A Domino Effect

1. I love the biting, toe-curling, crimson-cheeks-making cold that’s so necessary for you to appear…
2. I love bunkering down in bed with a cup of tea and a good book, occasionally glancing up to watch your graceful downward plummet…
3. I love the way you demand we wear bobble hats, earmuffs and stripy, colourful, joy-creating mittens…
4. I love the way you make snow angels possible – so simple, so beautiful, so easy to do…
5. I love the community spirit you engender – we desperately need our yearly dose of that ‘lend a shovel or a pair of hands’ mentality…
6. I love the ridiculous amounts of unnecessary news coverage you so effortlessly command…
7. I love the vehicle-free streets you fill with revelling pedestrians…
8. I love the way you encourage us to dust off our walking boots, wellies and cross-country skies.  Your zero-tolerance attitude to heels reminds me to keep it real…
9. I love the way you encourage the architects in all of us – snow sculptures are far more fun than buildings…
10. I love layering my clothes as a mark of respect to the power you have to freeze me where I stand…
11. I love the hot chocolates, oozing cream, marshmallows and calories from every drop that are totally justified after an afternoon spent with you…
12. I love the way you close our workplaces and fill our parks…
13. I love the way mulled wine tastes even more delicious when it’s consumed in your presence – the palette-pleasing way to warm chill-bitten fingers…
14. I love the way you lie heavy on branches, so lazily creating the most astounding Dickensian Christmas card scenes…
15. I love the way you silently endorse snuggling under blankets with festive films and all manner of snacks…
16. I love the perfect silence and the sound insulation you bestow upon us for free…
17. I love the way you so often come in the night, giving us the most exciting early morning surprises…
18. I love the way you make guys want to wear roll neck jumpers in neutral tones…
19. I love your non-elitism – a 99p roasting tin is as good a vehicle for sledging as any…
20. I love the way you encourage stomping…
21. I love the way you render our cars speechless and bury them in drifts – you remind us we don’t actually need them to survive, which is nice…
22. I love the way you know we won’t slow down unless something makes us, and that you then take it upon yourself to actually be that something…
23. I love the way you drape yourself over our most beautiful buildings and instantly bring them to life again – like a light, white, icing sugar frosting…
24. I love the way you bring us joy – everyone seems to smile, giggle and dance more when you’re around, and I appreciate that…
25. I love the impromptu falls in the street you so cheekily cause – these do wonders for reminding me not to take myself too seriously…
26. I love the way you bring us together, make us equal and encourage us to smile and engage with each other.  You are, without doubt, my favourite form of free entertainment.  Please don’t go away too soon…

Image above from Flickr – Jason Prini.

To everyone who helped me celebrate my blog’s first birthday by submitting lovely birthday-themed comments, thank you!  I want to pick you all as winners but I’m afraid there’s not enough free stuff to go round – isn’t that always the way?

So without further ado, the winner is…

Lovely Jane from Cobblestonesea!

Congratulations Jane!  Drop me a line at ralreid@gmail.com with your address and I’ll get some lovely freebies on their way to you very soon!

With that little globule of excitement out of the way, I can move on to boring you all with tales of a wet Edinburgh Autumn.  As is the usual these days, the infrequency of my posting is an issue.  Rather than spread my thoughts out into manageable bites, I invariably find myself vomiting all of my newsworthy tales into the one post, guaranteed to bring even my most patient, kind-hearted readers out in a rash.  For this I can only offer my apologies (again) and promise you that I’ll try my utmost to do better next week.  In the meantime, here’s some useless information about the last seven days…

…Visiting

So last weekend I went to London.  The picture above is of a rainy Portobello market on Saturday morning, chalked to the brim with battered brown satchels, Victorian teapots and enormous vats of delicious-smelling paella.  As you can imagine, the country bumpkin in me found all of this painfully exciting, and I surprised myself considerably by being not even an inch of a bit bothered by the amoeba-like crowds that swamped the stalls and swarmed in and out of the shops in a hapless bid to dodge the showers.  Despite my insatiable satchel obsession, I managed to refrain from buying one, and instead shored up my desire for vintage tan leather by gorging on some market stall falafel instead.  A righteous substitute, I thought.

