Dwell Time

Holidaying in Spain and then taking an impromptu trip home to see family has left little time to enjoy Edinburgh of late. After my sixth flight in three weeks I finally felt like I was very ready to hit the tarmac and take some personal ‘dwell time’.

At home I found almost perfect blackbird eggs, ate picnics amongst cowslips, visited my brother’s very own flat and got a chance to slop bright yellow paint over great expanses of wall (having lived in rented accommodation for five years my urge to colour walls in is reaching fever pitch so this was very cathartic).

Throwing myself back in to life in the Scottish capital has started to pay dividends for my sense of security and fulfilment.  I’m putting my swim membership to good use and feeling much healthier for it. This has been helped by our foray into oriental cuisine which saw us eating only Asian inspired meals for three weeks (after we got back from Spain we felt the need to take a break from our usually starched filled, Italian style diet!).

I’ve joined a very happy (and very hippy) choir and am loving the joyous feeling of singing with a group of people again. Although I went with a friend the first week I was brave enough to go alone last night which meant that I got talking to more people and was even given a heads up about a job which I wouldn’t have known about if I had whimped out.

We went to the independent film house ‘Cameo’ (I was looking around all night at their in-house advertising thinking it was somehow linked to the blog. I had no idea about the cinema before I started my ‘Cameo’ and they probably have no idea about me so it’s a happy sharing of a name!) to see ‘Marley’.

I’ve been listening to Bob Marley’s music since I was born. Whenever I hear a song from ‘Exodus’ it is like part of my life’s soundtrack is being played. But this documentary about the legend’s life completely blew my mind because it taught me so many things about the man I had thought I’d known just by listening to his voice. He was an activist, a charity worker, a footballer, a father of eleven children and an outcast who became a hero. We even got to take pints of cider in to watch the film so the experience couldn’t have been much better.

Being back in Edinburgh couldn’t go unnoticed and, luckily for us, we don’t go for very long before lovely friends start arriving for visits again. This time my cousin and his girlfriend Kim (of TitTat fame) came for a flying weekend trip. The sun blessed us with its presence and we finally made it behind the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle. I was imagining a Hogwarts style set-up but instead it is more like a miniature town behind a fortress with what seemed to be three chapels and some pretty spine-tingling prisoner vaults.

We were invited to a ‘Cheese and Wine’ evening at a friend’s house which signalled the end of our Asian diet. To make sure that we were not tempted to return to our healthy ways we went out for a last supper at ‘The Olive Branch’ and feasted on game pie, a butternut squash and ricotta strudel and pan-fried sea bass, topped off with mocha cheesecake and flourless chocolate and beetroot cake. A very good feed indeed.



Finally spring seems to have reappeared in Edinburgh and the weather is set to get better as we welcome D’s mum and another of my lovely cousins this weekend. We are also off to a theatrical whisky evening. Wish us luck!

P.S Thanks Dad for the inspiration.