You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Yesterday upon the stair

Okay, I acknowledge that the spelling and general form of my last entry left something to be desired; unfortunately, I ran out of time, and decided that it was better to post in an imperfect form than not to post at all. So - thank you for your patience, and in return, here's a cute photo of a baby.

See why I said she was adorable?

***

At dinner with Morgue and Cal tonight, I suddenly felt cut off from the news. Now, I normally don't think of myself as particularly well-informed, but they were talking about something that had been all over The Register recently. Now, The Register is one of the few news sites that I do read regularly - I'm not a big fan of slashdot, Z-net or Ars Technica, and I only occasionally visit the BBC news site or Stuff - so it really made me realise how much I've put my life on hold while I'm travelling.

I wonder whether travelling with a laptop would make a difference? I mean, hot-spots seem to be all over the place now, so as long as you're prepared to pay for it, you should able to keep up with your favourite sites while you're cruising around. But on the other hand, there are heaps of internet cafes around, yet I only seem to update my blog when I'm staying with someone with web access - so maybe I wouldn't have time, even if I had a laptop.

***

Morgue and Cal have a flatmate, I'm given to understand. He has not left his room in the time I've been here. No, wait, that's not entirely true - when I went out to brush my teeth last night, I saw his door close. And when I was in my long, drawn-out process of getting up, he came into the room, saw I was there, mumbled something, and left. Well, I assume it was him - I didn't have my glasses on, so I can't even guarantee that it was a "him".

Got up rather later than I intended (I must have been more tired than I thought), and then caught the bus into town, and walked around all day. I certainly hope that this holiday is making me fit, as I seem to spend an awful lot of it on my feet. As many people have said, Edinburgh is a beatiful city; as Morgue has said, it is currently full of tourists.

The big film festival is on next week. Luckily, I'll be gone by then; I'll admit to being tempted to pick up a brochure.

There were many people trying to give me fliers to shows. Since I'm not entirely clear how you book tickets, this seemed to me to be somewhat pointless, but I accepted one or two for politeness sake, and then kept my hands in my pockets.

I have had more people asking me for change here than in London, Oxford or Cambridge. (The absence of homeless people in Hay-on-Wye isn't that surprising; there wasn't very much Hay-on-Wye to be homeless in.) I'm not sure whether they've been drawn here by the extra tourists, or if there's a high number of them normally, maybe one of the semi-natives can clarify. :)

***

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do next. I mean, I know what I'm doing tomorrow - I'm probably going to a show with Morgue. And I know what I'll probably be doing after Edinburg - I have a return ticket to London, and hopefully I'll hear from one of the ex-Weta people before I go back, otherwise I may have to impose on Bob. And then I have to pop back to Oxford to change my books and grab my passport, and then I have to get over to Denmark.

But... I'm not really interested in going to Prague if it's only me that's going. Maybe I'll go to Dublin, or even somewhere in Scotland other than Edinburgh - who knows, maybe I'll get to chat to someone Scottish if I did that. (Talking to Morgue & Cal, it's apparently quite easy to live and work in Edinburg and not know any Scots: there are simply tons of people from elsewhere working here.)

Maybe I'll go to another small town and walk around - that seemed to work pretty well.

***

It's getting pretty late, so I'll wrap it up here. I guess my holiday is more than half over now; while I'm still enjoying myself, I'm glad that it's only a month. There's very few things that beat your own bed.

Posted by svend at August 17, 2004 11:44 AM