London excites me.  It carries a mysterious but completely alluring aura that I’ve yet to encounter in another UK city.  It makes Edinburgh look like the Outer Hebrides it’s so vibrant.  Places to go, things to see, bandwagons to jump on (and the people watching is second to none).  Whenever I go I find it almost impossible not to feel both completely ecstatic and utterly baffled at the same time.  I’d love to experience the city in more depth, and after two relatively pain-free train journeys, I’ve come to believe, however foolishly, that this isn’t quite the impossibility I’ve previously imagined.  So with that in mind I’ve firmly scrawled (in ink) the words ‘explore London’ upon my long-term to-do list.  I’ll let you know what comes of it.

…Watching

In other news, I’ve seen a few good films recently.  Last Thursday I went to the always-delightful Dominion to watch Red (Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Bruce Willis), which was absurdly entertaining and laugh-a-second stuff, despite considerable amounts of eye-popping gore.  Then last night I saw The Kids are All Right, which I really enjoyed, despite some initial scepticism.  I also watched The Proposal last week, which really made me laugh despite its much-deserved place on the wholly predictable rom-com trash scale (which I’m by no means averse to now and then).

…Spiritually cleansing

Sadly not cosmic ordering.  Over the past year or so, a couple of my long-term friendships seem to have been causing me more upset and anxiety than happiness and fulfilment.  There aren’t really any concrete reasons as to why, and I don’t even think that there’s any blame or fault to apportion.  I simply haven’t felt positive about things for a long time, and instead have been harbouring considerable amounts of self-reproach and bitterness – rarely a good course of action that one.  So instead of battle on and let things consume me, I decided a few weeks ago to lie low for a while, to make less contact and fewer arrangements with those involved and to generally give myself a bloody break.  It’s not a very easy thing to do, and I have worried a couple of times that I’m doing more harm than good by distancing myself from my problems rather than confronting them head-on in all their ugliness.  At the same time, however, my mind already feels like less of a glass paperweight than it has done for a while.  The break has also freed up time for me to hang out with people who do good things for my soul, which is never something to complain about.

…Meeting

Finally, and speaking of people who do good things for my soul, I met one of my favourite bloggers!  Holly was in town last Wednesday, so we met for a coffee and spent the whole time chatting like old friends.  This was a novel experience for me, given that I’ve never met anyone I know online in person before (and I have to admit to having been a little bit nervous beforehand), but it really was great to transpose our friendship from keyboard to coffee shop after all these months.  I would definitely encourage anyone with blogger friends in the vicinity to take the leap of faith and meet in person.  Who knows what might come of it?

What have you been doing this week?

Well that was a rather rude, ugly, unexpected silence, wasn’t it?  I can only apologise and promise to try and do better in the future.  My blogging routine is all to pot at the moment what with studying and flatmate shuffling and excessive faffing about on my part taking place.  So while I used to find the time to write a post almost every day I’m now struggling to say hello to you lovely people even twice a week! A sad state of affairs for one of my favourite pastimes, no?

But while I might not be writing much, I have been very busy doing all sorts of other things.  I’ve finally signed up and been trained for volunteering (this is a major ‘life list’ box ticked by the way), and have my first session as a student advisor tomorrow morning.  I’m really excited about this but also pretty nervous – all sorts of nasty doubt-fringed questions have been popping into my head ever since I agreed to take it on, most of which are very definitely rocking the whole ‘who am I to give other people advice on anything?’ vibe.  But as the old adage goes, you never know until you try, do you?  Better to feel the fear and do it anyway rather than cower in the corner and regret it later.

Alongside volunteering, I’ve been on a bit of a mending spree, finally getting round to fixing a few things that have been languishing, unloved and broken in my flat, making me feel all guilty and ashamed every time I look at them.  Top of the list was my bike, which I  had roadtested by someone who actually knows what he’s doing (as opposed to me bumbling around with my pink screwdriver pretending I’m all clued up about gears).  It did cost a little bit but it was completely worth it as I’ve barely been out of the saddle since.  Cycling has suddenly become a beautiful pleasure again, as opposed to the bain of my entire existence, which is all to the greater good.  And at this time of year, when the world looks so pretty and autumnal, whizzing around on my refurbished wheels has really helped to keep my spirits high.  It also means I get to lectures on time, which is probably a sensible idea.

