remote cards

We are in the Black Medicine café place. C is waiting at the counter for our teas and coffees, when the stubble haired guy leans forward and starts talking to him. He is dressed in black, a thick black jumper, black jeans, black boots, chunky esoteric metal chains round his neck. His hair is shaven short, maybe a 2 gauge? He wears glasses with yellow frames. There is something feral in the way he speaks to C, I watch to see how the conversation develops. Nothing seems to come of it, and after the guy has left we discuss how he was just asking about C’s phone, but there was something edgey about his manner. As we had noticed for the rest of his stay. The furniture is made of stray pieces of wood, giving it all a rugged feel. We sit at a table, the girls G and L on one side, C and I on the other. He sits behind the girls; a shelf built into the back of their bench, his mug sitting there, while he is propped on a stool. A guy with a window seat brushes by on his way to the counter. From here the conversation is fragmentary, but the gist is that they he is growling in challenge – what the hell do you want? The other guy looks surprised, I’m just passing, if I brushed you I meant no harm. He looks barely satisfied with this response. Having ordered he tries to return to his seat, the growler looks at him in challenge. Then he stands up, faces off with the guy as though he is going to start something, then grudgingly steps aside. Another customer arrives, spots something on the growler’s shelf, engages him in conversation. Can I take that? You can try, but I’m finishing my coffee here. He reaches across the growler who is not cooperating, who is obstructing. The guy is easy natured, something of a chancer, he fails, then shrugs and turns back to the counter. The growler leans precariously, waving his arms with voluble gestures, his mouth snarling silent swear words and threats. We drink our teas and coffees, we catch up, we are all conscious of his seething presence, as he glares around looking for his next victim, before finally leaving after receiving a phone call.

Labels: cafe, coffee, edinburgh, growler, hostile, tea

Postcard from the Edinburgh Book Festival
21st August 2007

Charlotte Square Gardens. A green square turned to mush. Wooden walk ways describe parameters, offering temporary floors to temporary bookshops, reading rooms and cafes. Every step is like being ocean bound, set off for foreign territory - clunk, sway, whoosh, sway, clunk- all aboard who are going aboard. The sky remains black, warns of stormy weather ahead.

Been travelling for days without food, time to stop at port, fill up on provisions. The cafe, overpriced of course - rip off sandwiches, the leftovers, toxic combinations, no sentient being would eat. The place is busy, the make-shift book shelves, cafe tables, societal claustrophobia laps, deep waves. So I risk outside. I eat, quickly, feeling myself sink into browning grass with each tasteless mouthful. Olives, tomatoes, cheese, ham, whatever else it is that’s in there - it all goes the same way.

I wander. Portacabin toilets, with that glorious festival smell. Hold your nose. Do your business. And move on. Move on. Godspeed to the courageous.

Guest of honour, on a lonely corner - loitering. Shoulder length hair, dark; fitted jacket, black; dress, cream coloured, knee length; legs, bare, nice; shoes, brown heels. At a guess a little older than me, but with a sharp attractiveness. An organiser arrives, offers a life line dear author. She smiles wanly, unconvinced. Wraps her hair back, left hand, fold behind right ear, more smiling and remember the polite chatter.

The site has an abandoned air, a curious silence informs this festival hub. People involved - children line up to get books signed, members of staff, book sellers. I look at the time. Again. The old American woman asks if I am sitting at the front of the queue or the end. I shrug, I don't know, I just sat down, and I suspect I'm not even going to the same event. I suggest she finds a chair and see what happens. But a glance suggests there aren't many chairs, so I give her mine, and wander closer to the venue. Joining the other loiterers, copies of MR.Y stick out, here and there. Listening to the laughter as a male author regales his audience in a nearby venue. Flick at midgies, who eat me, a microgram at a time, not much longer and they'll have me stripped to the bone - writers retreat!

Labels: book, edinburgh, festival, grass, midgies, square

Three punk girls. One with a ragged blonde mullet slash unruly misshapen Mohawk. One with hair dyed red, faded down to near pink, a ring through her lip, wearing glasses. The palely black girl, with short black hair, studs through each end of her lower lip, black framed glasses. The three of them fluttering around with an element of youthful energy. They end up in the line in front of us going up the stairs. A line going nowhere. Like them, I look back, at the other flight of stairs which is empty. They switch between English and Spanish in a manic manner, that is impossible to follow, speculating as to whether they should abandon this line. We come to our conclusion first, turning round and heading back for the other flight of stairs. That spurs them along, one of them saying, come on! As we reach the bottom and switch to the other flight of stairs, a member of staff appears, shouts - folks that’s the queue for the cloak room, if you don’t want the cloak room use the other flight of stairs! We laugh, where was he a minute ago when that would have been useful information?

