A year of mornings

Every morning for a year I took a photograph from my kitchen window. Here's a year's worth of mornings.

Waiting to set the world on fire

On the eve of New Year’s Eve (or Old Year’s Night if you prefer) I, along with 25,000 other people, took part in a torch lit procession through the heart of Edinburgh, which led from St Giles’ cathedral on the Royal Mile to Carlton Hill. The procession was lead by a pack of Shetland Vikings and a marching pipe band who, had they looked back, would have witnessed a river of people and fire surging along behind them.

Equally stirring was the sight of this torch bearing mass spread over Carlton Hill and framed against the backdrop of the Firth of Forth. All cheered as the Vikings torched a replica longship and a light and firework display flashed across the crisp night sky. We then all surged away, most to a pub, suitably inspired, invigorated, impressed and well prepared for the big night that was to follow.

In one of those satisfying coincidences I’d recently bought a copy of Neil Oliver’s A History of Scotland. Days after following the Vikings up Carlton Hill I read through his rendition of the Viking invasions across north and east Scotland and how men living in this region today remain embedded with Scandinavian DNA.

I believe we carry within our bodies a physical memory of the past. We are riddled with scars etched on our skins and in our hearts which map the journey of how we got here and where we have been. And no matter how, or with what we cover them, like our DNA they are never far from the surface.

As the old year waned in style on Carlton Hill and ashes from a smouldering longship blew across the crowd and the city, I saw images of my past streak through this celebratory spectacle. Blazing bins where people discarded often still lit torches brought back memories of the picket lines that stood their ground during the miners’ strikes of the mid 80s. The crowds of people surging through and taking over public spaces were reminiscent of the 1990 Poll Tax riots – the violent tip of an iceberg of public resentment.

Something beyond my memories of this lifetime stirred when the Vikings growled and their boat took to fire. But that fire was the same one I remember fuelling picket line braziers and the anger against a tax only 2% of the population supported.

Of course New Year is thick with memories as we grapple with the passing of time, our own mortality and everything we dare to hope for of the future. And the following night the city and the world welcomed 2011 with fireworks, champagne and incantations of new resolutions.

But now as we lull in the Bank Holiday cushion between festivities and work, and prepare to pack away our decorations and celebrations for another year, spare a thought for the past. Pay your respects to the histories and memories that lurk in your shadow – always emotive, easily provoked and waiting to set the world on fire.

to travel write or not to travel write

Perhaps the greatest social change since the Second World War is the way citizens from the free nations travel as never before in history.
Martha Gellhorn

When I was growing up I had to cycle past a complex of old people’s flats to get to the park. One old lady had positioned a cumbersome armchair in front of large French windows which overlooked the path that lead from my house, through the cemetery, past her flat, to the park. Every day she would wave as I cycled by, her face lit up and I always waved back.

Is this old age? I used to think. Is this what I have to look to forward to? Growing up in a small seaside town crammed with residential care homes, the future looked bleak and immobile and I believed from an early age that the only way to survive old age, and its cumbersome armchairs, was a supply of memories from a life lived to the full.

I came of age in the age of Thatcher, the age before yuppies disgraced themselves and rich pickings blinded those who worked hard, asked no questions and burnt out decades before their pensions matured. When the promises of the 80s turned into the broken dreams of the 90s, I took to the road in search of a different path.

Now, 21 years after cashing in my pension and buying my ticket out of town, I’m a fully fledged travel writer, committed to the unbeaten track. And, as a mark of respect for the old lady in the armchair and what she impressed upon me at an early age, I’d like to encourage all you would be travellers and potential travel writers, to stop planning and start travelling – whether this means walking a different route to work or taking time out to travel the world the long way round.

There are many reasons why we travel and many reasons why we write – but why write about our travels?

From a purely financial perspective, travel writing can fund your trips. And if this is your aim then options include writing or updating travel guidebooks. But this is far from an easy ticket. You might get a fee and, if you’re lucky, some expenses paid, but it’s no free holiday. It’s hard, often painstaking work, which allows little time to chill and scant editorial space to wax lyrical about your impressions of a place.

Travel articles allow more creative freedom. They are also a good way to sell yourself to guidebook publishers who’ll often want to see something in print before trusting you to write for them. This often means writing for free in the first instance just to get published or create your own travel blog.

Also once you’ve written or updated an existing guidebook, there’s extra cash to be made by selling features to magazines and newspapers on the places you’ve just visited. Having written a guidebook you’ll have instant credibility when trying to sell your work and your information will be bang up to date. All the time taking into consideration that it’s often easier to sell travel to publications that are about anything but – such as food and drink magazines. Also remember you’re an expert on your own home town, so don’t think you have to travel the world to have something interesting to say about a place. Which leads to the importance of getting an angle and saying something new and different and interesting to other people.

Or, if facts bog you down, make it up and write fiction. Keep notes on your travels – your experiences, impressions, the people you meet, the things you see – recording all the bad as well as the good. Because often the tales most want read involve danger, disease, delay and discomfort. Record everything and transform your experiences into poetry, short stories, novels, radio plays and even film scripts and in doing so guide people’s imaginations to new places.

Having said all that, fame, fortune and freebies aren’t the only reason to travel write. The most valuable souvenir from any trip is often a personal journal that records an internal as well as an external journey. These are written purely for yourself – for those times when visiting the memories of all the places you’ve been is all the travelling you can do.

Whatever the reason you want to venture away from the well trodden path, and whatever the reasons are you want to write about your journey, do both. One day when I cycled to the park the old lady wasn’t there anymore. I knew she’d gone travelling and I knew she wasn’t coming back.

