Tag archives for Edinburgh
Edinburgh Zoo
Lucy and I went to Edinburgh Zoo with my brothers and their kids yesterday. It was a pretty good day out despite the torrential downpour that soaked us at four ish. The highlight was the Pandas, although we only saw the male panda. Tian Tian, the female panda was hiding somewhere in the enclosure. Seeing the pandas was well organised, with timed slots and efficient queuing. We were also lucky to be in the indoor viewing room, which meant that we were very close indeed. Our day started with the meerkats just inside the entrance. The zoo has a fairly new enclosure and there are a number of baby meerkats in the group. This greatly excited Lucy as she loves baby animals and also they kept running around which made her run back and forth to follow them around the…
Edinburgh’s Camera Obscura
I was in Edinburgh visiting family at the weekend and amongst other things we visited the Camera Obscura up at the top of the Royal Mile. Despite many visits to Edinburgh I'd never been there before. My expectations were of a panoramic view in a classic Camera Obscura. The attraction is so much more than this. The whole place is packed full of optical illusions, most of which you are invited to directly interact with. Two of my favourites, which unfortunately I don't have pictures of because I was too busy enjoying them, were the mirror maze and the vortex tunnel. The mirror maze was a series of mirrors mounted at 60 degree intervals as you looked at them. ( from above they'd be at 60 degrees from each other). Although quite a small space from outside it was very…
A215 – Life Writing – Initiative at Night
Here's the second of the pieces I wrote for the A215 Creative Writing online tutorial on life writing. Saturday 13th December 1991 It’s 3am on a Saturday before Christmas 1991, I’ve only been awake for 21 hours. After a day of lectures I went with the UOTC to Redford Barracks in Edinburgh for a training camp. Since 1830 I have been on the Pentland Hills doing orienteering and solving problems with a team of third year cadets. We’ve not been good at following the approved DS solutions. To change the tire on a land rover without a jack we ignored the planks and mik crates and instead rolled the vehicle onto its side before righting it after we’d changed the tire. Our time was the fastest, but the officer wasn’t pleased. To take a casualty across a minefield (laid with…