Off to Edinburgh yesterday. The transformation of the city in August is never anything less than extraordinary. Visitors cannot really appreciate what it is like to see a city thus transformed. Watching Edinburgh in August is like seeing a maiden aunt take to the gin on New Year’s Eve and do the can-can. Every year, right on cue.
I mean, you would never guess if you came up from the South to Edinburgh in August that it is such a po-faced, humourless place, now would you?
[Did I just say that out loud?]
Yesterday was spent in a mixture of what Edinburgh is best at in August. Sitting in a tea-shop putting the world to rights with good company, going to a Fringe show in the early evening and spending a while sitting gazing at Alison Watt’s Still. Surely one of the most successful art installations in a religious space in recent years. I love it, and gaze in silent wonder.
Where is Still? I’m off to do my own Edinburgh Ausgustian pilgrimage next week and am intrigued . . . .
Still is in the Memorial Chapel at Old St Paul’s close to Waverley. It is the chapel next to the High Altar. There are other lovely things in there too, including a triptych in the Lady Chapel where Gabriel seems to have been blown in with the wind. (Quite appropriate when you think about it).
Gabriel in the wind? I am definitely going.