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| Image: Winkled Weasle |
Little bit tired yesterday after being out so late on a school night for the Darling event. No worries though, as I stopped in at the coffee shop on the way to the day job to write up the event and get it ready for posting on this blog as well as the (Unofficial) Edinburgh Book Festival Blog. I figured I should keep it rolling throughout the year with literary and bookie events that I attend.
More Tram Works
While supping my coffee, I noticed the atmosphere inside the shop has changed dramatically since the closure of Princes Street for yet more tram works. It means that Hanover Street is also closed as traffic is diverted down George Street, which in turn means all sides of the coffee shop are now pedestrianless and trafficless, making it very quiet and surreal.
You may ask why they are digging up Princes Street again. It seems that the Edinburgh trams project never did the job right the first time around and that despite their being no trams ever having run down the tracks already laid; they are already crumbling and sinking into the earth.
Edinburgh Council are an utter disgrace, there is no two ways about it. They’ve spent hundreds of millions on a failed project that nobody wants or will use end to end, and that was so badly done the first time around they are having to repeat the exercise.
Edinburgh Council’s attitude can be summed thus: fuck all the businesses that have already closed and fuck all the people that lost their livelihoods. Fuck the whole of Edinburgh while we’re at it, because the Council have their heads to far up their own arses they assume that the ideas they drum up are what the people actually want or need. Egotism is rife in the council chambers and it is this disease that runs the show.
School kids given a project to run the council for a year could do a better job, in fact, I reckon that would a great idea. Enable the kids to run the show for a year—it could hardly be any worse!
Productive
A good productive day was had, however, with a mix of jobs around the house and writing getting done. I polished up and sent in my submission for exercise 4 of the Advanced Dialogue Workshop. It’s all being forced into a point, which is probably not a coincidence given that exercise 5 addresses the need for a revelation. I’ll need to get mine in a day early as I’m through in Glasgow from Friday to Sunday this weekend.
I completed preparing the living room walls and ceiling for being plastered tomorrow. My arms and neck are aching but at least the worst of that particular job is now over. Preparations also included moving the couches out of the room—not easy but we got there in the end. Lots of cleaning and tidying done, too. We’re getting there, slowly but surely.
Animal Farm
Pippin, the family bunny, now has a spanking brand new home. It’s a slightly bigger hutch than before, raised from the ground, but which is more secure and can be access from above. It’ll make moving her about much easier as well as cleaning the dwelling out of her natural processes.
I also had to change the water in the tropical fish tank. I lost three fish overnight and so changed the water in case there was some form of illness. Seemed to be ok this morning, when I checked.
New Books
I was reading the automatic mail-out from RobAroundBooks late in the evening, spotlighting some great offers available through the Kindle from Salt Publishing. If you have a Kindle then you should really take advantage of some great offers they have running for a limited time.
I bagged the following four ebooks for 86p each!
- The White Road and Other Stories by Tania Hershman
- Sawn-off Tales by David Gaffney
- Aromabingo by David Gaffney
- The Best British Short Stories 2011 (Anthology) by Nicholas Royle
There’s some great reading in there (I published Tania in the Ranfurly Review a few years ago) so many thanks to Rob for pointing me in the right direction!
Peace and out!
OKTOBERFEST EBOOK OFFER
Enter coupon code OKTOBERFESTUK305 at checkout (OKTOBERFEST305 if outside the UK) and receive 15% off your order of my poetry ebooks: FRINGE FANTASTIC, POOLSIDE POETRY and SILLY POEMS FOR WEE PEOPLE VOL.2. Offer cannot be applied to previous orders and only applies to books or eBooks ordered through the Lulu option. Offer expires at 11:59 PM on September 23rd, 2011.
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Freedom from the Mundane 
Are Council meetings open to the public? Are people going there to complain? Or are they just being ignored anyway? When’s the next Election? Can you get ’em all out?
As far as I’m aware (could be wrong) Council meetings are closed events. One thing I do know is that people are ignored, especially those with legitimate complaints, but we have to wait until the next set of elections to remove them. Unfortunately, with the state of Scottish politics being as it is, the same people keep getting re-elected because people tend to vote by party and not person.