Shaddow play.

8am, and stepping onto morning streets washed yellow-filtered sunlight.
Joy Division.
Good music is of its place. A morning spent wandering streets and lanes that walk the line between gritty urban and gentrified bohemian. Still honest enough to leave a whiff of rough origin, but far enough down the path to a new inner-city identity that an antipodean interloper can explore without angst.
A destination, like so many of the most satisfying, found without intent or forethought... and one that, with great surprise, offers an insight into the best potential of a 'British' future.
A city rich with genuine remnants of an industrial revolution that not only embraced industry, but relished it. Great, stern steel and brick bridges and viaducts that criss-cross the town, not only massive and inspiring monuments to industry, but made to be beautiful churches of progress and achievement.
Everywhere grand victorian and georgian buildings retained, or sensitively adapted and re-imagined alongside inventive modernity.
Walkable streets and lanes, and beyond these an intricate tangle of canals and walkways that have still yet to grow into the fascinating playground of modern urban humanity to which they are so beautifully suited.
Everywhere is rich, honest beauty balanced with unlimited potential on a rare path to realisation.
Not only an amazing city in Britain, but a fascinating place full stop.

Fuck London, get to Manchester.

Morissey in his natural environment

I realised that my previous post contained quite a lot more one-sided vitriol than intended.
It did, possibly, also give the impression that little positive was gained from a month and a half wandering through Scotland.
Consider this a correction... or explanation.
Perhaps I am just not the kind of person able to consistently wax lyrically poetic about the beauties and virtues of a place. But rest assured, Scotland was beautiful, with many a something to recommend it. Id not have gone back there otherwise, and remained for so long.
Its beautiful.
The people are friendly.
Much that will be fondly remembered ensued.

Now if you'll excuse me I have a playlist of smiths, doves, joy division, happy mondays to listen to, and some Manchester streets to wander.

A name is a dangerous thing

Having previously formed the opinion that naming your child Damien, Jason, Jake or Darren near guarentees the little spawn will end up a petty criminal, I was unsurprised to find that a similar force operates in relation to places.
The past month and a half has seen me pass through 2 Campbelltowns and a Penrith. An unfortunate occurance which highlights the fact that giving a place either of these names is likely to ensure they evolve and grow into first class depressing cul-de-sacs of stunted human potential, and taudry joyless shitholes.
Town planners take note.

The afternoon trundling across the north west of England also brought home to me much that I should be eternally thankfull for.
 Chief among these being that I do not live in Bolton.

...

As I left the burned brown heather, stern mountains, black lochs and grey stone towns of scotland, I have time to pause a moment and ponder a few things with regard to my month and a half north of 'the wall'.
Firstly, what the FUCK is Iron Bru, and how did this bizzare budget brand of cough-medicine masquerading as soft drink EVER come to be popular. Some may sheet the blame for the decay of British society, productivity and ingenuity home to education, declining manufacturing and the rise of generation z... personally I blame the popularity of Iron Bru... whatever the fuck it is.

I dont understand football.
Not the game, which is of course ridiculously popular precisely because the most square-jawed, toothless caveman from Motherwell CAN comprehend it.  No, im talking about the pervasive obsession with the game, and every facet that surrounds it, such that a group of 10 60 year olds in a pub can spend a solid 6 hours talking of nothing else. Literally. No joke. If this were an isolated incident, one could probably pass it off, but its the norm. Can ANYTHING be so important or interesting as to absorb so much time, effort and attention? Let alone a professional game, played perpetually, between manufactured teams of overpaid preening mercenaries? A population that spends the evening crapping on about football, and then swigs a bottle of Iron BRU on the way home has problems that no programme of fiscal austerity can fix.

Why is Glasgow bus station bigger, more efficient and better connected than Sydney?
I dont know the answer, but considering it exists in a region populated by the people Ive just written about, this is surely a serious indictment of Sydneys transport malaise.

