I’ve been pottering about quietly in my flat, with the windows open. It is a still kind of day here in in Edinburgh, and the sound from Tynecastle wafts over the tenements. In this manner I deduce that Hearts are beating whoever it is they are playing.
I’m reminded of my time in Rio de Janeiro, living near the Parque Guinle, in the shadow of the Corcovado. If Fluminese or Botafogo happened to score, the city would erupt in a joyous cacaophony, like a jungle awakening.
Sometimes I find it is nice to live in a noisy town. The disturbances, like the roar of Tynecastle, or the One O’Clock Gun, are a kind of language of the city, one that you can pick out and understand above the hum of the traffic. It is a communication (of sorts) with your neighbours, who are elsewhere and enjoying themselves. “We are here,” they say. “You are not alone.”
Tag: Diary (Page 24 of 30)
I was on a 06:40am flight from Heathrow to Edinburgh this morning, run by BMI. It was half full. Also waiting in the departure lounge were passengers for the 06:50am British Airways flight… to Edinburgh.
What a waste of everyone’s resources in the name of consumer choice. I have travelled on British Airways flights before, and the service provided is exactly the fucking same as that provided by BMI, and for the same cost. If only we could pool them into a single service at, say, 06:45am or something.
Perhaps this is something that The State could organise?
The Space Shuttle Discovery is about an hour away from it’s “de-orbit burn”, where they flip the craft upside-down, and fire their engines. It falls out of orbit and becomes a very expensive glider. I highly recommend a trip over to NASA TV where you can watch the transition happen.
What I do not recommend is that you wait until the last moments before landing to load the video stream. Last year, the RealPlayer stream, which I had been running smoothly in the background for a good half hour before landing, failed on me literally seconds before touch down. I blamed all those Fair Weather Shuttle Watchers who hadn’t put in the hours beforehand, overloading the system at the eleventh hour. By the time the stream came back online, the moment had passed and the crew were out on the tarmac.
The same thing happened in April 2005 when the new Pope was chosen. All morning I had been vieiwing the BBC PopeCam, which was pointed at the Sistine Chapel Chimney. So it came to pass that I noticed the white smoke before the crowd in St Peter’s Square. But yet again, when the time came for the actual announcement, the stream became overloaded when thousands of rapturous Catholics followed the same link. “Habemus Papum! The new Pope is…” Crackle. Zip.
UPDATE: Landed at 1315 GMT, and I got to see the whole thing.
An image from the NASA website depicts Briton Piers J Sellars working on the ISS (International Space Station) during an EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity, more commonly known as a space-walk). Sellars had some difficulty during his second EVA yesterday, when his emergency jet thruster back-pack came loose from its tether. Fortunately his colleague Mike Fossum was on hand to secure it in place.
A close examination of Sellars suit reveals a graphic of an astronaut, drawn in the style of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. I love this kind of witty design thinking. Its also an appropriate symbol – The multipurpose logistics module being delivered to the ISS is called Leonardo.
Plenty of discussion on the blogs and in the media about the london bombings, this time last year, notably from survivors such as the irrepressible Rachel and the idosyncratic Dave Taurus.
The bombings were a terrible punctuation to a bizarre week. The previous Saturday, I had worn white and joined the Make Poverty History march, along with thousands of others. It was a hot day, and we stopped half-way round to have a pint on George IV Bridge. We chatted to a couple who had taken a bus from Bristol to join in the event. The G8 summit was about to start, and there was a feeling of optimisim in the air. It was genuine.
Watching the ‘Live 8’ highlights on TV that evening, and later that week when another concert was staged at Murrayfield, it seemed to me that those events had a certain falseness. Jonathan Ross and his interviewees kept talking about what an historic concert Live 8 would be, before it had even begun. The whole event was a paean to the original Live Aid concert, a consolation prize for those who had missed it first time around. I remember saying that you cannot package and market those moments that will define a decade, and that history has a certain spontenaity – it does not take place at a pre-arranged meeting point.
Of course, the following day four guys went straight ahead and made some real history, at their own pre-arranged meeting point. Not only did they destroy lives and property, but they destroyed the sense of optimism, a rising tide of political activity and awareness, that had been swelling over the previous week. And do you know what? One year on, I don’t think we have regained that momentum. Instead we flounder in scandal and misdirection.