On Friday I pulled off my first ever three course meal, which I made for my boyfriend’s birthday.  We tucked into a starter of mussels served in a white wine, garlic and shallot sauce with homemade bread on the side; a main course of Moroccan lamb tagine with rice and a dessert of sticky toffee pudding (with the sweetest and probably most calorific toffee sauce I’ve ever tasted) and vanilla ice cream.  While I did cheat a little and use the slow cooker for the tagine, I did everything else myself, including “de-bearding” the mussels (gross).  I was stupidly pleased with the outcome and proceeded to celebrate by drinking just a little too much red wine.  Needless to say I spent most of Saturday repenting.  Oh the woe!

And so to this week.  Reading week, which is really just another name for HOLIDAY!  It’s not looking much like a holiday for me, however, as I’ve made a to-do list that actually fills two sides of A4 paper.  Included are lots of boring but necessary chores and a fair amount of homework, but there are a couple of altogether more exciting projects in there as well.  One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is trying to establish some kind of sideline income to support me while I study for the rest of the year.  While I have savings from my last job to keep me comfortable I’m really not a big fan of the idea of doing absolutely nothing to contribute to my own finances for such a long period of time.  I’m not talking big bucks, but even £30-40 per week would be enough to put my mind at ease a little.  So with this in mind I’ve set about re-stocking my eBay shop, I’ve done a tiny bit of freelance blogging and I’m tentatively laying the foundations for an exciting new internet-based project which I will tell you all about at some later date.  While none of these things will ever bring me anything even remotely approaching a regular stream of income, not least because they are all so unpredictable (eBay especially) they might help, however marginally, to preserve my savings for later in the year when I might really need them.  The more I make now, the more there is for later, the less I’ll have to borrow from the big horrible bank!  That’s my current fiscal mantra, and it’s not going too terribly so far.  I’ll keep you posted!

Image above from Flickr – Zest-pk.

This is a rather late and awfully photo-less offering to the last round of Friday 5′s. The first week of uni has churned up a surprising amount of homework, and being the diligent, conscientious (or, rather, confused and panicky) student that I am, I’ve been sitting at my desk for most of the weekend, feverishly typing away and attempting to soothe my brain back into study mode (which, by the way, isn’t really happening for me). The topic this week was favourite local hotspots – one that I couldn’t not have posted about. Any excuse to bore people with tales of my beloved Edinburgh is just fine by me. The only problem was that I couldn’t narrow my list down to just five. I know, blatant flouting of the rules and all, but seeing as it’s the last one I didn’t think anyone would mind. So in no particular order, here are my six favourite spots in Caledonia’s capital…

Loopy Lorna’s Tea House

Loopy Lorna’s comes very high on my list of afternoon tea joints as well as my list of favourite local hotspots. Mismatched floral china, hand-knitted tea cosies, three-tier cake stands positively groaning with all sorts of goodies…it’s heavenly. It’s also a little on the expensive side, so I don’t go every Sunday, but the cakes are ludicrously good. I’ve fallen so madly in love with the Victoria sponge at this place that I seem to be ordering it every time I go and rudely neglecting the other tantalising offerings. Loopy’s also does an admirable range of speciality teas, including rose petal and masala chai. My standing favourite is ‘bricks and mortar’ – a proper builder-style brew which is absolutely perfect for all these autumnal afternoons we’re currently experiencing!

The Meadows

Any list of my favourite Edinburgh hangouts would be achingly incomplete without this. The Meadows is really just a series of tree-lined paths bisecting some randomly shaped patches of grass, but it is such a special and interesting place to be. Special because of the atmosphere, interesting because of the people. I once saw a man holding an umbrella over himself while he unicycled home from work, for instance (how cool is that?!). I’ve also seen a rather joyful girl doing cartwheels in the rain stark naked, and a runner who was using his hands to claw the air like a tiger as he jogged (I kid you not). An often-bizarre but ever-brilliant place to pass through, the Meadows is definitely one of my favourite things about Edinburgh.

