We are booked for a month into a very comfortable, nicely warm and well-furnished Airbnb in central Edinburgh that has a view of the Castle.  Our idea has been to try a model for visiting Edinburgh that is different from our usual 3-4 night stays with Eldest Son, wife and First Grandchild.  In part it is just an extended holiday, but in part a test as to how we might find living more permanently in this wonderful city.

The first two weeks have been extremely successful – until a bit of a disaster yesterday; more on that later. 

We have already visited lots of Edinburgh sights – the museums, cathedrals, galleries and exhibitions – got into the hinterlands of Edinburgh and, of course, done a bit of grandchild entertainment.  Were lucky enough to have a double dose of grandchildren when Middle Son, his fiancée and Second Grandchild visited us on our second weekend.  That visit, plus the nature of the intermittent contact with First Grandchild over a longer period than usual, has created a bit of a feel of living here rather than just holidaying here. 

No doubt that feeling would have been further enhanced by Youngest Son and his wife being able to join us as planned on our first weekend in Edinburgh.  Unfortunately, Storm Eowyn put paid to that.  Their flight was cancelled and Edinburgh was all but shut down during the worst if the storm.  Even at the end of the storm, the gusts of wind were strong enough to knock me off my feet!

Because of, first, Storm Eowyn, and then a visit from Middle Son and family, we have tended to eat in rather than out.  However, we have sampled a couple of our favourite bars and a few cafés, and we love the local pub (Teuchters).  Anyway, there are two more weeks for trying some more recommended restaurants. 

Cooking in a holiday home is not new to us but doing so most evenings over a few weeks is another way of generating a feeling of being ‘home from home’ rather than just being on holiday.  Next week, we are even entertaining Eldest Son’s parents in law.  That will be a further novelty but a nice reflection of how things might be if we moved to Edinburgh more permanently.

During our days here, we have been very active.  We have, of course, sampled the normal delights of the Royal Botanic Garden the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, the Modern Art Gallery of Scotland the Scottish National Gallery and the National Museum of Scotland.  Edinburgh is a capital and has public buildings, exhibitions and collections to match that status.  There were new exhibitions in all of the galleries and all were a pleasure to visit – although it was sad to see the Storm Eowyn damage in the Botanic Gardens.

The Scottish National Gallery is celebrating 40 years of its photography collection and curation.  Photography is not my favourite art form but it was good to see some pictures by some famous photographers (such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Annie Liebovitz, and Lee Miller) among the often gritty, local Scottish fare.

The Modern Art Gallery continues to show the substantial Everlyn Nicodemus exhibition which I saw on our last Edinburgh visit.  I sped through that but perhaps somehow enjoyed it a little more on a second viewing; plus, there are several other works in the gallery’s permanent collection I had not focused on before.

The Scottish National Gallery had a sequel to an exhibition of JMW Turner watercolours that I had seen in the gallery two years previously.  That had shown the section of the Henry Vaughan collection of Turner watercolours that had been bequeathed to Scotland.  This new exhibition was of the selection of watercolours bequeathed to Northern Ireland that again, as part of conditions of the donation, can only be shown to the public in January. 

There were no surprises in the collection of blurry seascapes, sunrises, sunsets and mountain valleys shrouded in mist.  But I like Turner’s style and enjoyed the viewing despite the long queues to get in.

Also at the National Gallery was a small exhibition of art inspired by the landscape of the Orkneys, called ‘In Orcadia’ and including large, interestingly constructed paintings by Samantha Clark. 

That was good but even better, I thought, was the large exhibition of paintings by the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour.  There were hundreds of paintings on show and of course, not all hit the spot for me.  But overall, I thought the quality was very high and I could imagine several on my living room wall.

^{The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour Annual Exhibition}

We also went to diverse art exhibitions at Dovecote Studios and the City Art Centre.  At Dovecote we saw textiles and paintings by Ptolemy Mann.  The designs were colourful and bold but Jane was a little disappointed that the majority of the textiles were manufactured in India not Scotland. 

At the City Art Centre were two exhibitions of modern Scottish art and of pop art; I liked the pots by Lara Scobie at the former and the typically irreverent set of cartoonish watercolours by the seemingly slightly unhinged, David Shrigley.

^{Works By Lara Scobie and David Shrigley At The City Art Centre, Edinburgh}

We made a couple of trips to the National Museum of Scotland.  The first to see some of the displays that we don’t get much of a chance to see when accompanied by First Grandchild.  The second was with him; his increasingly calm inquisitiveness was a joy to participate in.

One concept we discussed, as we passed some of the dinosaur and wild animal exhibits, was that of skeletons.  Subsequent conversations indicate that he understood how creatures often have skeletons and that you can’t see until after they are dead.  It’s fascinating to watch children learn.

And now we come to the misfortune of yesterday….. Apart from Storm Eowyn, the weather during our stay has been largely dry and sunny.  However, it has also been cold and yesterday morning my wife, Jane, slipped on some ice and, it turned out, broke her shoulder.  The pictures of x-rays that we came away from the hospital with have helped First Grandchild understand the importance of bones but there is no other upside to the accident. 

We’ll cope and enjoy the rest of our stay in Edinburgh but plans regarding how are changing……