Hopefully, I’ll still manage to find the odd wee gem to comment about on here. In fact, I need to look no further than this morning. I was passing the Central Bar at the foot of Leith Walk when some wild eyed denizen of the all night bars approached me tapping his wrist (presumably where a watch would be if he hadn’t pawned it for Buckfast).

“What’s the time pal?”

“Ten to eight”, I replied.

<pregnant pause>

“In the morning”, I kindly elaborate.

The new baby is fast approaching. Launch is imminent. With only about 5 weeks to go, things are starting to fall into place. The one thing which ultimately needs to fall into place though is selling the house and buying somewhere more suitable for two kids. A third floor tenement flat is not the place to be living. The house is big enough, but it’s too many steps up from the ground.

Unfortunately, the market is poor and the house still needs some final work before it can go on the market. Hopefully we’ll get it on somewhere around August time.

In some ways, I’ll be loathe to leave Leith and all it’s little quirks. I like it’s ability to bring all levels of society together on one flat playing field. You can eat in a Michelin star restaurant but you may have to step over a junkie to get in the door.

Other aspects I won’t miss though. Particularly the cretins who think it’s funny to kick the wing mirror off your car as they return from the pub on a Saturday night or run a key down the side of your car.

This past weekend was spent doing some really nice stuff. On Saturday, my wife stayed at home sorting through and tidying stuff in the house whilst I took Sam to the beach at Portobello. Good fun building sandcastles although what is it with kids and their magnetic attraction to water. I couldn’t take my eyes off him for two seconds without him making his happy little way down to a ‘stream’ of water running into the sea. For anyone born in Scotland in the 1970′s, it’s difficult not to associate such streams with effluent, particularly as Scottish beaches of that era regularly had sewerage streams into the sea or sewerage pipes which spilled out their contents half way down the beach.

Portobello beach was rocking though. On a walk along the promenade it was possible to see Mr Whippy ice-creams and jaded amusement arcades – symbols of Scottish beach resorts past – alongside more modern seaside pursuits such as beach volleyball and even some dude lifting weights.

On Sunday, we all went to East Links Children’s Park which was magic fun. Sam’s expression as the miniature train pulled away with a ‘choo choo’ was priceless. Sheer excitement. It was blisteringly hot though. We’ve all come home with more than a hint of colour about us. The heat eminating from my body last night was unbelievable.

Nothing else to report really, although I have developed an unhealthy fascination with North Korea lately and have just had a book about life there delivered from Amazon. I’m eternally fascinated with the idea of the last truly Communist state on the planet, where everyone has food and accommodation supplied by the state, people disappear overnight (rounded up by secret police) and the entire city of Pyongyang is woken up every morning at 7am by patriotic songs blaring out through loudspeakers.

Same thing happens in Leith, only it’s the drilling that wakes you at 7am.

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Well, this time I’m reading it online using DailyLit. I discovered DailyLit in the way I discovered a lot of things – via Stumbleupon and it’s very cool. Basically it delivers books (for free in most cases) in chunks either by email or by RSS feed. I’m currently doing Treasure Island on RSS. Not bad at all and quite readable given that I often find it difficult to read eBooks and such like.

I quite like Robert Louis Stevenson’s works. I’ve read Kidnapped recently as well. His books are hard hitting, fast moving and there are rarely any tedious love scenes, romance or any of the kind of things which nork up a good adventure story. Straight to the killing and the pirates. A winning formula in my book.

Back to the non-fictional world, the weekend is looming. Nothing planned this weekend, which is quite nice. There’s been a fair amount of stuff on in recent weeks and it wouldn’t do us any harm to have no fixed schedule this weekend. My only commitment is providing a training course for about an hour and a half at the Spartans Academy tomorrow morning on how to use WordPress to update their site. Nothing too taxing either for them or for me hopefully.

Have a good weekend.

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Not THE Elvis. An impostor.

He was standing there getting what looked like a Superking fag down his neck. All wig, shades and jumpsuit. In typical Leith fashion, no one was even giving him a second glance. Elvis? Smoking a fag ootside the Marksman? Am ah supposed tae be excited aboot that?

On the subject of Leith, I’ve started reading Trainspotting. Twelve years behind everybody else but never mind. It’s actually a lot better than I thought it would be. I recently read “Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs”, another of Irvine Welsh’s books and thoroughly enjoyed it which is why I’ve decided to give Trainspotting a spin.

