach

About to eat: porridge - what else would do for a snowy morning?

Watching: Swimming at the Commonwealth Games. Beginning to see benefits of this jetlag.

in by the skin of my teeth

It's the last day of February, and so far this is the first month since the beginning of EH10 without a post. Ingrid told me today that even Berin was more up-to-date than me. A sorry state of affairs.

We're in New Zealand, Auckland for the moment but off to Wellington tomorrow and Nelson on Saturday. Chasing awaythe last vestiges of summer wherever we go - Auckland is feeling decidedly autumnal, and everyone gladly tells us that this is a new thing.

We've still experienced a lot more sunshine than our pasty scots skin is used to - A. managed to get sunburnt behind the ears while boogie boarding. Not something that could ever happen in Edinburgh! And Friday, a year to the day since I last arrived in NZ, a year since my brother died, was the most perfect day anyone could have wished for - still, clear, cloudless and warm. We spent the day as a family up at Mangawhai, up and kayaking at dawn, watched the sun rise over the Barrier, stunning...I'll post some pics when back on broadband.

Until then...I'm on holiday!

what's been happening

Well, we've all just about survived the most depressing day of the year.

Otherwise, not much. I've been:

Watching:

• too much TV (curse those programmers and their new season schedules). I also blame digital TV for giving me 3 chances every week to catch ER etc.
• A Bittersweet Life - extremely bloody, visceral, satisfying, cinematic Korean mob movie. Was pleased to see it was made by bom productions, whom I had met at the Busan film festival a few years back, and organised a NZ recce for.
• Match Point. Ridiculous. Nothing else to say about it. A liked it (or liked Scarlett in it?)
  

Reading:

• Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere - see my last post

Eating:

• Breadmaker bread. Yeah, I know. Very 1999. But there's never any good French bread left at the deli by the end of the day, and regular bread in the UK is worse than awful chemical gunk, which stays on the shelves for days, so never fresh despite all the preservatives. My uncle gave me an old one of his that he doesn't use at Christmas time, and I haven't looked back. Loaves aren't very loaf-shaped, but taste good.
  
• Making up for my misshapen bread are a series of perfectly loaf-shaped cakes - gingerbread last week, marmalade cake the week before. I'm working my way through Nige's Kitchen Diaries

Listening to:

• Belle & Sebastian - live last week (chaperoning some 13 yr-olds to their first gig) and on my ipod since
• Podcasts - Nature, Jon Snow, Ricky Gervais so far
  
• more, generally, since apple replaced my ailing ipod battery
  

More connectedness

Not people this time (although Tim did give me and the rest of the world a handy update on the old flat, and I did read about Harper Simon, who is (was?) in a band with A's cousin, Chris, in the paper this week).

I've been reading Richard Holloway's meditative and simple, powerful book, Looking in the Distance. Subtitled "the human search for meaning" it's just the thing for this time of year - the beginning of a year, especially when coupled with the time off work that yields rare and precious thinking time, always brings out a bit of "looking in the distance". Feeling a bit melancholy after watching Brokeback Mountain, I was delighted (well, as delighted as one can feel, while maintaining melancholia!) to read that Aristotle thought that all interesting people had a touch of melancholy in their make-up. Looking in the Distance is a book that sends you back to all sorts of wonderful sources - Burns, Larkin, Pound, Michael Ondaatje, John Rawls & John Stuart Mill (a reminder of 1st year philosophy). But Aristotle had come via someone I didn't know, Jan Morris (Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere). 10 hours later, I found her again, describing Trieste as her favourite place in this morning's paper. Being somewhat susceptible to suggestion, I guess I'll just have to buy the book! Either that or go to Trieste.

Old flatties and the connectedness of the universe (in NZ)

I somehow found myself reading Tim Selwyn's blog (it's the holidays - I obviously have too much time on my hands) and was amused to see a pic of another former flatmate, Karen (different flat, different city even) featured in a recent post.

Apart from random ramblings through the blogosphere, I've been passing the holidays:

• trying to edit some decidedly patchy footage into something less patchy, shorter (potential audiences breathe a sigh of relief) and more filmic
• sleeping lots
• reading - Beyond Black, Original Bliss, Ghosting and some poetry for a change
• trying to wangle a trip to Seoul this year (work, but with a personal agenda)
• shopping - just a little bit, but in my defence, Polly Toynbee asks:

Is mass culture so deplorable? Shopping is the number one leisure activity - nothing wrong with that. A cornucopia of affordable pleasures invites the eye at Ikea. (It is mostly men who inveigh against retail therapy, but is sport any more elevating?)