Dominion Cinema

My boyfriend and I always joke that the Dominion isn’t just a cinema. It’s an experience. And I can’t think of any better way to describe it than that. Set way back from the heart of the city in leafy, lovely Morningside, the Dominion is old-fashioned, traditional and a world, a universe even, away from the mass-produced multiplex conglomerates that are, depressingly, absolutely everywhere. It has huge screens with leather two-seater couches, armchairs and coffee tables. It’s like watching a film in a giant living room with a whole bunch of your friends. It also has a bar serving beer, wine and tea, and which is manned by a barman who wears a suit and a bow-tie, not a garish polo shirt and a baseball cap a la Cineworld, which I love. The sad thing is, of course, that the chain multiplexes with their vast PR coffers are driving places like the Dominion out of business, in the same way that Tesco is forcing the closure of local high street grocery stores left, right and centre. So, here’s my one and only plug of the post: if you’re ever in Edinburgh, looking for a place to watch a film, please please give the Dominion a blast. You’ll love it, I promise!

The Rusty Zip

The Rusty Zip is a branch of Armstrong’s, a vintage clothing emporium with, I think, three stores in Edinburgh all told. The Zip is a tiny place, but it’s packed to the rafters (literally – if you want something from high up they have to get a ladder out) with second hand clothes, shoes and killer accessories. Particularly good finds of mine have included a polka dot dress a la Julia Roberts at the races in Pretty Woman; a pair of black slouch boots that I wore so much they now need to be re-heeled and a purple taffeta dress that properly rocks my world. Think the high school hop in Grease and you’re totally there. The Rusty Zip will always be one of my favourite shops, simply because it’s so quirky and it houses so many weird and wonderful bits of clothing that the high street would simply turn a blind eye to. Cute, kooky and Amazing with a capital ‘A’!

Blackford Hill

Blackford Hill is one of the first places I’ll think of when I need a bit of peace and quiet. It’s only a half hour walk away from my flat and it has a really beautiful view right over the entire city and beyond, across the Firth of Forth to Fife and the surrounding area. I sometimes go on my own, just to sit and think about whatever’s going on in my head, and I go with my boyfriend lots too. I can’t count the number of times we’ve sprinted the last couple of minutes to the top just to catch the sun setting! Blackford is a great place to go with friends as it’s so easily accessible. A group of us went on Bonfire Night two years ago with a tray of home-made toffee apples and a few flasks of tea, and a bunch of us also went on New Year’s Day this year, where we watched the first sunset of 2010 and played in the foot-deep snow. Hmm, all this talking about it has made me want to don my boots and go right now!

Edinburgh University Main Library

My final favorite hotspot is a new one to me, which I’ve only really discovered in the past week or so. From the outside, the main library looks like a multi-storey car park which, oddly enough, it actually was originally intended to be! But inside, the place is a mecca for learning. There are thousands upon thousands of books here, on every subject thinkable, from astronomy to obesity to linguistics to engineering. There are desks, computers and quiet study spaces absolutely everywhere and it even boasts a little cafe where you can refuel yourself on tea while chewing on coursework problems. The thing I like most about this library, however, is its location. It sits right on the edge of the Meadows, so if you’re lucky enough to bag a much-coveted seat by a South-facing window you can punctuate your study or reading sessions with a bit of people-watching and some tree-gazing. It’s a wonderfully relaxing place to spend a bit of time, and I already know I’m going to be truly sorry at the end of this year when I have to relinquish my student card and say goodbye.

After smugly declaring myself “organised” and “ready to get started with lots of new things” only on Saturday, I’ve gone and had the kind of start to a week that the word ‘clusterf**k’ surely has to have been invented for.  It’s been totally, utterly shambolic, and I’m now horribly ashamed of myself for thinking I had everything simmering away so nicely all of four days ago.