Scottish literature, film and television so often focus on Glasgow and Glaswegians. “No mean city” and all that. It’s refreshing to read about Edinburgh, particularly given the broad Edinburgh dialect in the book. Even though it’s set in the Leith of the mid 1980′s, many of the establishments mentioned are still in existence.

The Marksman bar is one of them. Elvis was probably kicking about back then as well. In those days though, he could have had a fag INSIDE the boozer.

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I’ve booked another two train journeys today. I’m on holiday from work next week but the two following weeks will see me spend the majority of my time on one train or another as I travel around the country giving training courses or presentations.

I don’t mind the train. It’s so much less hassle than flying these days. You are virtually down to your boxer shorts with the contents of your laptop bag scattered all over the security desk being swabbed before you get through to the departure lounge. Quite irritating.

Two of my journeys are overnight sleeper trains. Regular readers will know the love/hate relationship I have with the caledonian sleeper. The love aspect is the convenience. Spending a night away from home when you have a young child is not ideal and the sleeper allows me to avoid that inconvenience by still being able to go home, spend some time with the family and then head out of Waverley at midnight, using the dead time to travel and sleep at the same time. This is preferable to being away from 4pm in the evening, flying to London and then tubing it to the hotel.

On the flip side though, it’s no privilege to pay £152 for a ridiculously narrow single bed in a room which resembles a cell on a prison ship in the 1970′s. Quite often the tap doesn’t work, so you can’t even have a wash in the morning and you spend the whole night waking up with every jolt and clank on the line.

Never mind, I’ve got a week of no work to help me get used to the idea.

In other news, I received a letter yesterday from the Scottish Book Trust, telling me that the short story which I submitted to the ‘Days Like This’ project had been selected by the judging panel to appear in a book of the same name to be published early next year.

Enclosed in the envelope was a contract (in duplicate) which stated that I would be paid £10 and receive a free copy of the book. I had to sign the contract to state that I was handing over sole publication rights to the Scottish Book Trust and that I understood that I was not eligible for further royalties from sales of the book.

I’m quite chuffed really. I submitted the story for a laugh really on the basis that I was really getting into writing as a result of this blog. It will be good to see my story in print.

Have a good weekend.

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From reading the small print, any of these stories could be broadcast or printed in the future. Maybe this scrambled collection of poetic license, half truth and teenage memory might just make it into a book. You never know.

The premise of the “Days Like This” Project is to collect stories from Scottish residents or Scots living abroad about a single day in their life.

Read it in all it’s glory here.

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It’s as brilliant as I remember it. Bradbury is a great writer. I mean, just the names of his characters are amazing. “Jim Nightshade” and “Mr G.M. Dark”. I recently read “It” by Stephen King and whilst “Pennywise the Clown” is a great name, it’s nor as simple or as sinister as “Mr G.M. Dark”.

I’ve loved Bradbury’s work for years, ever since being captivated by “Fahrenheit 451“, the tale of Guy Montag the fireman who saves books from burning. All great stuff. Bradbury is definitely one of my favourite authors. The words just tumble from the page.

On a sporting note, tomorrow sees the end of an era with what is likely to be the last Scottish Cup game at City Park. A big crowd is expected – Pollok are expected to bring 500 travelling fans and I can see Spartans drawing a similar number, be they hardcore fans or interested observers.

To be fair, the old girl is on her last legs. It’s a shame that football grounds like City Park just disappear into the history books. Spartans will move to a shiny new ground with modern facilities next month which is great for the club, but I can’t help but feel nostalgic for little grounds like City Park which make up in atmosphere and history what they lack in facilities. There have been some classic cup games there in recent years, most noticably the game against St Mirren, watches by around 3,300 fans in 2006.

These kind of grounds are the grounds of my youth. I remember going to numerous junior games as a teenager and enjoying the atmosphere as sometimes 800 or more fans packed into delapidated grounds for big Scottish Junior Cup games against the big clubs from Ayrshire. All fag smoke, bunnets and swearing.

Whilst I agree that we have to move with the times, I’ll miss that type of ground. Only when the last one is gone and replaced with featureless modern apartments will we realise what we had. It’s part of the heritage.

Speaking of nostalgia, there was a kid on the bus this morning who called his mum a “Nincompoop”. I’ve not heard that one in the longest time.

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