The castle calling...

Playlist

Alice Cooper - The Pretty Road 1969-2023

Cloudland Blue Quartet & Sombre Reptiles - Decades

James Jamieson - Precious

Cloudland Blue Quartet - Deeperdown

Cloudland Blue Quarte - Sparklemusik

Cloudland Blue Quartet & James Jamieson - Live at the Roxy 2005-07-14

Up not exactly with the larks but, you know, up...

Today was Alice Cooper's 76th birthday...

Jeez oh...

Most of the day, when listening, was, therefore, soundtracked by the crossfaded career spanning comp I did when "Road" came out last August...

Coop-tastic!

Also today...

...listened to tracks from a couple of my old things, "Deeperdown", inspired by wanting to hear again the two Jamie Frain songs we re-wrote for CBQ back in 2005; and "Sparklemusik" form 2021 which was such a mammoth LP to record, as attested to in the sleeve notes...

I can't believe I've issue a further 39(!!!) releases since then...

My best stuff is being swamped by all these almost monthly releases but, in this day and age, you can't achieve any traction whatsoever for anything, new things are only vital on the day of release or so, so you always need to be doing something new (although my Beethoven and Eno LPs are still selling well and, to be fair, people are delving into my entire back catalogue but the big attention always goes to the new stuff)......

You can't just put an album out and wait two years till your next one anymore...

Anyway, post a swift lunch, out and into town, in the mist...

Our target was in the distance....

,,,but got closer...

...and soon we were in, for our free visit to Edinburgh Castle...

Misty views from the ramparts...

...and across the courtyards facing West...

Into the first of many museums visited today...

...most with good views...

This was that for the Scots Greys - named after their horses - which, in WWI had to be dyed chestnut as they were too easy to spot...

The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards received this gold record for sales of "Amazing Grace" in 1972...

A unique story...

A ship built by prisoners of war...

Dungeons a plenty...

...and prisons too...

And, from the histories of so many wars and battles, it became obvious all of these were about rich people running out of money and sending their poor people to fight and die in wars against other rich people's poor people...

Depressing stuff indeed...

Still, the people who actually fought and died got medals, so that's ok...

...and a whopping great memorial too, so that's ok...

Into the Great Hall...

...the walls lined with weapons of death...

A man here on holiday from Cork engaged us in conversation about swords...

Nice windows...

...and out and into a nearby building to see Scotland's Crown Jewels...

...the slow path to which was illustrated along the way by "scenes"...

...including the "something" (can't remember) hat...

...and sculptures of the actual things...

...which are not allowed to be photographed so took this from the website..

Reasonably impressive, including the "Stone of Destiny" (jeez, people are superstitious dolts really)...

Kings, Queens and other Royals...

...and another impressive hall...

Here's Anne being impressed...

Down into what's left of "David's Tower"...

..and out again...

The mist had cleared...

To St Margaret's Chapel, from around 1130 or so, oldest part of ther castle...

...and, possibly, smallest...

...but with impressive windows...

Mons Meg...

The massive canon was built at Mons in Belgium, in 1449 and transported to Scotland at the rate of 9 miles a day, due to its weight...

More Edinburgh views...

...and then one last exhibition of warfare...

The story of Bob the Dog was good though...

Go Bob - medal for "chasing cannonballs"...

Weapons of death abounding...

Ah yes, good old General Haig...

...and a couple of final Westward views...

..before exiting after around 2.5 hours...

Very enjoyable, especially for free...

The money we saved went on tasty pizzas at Bar Napoli...

Home around 6...

A couple of "Leverage"...

Writing this up and doing some "work"...

Later, the welcome return of "Death in Paradise"...

Good weekend...

Highlight of the Day: The castle...

Today's New Music:-