Andrew MacLaren-Scott's Blog, page 40

Late afternoon in Leith

I love Leith. Rough and ready when I lived there many years ago - a famous old port of working people and pubs and a fair few gangs and thieves and prostitutes; but alive with the dirty messy vigour of humans being human in the best way they could manage, which was often not very good at all. Now greatly gentrified in a wonderful vibrant way, but with all the old traits and characters and drink and drugs still clearly there in the muddled messy mix of humanity heaving and flowing like the lapping sea that surrounds it. I was educated in Leith, until the age of 17, in the days of uncontrolled playground fights and bullies and girls and youthful attempts at love and hate and good and bad, but not much evil, although under the surface, yes that was in there too. I got hurt in Leith, physically, emotionally, romantically. I got tough in Leith, more mentally and emotionally than physically. I grew a hard carapace that even now can hide the wobbling soft pathetic jelly of the man within. And I come back occasionally, not often enough, to walk and eat, and still again yesterday to shake my head with an almost apologetic smile when a surprisingly pretty lass tried to sell the brief use of her slim body to me near the dock gates... where my father used to stand as a young police constable, fresh from fighting a war, but then directing the traffic when not called, as he often was, by a shrill whistle - no personal radio in those days - to intervene in another melee of flying fists and smashing glass in a riverside pub. I love Leith, and I will be back again, sooner next time, to walk and watch and sit and drink and eat, and probably to shake my head with an apologetic smile again and say, "no thanks", sweet, sad, young, dear, lost, lass... no thanks.

The Dazzle Ship at Leith

See The Dazzle Ships website for explanation, and the history of Dazzle Ships in WWI

A reminder across the Firth of Forth

Waiting for sunshine

And so the madness begins, again, on Planet Bleedin' Earth...

 
Happy New Year

4540000000 (± 1%) years...

since the planet formed, apparently...
www.universetoday.com
and here we go for another one...
nasa
whether you feel ready or not,

until...



best to try to make the best of it while it lasts, I suppose.

Playfair and the museum

Don't dare smile

One little girl who smiled at me
was enough to cheer me up
until her mother saw, and snapped
although in a whisper, but one I heard:
“Don’t smile like that at strangers”
and looked at me as if I was so bad
to have smiled so freely back
Well fair enough, in this dreadful place
to warn and keep your small child safe
but sad, still sad
And when the same child looked back at me
and half-smiled again, in a somewhat conspiratorial way
I turned my head to pretend not to see
I am so sad to say

Returning

A brief moment of ever so slightly angry, caught

I can get angryAnd this day I was so damn angryI was walking in the street shouting“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! I’m so damn angry!”Until the glare of a woman with a child I had not noticed shut me upI mean I had not noticed the woman or the childnot just the childI was so damn angryAt what?I’ll tell you what…Oh… let’s skip the softening lies and jump to trueI am angry at you, yes youand meAt peopleoh, and painand cold and wind and rain…At life and death and mud and mess and guts and gore and more… At planets, stars - the whole damn lotof this universe’s messed and muddled ugly plotunwinding right behind my eyesbeyond the woman, child, the dark grey skiesAhhngry!Happy not………………But settling now?Maybe…Yes?Or maybe notWe get the world we makedumped out in a blackened void?AloneForgot?This festering fetid human lot
(I feel better now)