Festivals & Fireworks

Last night I stood in the darkness of Inverleith Park and watched Edinburgh Castle on the not so distant skyline form the back drop to the spectacular firework display that marks the end of the Edinburgh International Festival and festival season in this city.

I wasn’t alone. Hundreds of people sitting, standing, with cameras, with glow sticks, with children, with picnics, with mates flowed over the grass of this vast north Edinburgh park to enjoy the show. A large screen stood in front of our view of the castle and gave us all close up images of the accompanying concert whose sounds synchronised with the dazzling displays that filled the early autumn evening. The air was stuffed with the scent of candyfloss, take away food and expectation as the large round lights which illuminated the park were extinguished once the first note sounded and the first firework lit.

Sure you can buy a ticket to watch the concert and fireworks in front of your eyes in Princes Street Gardens – if you’re quick enough off the mark the minute they go on sale. But outside of this tiny patch of the city centre, this event is free, unticketed and one of the reasons why festivals, and the arts, work in Edinburgh.

Many people in Inverleith Park won’t have been to a performance at the International Festival, maybe not even the Fringe and possibility not any event at any of the other festivals that consume Edinburgh throughout August. This event is for them. It allows everyone to be included and to see a show on their territory. It’s also a thank you to the city for putting up with overcrowded streets, an onslaught of posters, flyers and marketing of every kind and for the invasion of performers, press, promoters and visitors who fill every room, every restaurant table, every bus seat and every inch of the Old and New Towns.

Of course we all welcome the money they bring, the jobs they create and the local businesses they support. We all understand that the festivals are of direct benefit the city’s economy and we would not have it any other way.

But this event goes beyond box office income and profit margins. It gives everyone in Edinburgh the opportunity to celebrate and to profit from both the hard cash and the art. This event reaches out to everyone and gives us all a moment of wonder, a moment of being amazed, a moment of seeing Edinburgh Castle and the history it embodies celebrated and transformed by the amorphous business we call ‘the arts’.

As we all now take a deep breath, clean up the city and calculate the revenue from what everyone is predicting has been a bumper festival season, somewhere on the multitude of spread sheets being drawn up, there has to be a column for the value of transformation. Income calculations will not be accurate if they don’t include the profits our hearts and minds have made from the stories, laughter, new ways of seeing the world, new understandings and the sheer spectacle that the arts contributes to everybody’s lives – always reaching out and often asking nothing in return.

Rainbows and re-seeing

Last Sunday I arrived back in Edinburgh from a weekend away in the nick of time to catch a spectacular rainbow arch over the sky at Canonmills. The sun broke through the clouds on an overcast, drizzle soaked early evening and there it was. Shoppers trailing out of Tescos stopped their trolleys to stare and walkers and cyclists on the adjacent bike path paused to gaze up at the sky. And I liked the moment of stopping, pausing a journey and looking, really looking, at a view I pass every day.

A few days later I took part in en-route, one of the Traverse theatre’s Edinburgh Fringe shows created by one step at a time like this. Like the rainbow, this performance also invited me to stop and look. However, much more than merely a moment of re seeing a familiar view, this hour and half long guided journey through Edinburgh lead me through back alleyways, famous streets, a car park, a shopping centre, an iconic hotel, a phone box and much more. All accompanied by a narrative and a sound track and instructions drip fed through the likes of text messages, found maps, arrows on the pavement and envelopes filled with instructions.

The key to making this experience work, and seeing the city afresh, as ‘en route’ invites you to, is to trust it. To be led one step at a time. To be ok about not knowing where you are going. As someone who writes travel guidebooks this goes against the grain of everything I’m meant to do – locate the reader, give clear directions, make sure people know what to expect, where they are and where they are going. In the process I often feel complicit in supplying everyone with the same experience of a destination and retelling the same stories. And try as travel writers do to find a new angle, we never give visitors the opportunity to get lost or residents the chance to see afresh the views they look at every day.

I’m now, more than ever, unsure what the rules of travel writing are. Where the responsibilities, expectations and boundaries lie. Do travel writers have permission to dislocate the reader and challenge their expectations of a city? Would this be entering territory a travel writer is not meant to explore? I have no idea. But both the rainbow over Canonmills and en route have inspired me to find out.

Valentine Rocks

If this line of poetry projected onto Edinburgh Rock on Valentine’s night doesn’t inspire a writer – new, developing or developed - to write. Nothing will.

Halloween in Auld Reekie

Went looking for ghosts in Edinburgh's Old Town on Halloween. In a city soaked with the past they shouldn't be hard to find on the day when the veil is thinnest between the worlds. A walk along Cowgate in sparkling sunshine brought me face to face with one of the city's ghosts. A middle aged man sat at the junction of Cowgate and Grassmarket - looking up to West Bow. Homeless and invisible to those without second site. The tour buses don't visit the bits of the city he knows and tourists aren't told his story by the guides who share tales of the ghost of Major Weir whose house of depravity once stood on West Bow.

Later that night I walked back through Cowgate. Clubers in fancy dress pouring along this narrow, sunken road. High heels wobbling on cobbles, music and heat beating out. High up on the Royal Mile the Samhuinn fire procession was let loose at 9pm.

The more I get to know this city, the more I realise, I'll never know it. No view ever looks the same twice. No guidebook can be trusted. And no ghost should be overlooked. I've tried to find a history of Edinburgh I can understand and relate to. A tale that will guide me through its past. I'm beginning to think the only thing to do is create my own.