Edinburgh

As planned I paid my first visit to the big city today.  I am going to have to admit that Edinburgh is actually my favourite city in UK (Rome is my favourite city in the world).  If there are no more posts on this blog it means that R has murdered me for saying this – my body has probably been dropped in the Clyde.

Anyway – I went to Leith to do a woodworking class.  I am frankly sick of the situation with joiners in general – it is not just a Cupar thing because we have always had trouble getting a reliable one.   My Dad always did anything of that nature for us (he was a civil servant by profession but a cabinet maker in his heart) until his eyesight went – but after that in both Livingston and Lochgoilhead we could never get one – and Cupar is turning out no better.  So I have decided to do this for myself – I have a fair range of skills already and this will be another one.  At the moment I can just about do things like put up shelves and build basic flatpack furniture – so this will be learning proper big boy stuff like how to box in pipes and hang doors.  First step though is that we are making a blanket ladder.

I haven’t been to Leith for about ten years but I used to go down there regularly to visit the offices of a company I did a lot of work for.  I would always walk there and back from Waverley, and the last few times I went the roads were being torn up for the trams.  This time I went on a tram – for the downhill trip at 5pm I don’t think I would bother in future – the tram was packed and it was so incredibly slow I could have walked faster.  When I got to the bottom of the hill I found the workshop easily enough and went for a wander.  It was a different bit of Leith to where I was familiar with, and at about 5:30pm on a Monday it was totally deserted.  There were some huge docks.

And there was a floating hotel on a ship called the Fingal which is a sister ship to the Britannia (which is just round the corner).  I thought of going in for a cup of coffee but there was no one about and I did not think they would have appreciated my woodworking clothing.

Anyway, the course was very enjoyable and I learned to use several large powerful machines to plane and shape the wood for our ladder.  I think I might possibly have been better off with the DIY course as being closer to my needs so I might do it as well.

On the way back they moved the Dundee train from platform 17 to platform 1 two minutes before it was due to leave and I had to shoot right across the station with about a hundred other angry people.  So all in all an eventful day.