Busy Streets

Yesterday I went to Edinburgh again, this this time with Jenny. We were in the centre, it's festival time and the streets were crowded. Some people seem convinced they can just walk though you, I think we must have been using a cloak of invisibility! Which reminds me of the first time I came to Edinburgh. I was visiting a friend to see the place and decide wether I wanted to come here for medical school or go to London. I was waiting for her at the railway station. At that time there was a cafe at the top where you could look over Princes Street, I remember seeing the heaving mass of people, looking like ants, covering the pavements in all directions. I was terrified, a country mouse, the largest town I'd seen was Chichester, and it was never that busy. Luckily she lived in a quiet area, and it didn't feel so overwhelming there. Life would have been very different if I'd not come here. Better or worse -who knows, but certainly different.

We went to two exhibitions. Well, there were two on that I'd not seen.

Man Ray at the Scottish Portrait Gallery. A selection of his photographic portraits throughout his life. Brilliant. So many famous people. He must have had a glittering lifestyle, but often the models looked sad, or, at least, pensive. Very few were smiling. Very few engaged in something they enjoyed. Faces, and more faces. In a hundred years, without the bibliography no-one will recognise any of them. The brilliance of the photography will still show.

Peter Doig - No Foreign Land. As different as possible. Crashing colour. Enormous canvases, strokes of paint outlining the emotion rather than the fine detail. Some I could stare at for ever. No recognisable faces, possibly recognisable places if you knew the areas, but mostly almost abstract views telling you all about the heat, and the dust, and the sheer colour of the tropics. I was tempted to theft!