Who is going to tell most of Scotland that the accent they are so proud of is actually English? And that the true Scots accent doesnt come from the Weegies in suburban Glasgow, but in the westcoast highlands and Islands where they speak Gallic as a first language.
I pondered making an open announcement in a Glasgow pub, but decided that the cost of buying the requisite conciliatory pints for the bar afterwards, was prohibitive.

Where do black face sheep come from? Why dont we have them at home?

Beards may be practical as facial fortification against chill, damp weather, but they are bloddy annoying and make eating soup and drinking ales a task necessitating a box of tissues.

....

Hello Manchester.

A Mariners lament

Nobody gets it right.
This is, if nothing else, the lesson learned in travel.
Every city passed through exhibits itself as an aggregation of the talents, flaws and foibles of the flawed mass that make them up. And so, it seems, to like a place is simply to choose your preferred mix of success and failure.

Illustrative, the sunny spring walk through 'New Town' Edinburgh.
Stern grey stone buildings, city-block squared rising 4 stories from cobbled streets.
Protected behind, inside the ring of stone, laneways, stables, houses, businesses and gardens at the most comfortable of humans scales. Wandering these laneways (while remarking that Melbourne was only a few hundred years behind even the Scots in embracing something they are now intent to be defined by) it is hard to believe that the same society that spawned them remains fatally afflicted by an abusive obsession with alcholic self-assault; subsists on food that is fried, battered, salted and processed beyond all recognition; and still maintains the most beautiful of its prime garden spaces in mid-city as private rentals, innaccessable under lock and key.

A day to ponder this in rare, crisp sunshine...
scrumming slow-roast suckling pig roll breakfast, and ales and whiskies in secret alleys and lanes.
A last whiskey with old Robert, to round the last few consonants remnant of a lifetime of mariners shoreside consolation.
Packing for the train to follow.

Heaven on the top shelf.

The centre of Edinburgh exhibits a unique form of torture, manifested in a solid 3 square miles wall of solid bagpipe assault. The overly generous scattering of tourist shops in the central city are so evenly spaced that the perpetual bagpipe music that emanates from them becomes a continuous wall of celtic cliche. All of which would be unbearable, were it not for the fact that every bar is a refuge of top shelf single malt heaven... and often 2nd and 3rd shelves as well.

Inevitably a decent cheese shop has a Frenchman, pizza restaurant an Italian, and now it seems that Cafe's are run by Kiwis and Australians. Having already formed a beachhead in London, the vanguard are already in Edinburgh. Seeking refuge from a biting wet gust, burst into a cosy rustic little cafe , and there amidst the mix-and-match antique furniture, comfortingly warm music, and the smell of fresh coffee... the antipodean stereo accents behind the machine.

After a few days of unbroken gloomy grey, chill damp and rain... the sun.
A couple of morning blacks to start the day, and out and up the long way over Arthurs Seat.
And down after to leather armchair, ale by the pint, Haggis Neeps and Tatties.
Restored.

Gigha to the end of the world.

A chance to bookend my experience of the Hebrides, started 3 years ago with Lewis & Harris, with a daytrip down to the Island of Gigha (just off the coast of the Kintyre Penninsula, affectionately referred to the "Wang of Scotland'). Complete with wistfull glances across to the the misty mountained heart of Islay Whiskey heaven.

A few observations...

Gourse, is possibly the most unfortunately named of plants. A wild-flowering weed it may be, but if for tourist information purposes only, surely a less unpleasant sounding name can be found for something that, in the spring sun, provides a welcome splash of bright warmth across the countryside. Gourse... I cant help thinking it sounds like an unpleasantly itchy skin complaint one may have on ones arse.

All the cliches about Scottish food are true, and most likely understated.

True Scottish weather involves the experience of the full range of meterological conditions in a 24 hour period, and possibly a 24 minute period.

Even Scottish food can be enjoyably experienced when taken with a proper pint of Ale or Guinness, chased with a generous dram of Lagavulin.

... Back from Gigha and down the 'Wang' to the end of the World (otherwise known as the Mull of Kintyre), to gaze across to Ireland and in the distance, next weeks destination.