A Week at the Edinburgh Festival

Just back from a week in Edinburgh, visiting my sister, celebrating my birthday, and Doing the Festival! This is what we did, each with a mini-review in case you're thinking of going to any of them yourself:

Monday:
Walked along the Water of Leith to Dean Village (beautiful) to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art to see the exhibitions of new work by Hiroshi Sugimoto and a retrospective of drawings and sculptures by Tony Cragg. Thumbs up for Sugimoto (who I like anyway) especially for Lightning Fields, which manages to capture forms from bursts of energy which seem to be alive, like weird sea creatures from the bottom of the ocean... Photogenic Drawing (blow up prints of Fox Talbot images from the 1840s) seemed more of an academic experiment. Take-it-or-leave-it thumbs for Tony Cragg - I like those weird sculptures that look like lots of faces in profile but after a while it is all the same.

Midnight till 2 am: 'Political Animal' at The Stand, politically satirical stand-up hosted by Andy Zaltzman. His bits in between the guests were the best and funniest thing about it so if you're not sure and don't want to stay out late then I'd go for his 'Armchair Revolutionary' show instead! But it fulfilled all my expectations of the Fringe! Late night comedy stand up in basement bars... So worth it for the experience alone.

Tuesday:
'The Proceedings of that Night': Excellent. This will probably turn up on Radio 4 at some point. Short single-hander play about an actor recording a ghost story for radio, inexplicably all alone late at night in an isolated recording studio... As he reads it the ghost story starts to fight back. Truly spooky!

'Blood and Roses': also really good. A promenade play, where we turned up to a meeting point in St George's West church and were given headsets to listen as the play played out in our heads, while we followed an usher who led us round nearby streets and into spookily dressed staged spaces. A love story through different times and places, with some witches thrown in for good measure.

Wednesday:
'The Queen: Art and Image' at the Scottish National Gallery. Not that I'm a patriot but I thought this was a really interesting exhibition - about celebrity, the developing image of the Queen over the long period of her reign, how this image is manipulated according to political events or popular opinion, especially the need to make her increasing accessible to her subjects... Plus many of the world's greatest artists have photographed or painted the Queen and there were some iconic and beautiful images. In particular I was struck by 'Lightness of Being' by Chris Levine (do a Google Image search), the accidental portrait taken while the Queen rested her eyes between long exposures while he worked on the actual portrait. Both are in the show and are holographic, so the reproductions don't really capture how the images follow you around the room...

Explored the craft market in the graveyard of St Johns church. Bought a cheese knife with a handle made from bracingly scented juniper wood as a memento.

National Museum of Scotland - which has recently reopened its doors after a major refurbishment lasting more than a decade I think. They have done major work on restoring the Victorian building, and the natural history displays are spectacular - particularly as they have a contemporary feel yet are inspired by the original Victorian approach - and I spent quite a lot of time in there. However I found the rest of it - the, er, art - disappointing and I am sorry to say the Islamic displays were risible.

Thursday:
A discussion at the Book Festival about Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, marking the centenary of his birth this year. This was K's choice and it was nice to do something at the book festival - most of the interesting talks were happening the following week... I hadn't read any Czeslaw Milosz - had hardly even heard of him - but it was a really interesting session, with some of his poetry read out, in English translation as well as in the original Polish, and I certainly will investigate him now.

'The Conference of the Birds': this was Isla's choice, a student production (we had had lunch that day with the Islamic history tutor of some of them!) which used a lot of physical theatre to depict this allegory of the world's birds undergoing trials and tribulations while they search for their king, the Simurgh (for which, read God). But it was really well done, and really nice to see something quite experimental - took me back to my own days of student theatre.

Friday:
My birthday! I am officially in my late 30s now. We took a trip to the seaside - driving along the East Lothian coast to Gullane where we had a wonderful 2-hour walk along its sandy beaches and back along its dunes, before heading for North Berwick for lunch - a feast of lobster and chips from the wonderful and much-to-be-recommended Lobster Shack at the harbour... We saw the lobsters being delivered (still alive of course) so they were totally fresh and absolutely delicious!



Pudding was Signor Luca ice cream (made with all local ingredients) while sitting on the sea wall looking out to the sheer rockfaces of the Bass Rock with its colony of tens of thousands of seabirds... It was gorgeously sunny and warm so K and I got a bit burned while Isla just went a deeper brown as she always does!

Back to Edinburgh in time to see 'Cowboys and Aliens' at the cinema - there was some low-brow activity as well!

