Ah, Edinburgh!

[endlessrarities]

I was visiting the National Monuments Record for Scotland today, so I spent the day in Edinburgh.

It was potentially bad timing.  Pope Benedict was in town.  Not that you'd have guessed it... 

I saw one stand selling 'Pope Benedict' scarves and flags for the faithful, stumbled across numerous pictures of His Holiness emblazoned on almost every newspaper, and heard a few passing references to 'Pope', 'Catholics', 'Protestors' and 'f***in' Catholics'.  The last came from a red-faced old boozehound stumbling his way across a busy street in the rush hour.  I don't know what the supporters of Scotland's traditional medieval religion did to upset him - I suspect he'd be blaming his woes on any helpful scapegoat that came to mind... 

And there were policemen (and women!) everywhere.  Plus a helicopter...

My day was not disrupted.  I spent it closeted amongst countless aerial photographs, where I became intimately acquainted with the site that will be dominating my life over the next couple of years - the local ordnance factory which we'll be recording prior to its destruction. 

Life has a strange way of turning back on itself.  Ten years ago, in a totally different job, I found myself sifting through these same aerial photographs and thinking, 'this place is fascinating!'  From the air, it was a visually arresting site, with all its little bunkers and trackways.

http://aerial.rcahms.gov.uk/database/record.php?usi=006-004-003-975-C&scache=7usoq16dqi&searchdb=tara_scran
 
At the time, my curiosity was roused - I never knew my working life was carrying me on a collision course with the site in question!  I've been eager to get my teeth into this one - in preparation, I'm reading the English Heritage book Dangerous Energy: The Archaeology of Gunpowder and Military Explosives Manufacture.  Life is revolving around gun cotton, gloom stoves, nitro-glycerine hills, brown and black powder, and low and high explosives, and other countless delights.

I didn't get home till 7.15, so I'm knackered.  The good news is that we were visited by a tame blackbird this morning, but I don't know if it's our regular one.  Tomorrow I've got a half-day for Aunt M's funeral, and then I'm on holiday for a week.  Hoorah!

It is of course a Busman's Holiday, but I don't plan to go visiting any munitions factories, so a change should be as good as a rest!