It all started on Monday (there’s a reason behind that Boomtown Rats song y’ know).  After foolishly thinking that my first day of uni would be a breeze almost not worth bothering to turn up to, I somehow ended up facing a full day of classes, not one of which I was even remotely prepared for. In the state of disarray that followed, I found myself eating a cardboard sandwich for lunch (which is one of the easiest ways to depress me, just in case you ever need to know) and lumbering around laden with three trees’ worth of paper that had been carelessly flung my way and which I had no receptacle for. The only nice person I encountered all day was the absurdly kind man working in Sainsbury’s who offered to pack all of my books into a sturdy bag for me without the slightest hint of irritation. FYI, you are a maroon-fleeced ANGEL and you WILL go to heaven. Fact.

And Tuesday was no better.  Having spent a little while advance-packing my satchel to avoid a repeat of Monday’s fiasco, I set off early, feeling slightly more prepared than I had done 24 hours before.  I also decided to cycle as I hadn’t been on my bike since mid-August, and thought the downhill whiz through the Meadows to class would help lift my trampled spirits a little. Only too late did it occur to me, however, that my bike tyres might have deflated a bit in the month or so since they last came into contact with a road. Nor had I considered the impact of that little bit of ‘pancakes for breakfast’ weight I gained in the States…

Now I fully admit I’m not the world’s fittest person.  Nor am I the world’s most competent or sophisticated cyclist.  I huff, I puff, I get off and push quite a lot.  You know when you see incredibly stylish, beret-clad people floating effortlessly by on those adorably old-fashioned bikes with the wicker baskets?  That’s not me.  At all.  My bike is the pedalling equivalent of Victor Meldrew, and I look just about as unglamorous as it is humanly possible to look when astride it.  We don’t get on that well either. It throws me off regularly, it drives me into the paths of oncoming buses and it only has two gears that work (I call them ‘uphill’ and ‘downhill’), which means riding it is often about as pleasurable as I imagine sticking two knitting pins into my eardrums might be.

In spite of all that, I persist, and I am cycle-savvy enough to realise that when the wheels are actually all but refusing to turn completely, there might be something more at play than a bad cycle/cyclist relationship. So I pulled over on Tuesday morning, only to discover that Meldrew’s tyres were as flat as all those pancakes I was gorging myself on only a couple of weeks ago. A classic fail. So, looking every inch the completely incompetent mechanic that I am, I had to prop my bike up against a street lamp amidst the fully ferocious rush hour traffic, fish out my tyre pump (luckily enough the girl guide in me knows to come prepared) and do the hands-dirty inflation stuff there and then, kerbside. Which not only made me filthy, it also made me late. Day two off to a flying start.

And so to episode three which, funnily enough, involves the wretched bike once again.  It only took me one day to discover that spending eight continuous hours on campus without ready and inexpensive access to a tea supply was going to be a problem. I would hate to use the word addict, but not having tea within easy reach is something that makes me very miserable, very quickly. I hate it. So to put a quick end to this completely unnecessary cause of woe, I bought myself a flask to take in with me every morning. I got all excited about this and hurried on my way home, eager to try it out straight away. Disaster struck, however, when carrying my bike up my tenement stairs the flask slipped out, fell to ground and then proceeded to clatter its merry way down a whole flight of concrete steps. This was enough to shatter the fragile insides of my new toy, rendering it completely unusable before I even got it home. Money wasted, dreams of constant tea suspended, and yet another reason for me to hate that sodding bike.

All in all, this has not been the productive follow-up to last week’s run of inspired planning and organising that I had hoped for. This week has, in fact, been a shambles. With life playing me this stinker of a hand at the moment I’ve decided to take cover at home and refuse to venture out until the storm has passed. I’m therefore going to sit right here in my favourite red chair for the rest of the week, and do nothing but eat soup and browse the internet. I’ll be back when the Mitchell brothers of the cosmos, otherwise known as Bad Luck and his bald, fat, ageing friend Misfortune finally decide to bugger off and annoy someone else.

Image above from Flickr – incurable_hippie.