Saturday:
'Me, Myself and Miss Gibbs': a really original show put together by Francesca Millican-Slater, which tells the story of a postcard she picked up in a junk shop in Devon, sent on 15 July 1910 to a Miss L. Gibbs, instructing her to 'Be Careful Tomorrow'. Francesca became obsessed by the postcard and about trying to track down Miss Gibbs and why she should be careful tomorrow... It was a really interesting little detective story, beautifully presented (best use of an OHP I've ever seen I think), told from the perspective of her personal journey to find out what she did, how she felt about the 'historical stalking' she was doing, who she met along the way... Really excellent.

After this we wandered up to the Farmers' Market on Castle Terrace, catching it just before everyone packed up for the day, and had the most amazing Aberdeen Angus beefburgers! Followed, somewhat later, after some lazy wandering and provision-purchasing (can't leave Scotland without some hot-smoked salmon, though the preferred Hebridean Smokehouse variety - smoked in peat, yum! - was not in evidence), by a tray of macaroons at Valvona & Crolla's VinCaffè...


That evening, opening night of 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' at King's Theatre. This was the only thing we did as part of the actual, original 'International Festival'. My sister and I both really loved Haruki Murakami's book, though K hadn't read it so I think he spent most of the performance wondering what on earth was going on. It was really well produced and staged, with lots of interesting projection and puppetry, and I enjoyed the mix of Japanese and English language... K said the next day that the memory of the performance seemed like a hallucination which was exactly the nature of the book, so an amazing achievement, really, to capture its surreal nature.

There was much more food, drink, meeting up with friends, chatting, walking, exploring my sister's new neighbourhood (she now has her own flat off Leith Walk)... It was exhilarating and exhausting! Back to work for a rest!

Five days later

This was Foot Locker in Brixton on Wednesday morning, totally torched in the riots on Sunday night. There were a couple of crime scene investigators still at work on it, but by the end of the day it was being boarded up. Many of the shopfronts on the high street have their windows boarded up now, so you are faced with a cityscape of plywood when you walk down into town, but otherwise everything seems totally back to normal.

Everyone is sharing experiences - you overhear snatches of conversation in the market. We chatted with our upstairs neighbours, who were much more alert than us and started noticing via online forums that it was all kicking off in Brixton on Sunday night. One of them is a journalist and actually went out and had a wander around - he said that the mood was more like a carnival than anything particularly aggressive, but he was depressed about the fact that most of the kids doing the looting were young teens. The other neighbour said she had looked out of her front window at one point and seen kids running down our street laden with flat-screen TVs and other gear from Currys round the corner. She had heard, though, that these kids were subsequently mugged by older kids with guns - kind of worrying to have confirmed so baldly what you have always suspected about the neighbourhood but never really wanted to think about.

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On a lighter note... Because K was working at home today, we went and had lunch in Brixton Village, fulfilling our resolution to always have lunch in the market when we're around (more usually at the weekend).

View down 4th Avenue, with the quirky lampshade installation designed by local artist, Charlotte Squire, who has her studio in the market. Read more about the work here.

Last autumn I blogged about the total transformation of Brixton Village, but didn't know much about it at the time. I now know it's the amazingly successful result of a deliberate policy of regeneration, the brainchild of an agency called Spacemakers that hasn't been going for long but specialises in urban regeneration projects: you can read about their project for Brixton Village here. That part of the market was so rundown that parts of it were derelict, but they arranged with the council and the property managers to let out 20 market stalls rent-free for three months, and held an open evening to attract interest, which was massive. They allocated the stalls to independent small businesses run by local people or who would source their supplies, especially food, locally, and only agreed to projects which would not threaten the already-existing shops and stalls. And now it is totally buzzing!

We have been back many times since, and it seems like there are new places every time we go. We try to eat at a different place every time: we've tried Etta's Seafood, Cornercopia, though I must admit we have been three times to Kaosan, a really delicious little Thai place which was highly rated by the Observer's restaurant critic, Jay Rayner, also a local resident (we used to see him taking his kids to school when we lived on Brixton Hill). The first time we went it was empty - just us and a second table were occupied - but ever since his rave review, the place has been totally packed and you're lucky to get a table! (They do really gorgeous lemongrass tea)


Today we tried the Japanese place, Okan, which specialises in okonomiyaki, Japanese street food - which I had eaten in Japan and it tasted just as good and delicious here in Brixton. I love how all these restaurants have benches outside, and you can watch the market life going on around you. It's really nice to go on a Friday, when it is quieter anyway but feels like locals only, whereas on Saturdays now the market is full of people who come in from outside Brixton - we've even spotted some tourists! It's all great for the local economy (though I know some fear it heralds gentrification - though actually Brixton has always been pretty wealthy and gentrified, until the post-war years...) but it is also nice to feel you're a local there.