Labels: edinburgh, gig, girl, ojos de brujo, punk, spanish

Gigs are always curious. The mix of people. Pretty girls and of course boyfriends. Spaniards here for reminders of their home lands. Pasty faced locals. A grey haired couple, here for the world music. People holding place, wondering when the others will show up. Casual smokers, getting that last puff before they go inside - the sign on the venue door saying “no pass outs for smokers”. Beside that casual Spanish girl, her boyfriend so Scottish, with a mop of ginger hair on the top of his head. Further back, a stoop shouldered, long haired metal kid, here with his parents, who look lively and aged just right.

Labels: edinburgh, gig, girl, ojos de brujo, spanish

Waiting for Ojos De Brujo. A Spanish band. You can see people hovering in the street outside the venue. Skin tones and manner clearly not Scottish. A chatter of Spanish voices in the coffee place, initially two olive skinned girls with long dark hair, though their numbers have doubled by the time I leave. Outside, a girl who looks something like the band’s singer - the way her hair is bunched and curled, the cheekbones and attitude. With her boyfriend, the two of them lean against the glass and smoke. While their friend paces smoking and drinking, taking mighty swigs from a bottle of beer. She has her hair tied back, bunched in a bun at the back of her head. Beneath a white cardigan, that is about to slide off her shoulders, she wears a slight summery top, green with white dots, fitted around her breasts, hanging by straps, leaving an upper stripe of torso and shoulders bare. Ten minutes before the scheduled doors opening time an official queue has started to form, so they wander along to join. People building up behind them, and extending in front of the coffee shop window.

Labels: edinburgh, gig, girl, ojos de brujo, spanish

Outside the coffee shop. Two girls walk down Lothian Road. Blonde, long curly hair, she wears a grey top, with a zip which is three quarters fastened, leaving a suggestion. The brunette’s hair has a read dye through it, giving it a different kind of feel. She is dressed in something black and shiny and fitted, think sexy. Both are pretty, early twenties. They both hold a fat handful of flyers, the brunette clutching them to her breast as she walks. She stops a grey haired man in his fifties or so, and gives him one of the flyers. The girls keep walking. She giggles. Then the two break into a slight run. The man stands in the street and studies the flyer in detail. One he is done, he turns round, looking to see where the girls have gone. Leans further out into the street as though that will make them more visible. But they are gone, so he turns and carries on. Later the line starts for the gig in the venue next door, we join it and wait for the doors to open. We are standing there when I spot the two girls coming back up the road, still handing out flyers. I overhear the brunette saying to someone, here half a flyer for the strip club where I work, free entry! She nips into the newsagent, presumably handing flyers out in there, coming back out, and handing me a couple, while most folk refuse, I accept out of curiosity. I hand my friend one, and then tell her what it is. She asks what she is supposed to do with it now, I laugh, and shrug, suggest that she gives it to her boyfriend when he gets back from parking his car?

Labels: edinburgh, flyers, girls, strippers

Girl with her auburn tinged brown hair tied back takes a shelf in the coffee house. Sat on a high stool, she grabs a free newspaper that is sitting off to the side. She wears a thick long scarf, multi coloured, wrapped repeatedly round her neck and lower face. She sits propped and ready, watching for them to shout when her coffee is ready. There are a couple of false alarms, where she is half off her seat, before her turn comes for real. Once she has her coffee she can settle, take off the waist length grey jacket, with its fuzzy lined hood. Beneath that she wears a warm blue woollen jumper, a couple of inches of black t-shirt peaking out from the bottom so that it almost looks like a skirt over her blue jeans. She wraps the jacket round her legs, covering her lap. Then props her head on one hand, sips coffee, turns the pages of the paper, reading carefully. Occasionally scanning the coffee for anything that might catch her interest amongst the background noise of people receiving their orders and chattering. One page clearly delights her, her nose with one nostril pierced with a thin ring, wrinkles as she grins with appreciation. After a while she digs into her backpack and digs out her phone. Checking the time, she decides its time to leave, so she wraps that long scarf back round her head, before pulling her jacket on and zipping it up. She bends down and picks up the branded super market bag with her groceries, and the generic blue polly bag, into which she shoves the paper. She slings her bag over her shoulder, then with shopping in one hand, she picks up the cup and saucer with the other and takes it back to the bar on her way out the side exit.

Labels: coffee, edinburgh, girl, reading