Being a culture vulture – 19 August 2015

Last year at this time of year, we went to the Embra Festival. Note for new readers: It’s not Edinburgh or even worse Edinboro 😡 It’s Embra. It’s always been Embra. It will always be Embra. Ask any Glaswegian and they will verify this. So, today being Scamp’s day ff and well into the Festival, we decided to go to Embra on the train.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWalked up the Grassmarket which is a strange name for a street. Although we have walked up it many times and there is almost always a market there, I have never seen any grass (of any kind) being sold there. Very strange, but then, you expect strange things in Embra. At the top of the Grassmarket, we walked to the Royal Mile where most of the maddies performers were. All human life is there during the festival, and sometimes other forms of life too. We saw Japanese drummers, Korean dancers, maddies actors dressed as frogs, badgers and a bear. At least, I think it was a bear, but Scamp thought it OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAwas a dog. Just goes to show how detailed the costume was. One of the best performances was Yukinko Akira, a dancing, DJ artist. Very energetic and really quite entertaining. After a while we got tired of batting away OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERApeople dressed as pirates, samauri and bewigged dandies all wanting to give you a flier for their ‘fantastic’, ‘five star’, ‘successful’ show. We did see one man dressed as a lawyer in black gown carrying his wig, but Scamp thinks he really was a lawyer as we were just outside the high court! Anyway, we walked along Princes Street gardens and had lunch at Hendersons at St John’s church in the west end. It’s probably the best vegetarian restaurant I’ve been to. Great food, in interesting surroundings. There was even a piano player showing off his considerable talent. Scamp was impressed. Walked back and visited John Lewis (of course) before getting the train home. The weather? Oh, the weather was excellent in Embra, it was only as the train drew into Croy that the large drops of rain started hitting the windows, and I don’t think it has stopped since. So, the magic weather pixies are back in business. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

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