Fay Young

Category: Street life

  • Anyone for the pop-up economy?

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    A pop-up opportunity until the next tenant comes along? The old hard-ware shop is long gone and now the bright new baby-ware shop that took its place has gone too (though only as far as the next village).  I’m sorry to see empty windows and To Let signs in Broughton Street but maybe, just maybe,…

  • Sweetly subversive in Castle Street

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    Poetry as graffiti, a brilliant combination by Banksy (picture by CodySimms) I like to think this could be a sweetly subversive movement: poetry in motion, gently working its way into the nooks and crannies of city life; sometimes soothing, sometimes stirring.   In London this summer at least some of the 3.5 million daily passengers…

  • Be brave Edinburgh, follow Glasgow’s lead

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    Public space for people Sunday lunchtime. The sun is shining, the pan pipes are playing and the waiter is serving sea food and pink wine at the table next to us.  If you shut your eyes you might be in a typical street cafe in a typical European town centre.  And of course that’s where…

  • Rust in pieces on the Water of Leith

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    Thanks to Ray Perman for this guest blog on a bold new proposal for our part of town. And thanks to Aunty P for the picture (taken a little further afield). I like the work of Antony Gormley. I like particularly that his rusting, steel statues – modelled on his own body, although you would…

  • Tescotown – Tescotram?

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    The success of our business depends on listening to people and responding to what they tell us. [Tesco Corporate Social Responsibility] Here’s a shocking revelation in our local community newsletter.  Shocking but probably not surprising.   Tesco  will not be paying a penny towards the construction of Edinburgh’s tram route although it is perfectly – and…

  • When a house is a home

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    A new dawn, a new neighbour, a new kitchen Poor old house. I can almost hear it groaning through the adjoining walls as the banging and drilling, the sawing and sanding, the breaking down and tearing up begin all over again. Yet another new neighbour means new paint, new carpets, new bathroom suite and, of…

  • Guardian sings the Broughton Street Blues

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    I left a message on Tom’s mobile suggesting we might take a rain check.  Or even a snow check.  But the Guardian’s new beatblogger is made of strong stuff and how could I refuse? He wanted to follow up my blog about Tesco by interviewing real shopkeepers in Broughton Street and he wasn’t going to…

  • Broughton awaits Tesco Express

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    Welcome to Broughton Street, open for business despite the tramworks. It’s the place to come whether you want a leisurely meal or a quick coffee, whether you are looking for upmarket sausages or  good wines, second hand books or frilly knickers, organic  fruit, vegetables or ( ahem) erotica.  On a wet March morning there is …

  • Roses are red and dogwood is too

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    We’re planting in the Poetry Garden today so it’s not good to wake to a small blizzard swirling outside the window. But, would you believe it, by the time we carry our poems to St Andrew Square the sky is blue, the sun is shining and the snow is a perfect background for bright red…

  • The tenement tree

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    Enlightened city had let you be till Mammon’s grasp said ‘damn the tree’; So far the trees are still there: a splash of green between grey buildings in a grey street. Otherwise only cars and traffic signs add  colour to one of the posher parts of Edinburgh. Planning permission for a new building on the…

  • No mess, just hope

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    The National Portrait Gallery is plastered with graffiti. Empty shops fill with art, music and dance. Subversive signposts undermine the shopping mall. Bright paint covers a grey tenement. Could be the stuff of nightmares for some but to me it is like a dream come true. Ever since I first visited Berlin I have wanted…

  • Here and (not) there

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    here, there and gone: where? Home is a controversial word for Iyad Hayatleh, a Palestinian poet who was born in a Syrian refugee camp. “The most controversial word of my life,” he told us. He has never been to Palestine but to mark Refugee Week, Iyad read poems about home in Arabic and English as…