Observation

Slightly incongruous to be re-reading Werner Herzog’s Of Walking in Ice whilst we all wallow in the sunshine this week.  A bit like walking around with an ice-cube in my pocket as Edinburgh metamorphoses into an outdoor theatre and city life explodes on to the streets.  It’s interesting to think about how a hot snap of unseasonal weather can challenge the notion of city design, public space, and it’s usage.  Groups and individuals start to congregate freely in the most unlikeliest of spaces under ‘normal weather conditions’. The usual wet and windy expanse of the Usher Hall steps are transformed into a natural amphitheatre, for meeting, eating, drinking, thinking and reading. Any available sun-facing surface is colonised by the intrepid light worshiper including window sills and ledges. People appear to embrace drifting and flaneuring in lunch hours, glad to be moving though the city with no particular purpose.   I haven’t really given too much  thought about the relationship between weather and city space but when you see such an instant and radical transformation it is hard to ignore.

Now playing:  Untitled – Birchville Cat Motel . Bruce Russell.