photo essay

“This was a townscape raised in the teeth of cold winds from the east; a city of winding cobbled streets and haughty pillars; a city of dark nights and candlelight, and intellect.” ― Alexander McCall Smith, The Sunday Philosophy Club

It feels particularly appropriate to be writing about my hometown on Hogmanay. Edinburgh is – for the world at large – the city most associated with this Scottish celebration of New Year.

I was born in Edinburgh, though I’ve never really lived there. It’s a town I experience in soft focus; an idealised place of ancient history and learning. I want to belong, but I don’t really. I can feel distain for the endless shops selling novelty kilts and postcards of the castle to tour bus crowds, but I have a visitor’s excitement at every street corner and close, every church and gallery.

It’s a city of instantly recognisable architecture; the castle set high on the remains of a volcano and Scott Monument – the neo-gothic monument to Sir Walter Scott.

I love the way the city is bisected by the railway line and Princes Street; the crisp, orderly New Town to the north, the medieval old town of haphazard buildings and narrow closes to the south. It takes only minutes to walk from carefully planned and laid-out squares lined with neo-Classical and Georgian buildings, fenced parks and statues of the worthy – to the jumble of centuries’ worth of urban life that is the Old Town.

Riddle's Court, 322 Lawnmarket, Edinburgh. Photo: Su Leslie 2013

When I’m there, I imagine a giant game of hide and seek where I could tuck myself away down some cobbled yard and not be found for days – if ever.

If I were ever to set a story in Edinburgh (and I’d be in wonderful company – from Robert Louis Stevenson to Muriel Spark, Kate Atkinson and Irvine Welsh), it would be in the old town. Not because I don’t love the rationality and intellectualism of the New, but because rationality and intellect are my everyday life and if I’m going to commit to fiction it has to allow me to explore the aold structures and narrow doorways of my subconscious.

On Hogmanay I wish you all good fortune and fulfilment for 2014.

Slàinte mhòr agus a h-uile beannachd duibh.

This post was written as part of the Phoneography Challenge at Lens and Pens by Sally. My choice this week – architecture.

Here are some other posts I enjoyed:

iPhoneography Monday: 12-30-13

http://sustainabilitea.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/phoneography-challenge-whoops/

http://firebonnet.com/2013/12/30/phoneography-challenge-selfie-reflected/

http://angelinem.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/phoneography-challenge-tequila-in-tulum/

http://weliveinaflat.com/blog/phoneography-weekly-waterloo-street-%E5%9B%9B%E9%A9%AC%E8%B7%AF/

http://piecesofstarlight.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/phoneography-season-sampler/

Photo: Su Leslie 2012

Humans are diurnal creatures; we operate in the daytime and rely on vision as one of our principal senses (if not THE principal sense). For that we need light. Arguably, our ability to create light – fire, candles, electric lamps – has transformed human culture, allowing us to work, play, create during the hours when the Earth is naturally dark.

All lit up; Auckland's Sky Tower, an office building and St Patrick's Cathedral in the foreground. Photo: Su Leslie 2011

All lit up; Auckland’s Sky Tower, a hotel and St Patrick’s Cathedral in the foreground. Photo: Su Leslie 2011

Light is one of the oldest, most powerful and most pervasive symbols. It can invoke knowledge, enlightenment, spirituality, purity and the divine. We use the word “enlighten” to mean sharing or imparting knowledge – literally to shed light upon. Religious teachers speak of spreading light in darkness. It has also been co-opted to underpin centuries of racist oppression and discrimination in the contrast of “light” and “dark” skin.

New Plymouth Festival of Lights. Photo: Su Leslie 2010

In New Zealand, as in much of the world, we take light for granted. Our electricity supply is reliable and largely affordable. For how long -who knows? But it does mean that light has become decorative; we illuminate buildings and structures because it looks good and we can.

Flinders Street Station, Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Su Leslie 2010

Sometimes we illuminate buildings to share more than beauty. For a few days around the 25th April, the Auckland War Memorial Museum stages the Anzac Illuminations; with archival footage of New Zealand’s war stories projected onto the facade of the Museum. Hundreds of Aucklanders visit on each nights of the illuminations. We take blankets and cushions, picnics, friends and children and we watch a few moments of silent film played against one of city’s iconic buildings. It is part of the way we remember those who have served in the many conflicts our small, relatively young country has been involved in.