And supporting your local businesses and community seems like the right thing to do at the moment, after the trauma of the riots.

After the riots...

Pictures from a walk around Brixton after last night's rioting and looting...

Curry's on Effra Road - this is literally just around the corner from us. I took these pics with my phone so the quality isn't great but you might be able to make out that the glass front doors are both smashed in and there are piles of loot that I guess wasn't taken - and two of the shop managers standing around apparently totally lost about what to do. Next door is Halfords which didn't look too badly damaged, but the BBC journalist who reported on the looting live in the small hours of this morning said that bikes were being passed one by one out of the front door...

There were piles of stones and bits of broken up brick lying around on the pavement, presumably assembled for throwing at shop windows to break the glass. A low wall at the end of our street seemed to have been slightly dismantled, presumably to get at the bricks for ammunition.

Brixton was full of press. This reporter was being hassled by a drunk guy who the police had a stern word with...


The camera crew at the left were from Portuguese TV. I even saw a couple of Japanese journalists setting up their camera in the middle of Electric Avenue. This shows the view down Brixton Road, totally cordoned off with police tape, everyone standing around just looking though there wasn't much to look at apart from scenes of destruction.

The windows had been boarded up at KFC by the time I got there, around lunchtime. Though I couldn't get onto the high street to really see the extent of the damage, what seemed to be the case is that the banks were completely untouched, but places like KFC or MacDonalds or the gaming shop (you can just make out the smashed windows of the shop with the blue frontage)

or Foot Locker - all these places were targeted for smash and grab. It seems to have been gangs of youths out for whatever they could get. Someone made a half-hearted attempt to get into this jewellery shop

but the real targets seem to have been those places that stock goods that appeal to current youth culture - the mobile phone shops were particularly smashed up apparently. Though someone had also had a go at M&S for good measure.


This was one of the bus stops by the tube station (which was closed today) - totally smashed up.

The high street was closed and buses were diverted and there was pretty much total chaos on the traffic front - but I still managed to walk around the market, some of which was open, and do some shopping (I am on leave this week and needed some supplies as Rosa is coming round for dinner this evening). There was a weird feeling of business as usual, though subdued and with a sense of people not quite knowing what to do with themselves.

It was weird. Coming home from Helen's barbecue last night around 9 pm, we would never have guessed that riots would erupt within a matter of hours. It had been Brixton Splash, a street festival, during the day, which seems to have been fun and chilled and there were still quite a lot of people around, sitting in groups on the lawn in Windrush Square. There seemed to be a rather unnecessary number of police around, but they weren't doing anything - we laughed about how one of them was queuing for a burger from one of the street vendors. Ironically, later it turned out that there weren't enough police on hand.

We came home, watched a movie (The A-Team!) and went to bed - then got woken up at 2.30 in the morning by the noise from a police helicopter directly overhead. The noise was unbearable - reverberating with all the tall buildings of the council estates around us. It went on for about half an hour/40 minutes, maybe longer. I got up and looked out of the window - it literally was straight up from our flats, with a huge beam pointing in the direction of Currys, I now realise. I guess we realised that meant something was going on - but something usually is going on in Brixton.

I just fell back asleep and was none the wiser until K checked the headlines online as he settled down to work at home for the morning, and was greeted by 'Riots erupt in Brixton'.

I feel kind of depressed about the whole thing. It seems to have been organised and there is some talk online about groups of youths bussing in from outside Brixton. But what is it all about? What is the point of it? So far it seems to be utterly senseless, violence and looting for the sake of it. One of the buildings that has been completely gutted by fire in Tottenham was a rather handsome 1930s block, now destroyed - so sad. A lady standing next to me this afternoon as we surveyed the emptiness of Brixton Road said to me, 'It's so unfair - they're smashing up their own back yard, where their parents and grandparents have to work and shop'. It doesn't have the ideology of 30 years ago - but is that how all riots start? With a spark and then you rationalise it later? I just hope that's it, and we're not in for a repeat of what happened last time.

P.S. so touched by all the messages and calls we've had this evening asking us if we're ok - thanks for caring guys!