Scottish soul

some pictures for those poor lost souls that come to 25th and feel the need for haggis and neeps, the cry for Hearts and the sound of pipes, the frezzing wind on the High Street and the mist rolling in from Leith Docks. I had a workshop in New Street, an old school next to Waverley Station and by all accounts a good location. The main problem with edinburgh is the councils lack of art training and their lack of vision, along with short term attitudes that seem to only suit the parking of cars and its potential in raising money. I think it must be impossible to find any one outside the council that agrees with the councils aims.
I remember being told of all the different trades that once exsisted in Edinburgh and must have given the town a real sense of identity, some individuality that every town requires, not the removeal of any sign that people work and live in the place, leaving the city for tourists, bankers and now parlimentarians. I was constantly being hounded by the council because of the prime location that my workshop had, I was the last there to be creating hand made goods in the form of furniture. The council got their way in the end for I decided that I would only have a marriage if I left Scotland to live with my wife and her daughter (Ednanda) here in Bahia, Brazil.
Artisans are for me the most important part of a community and please take me as an example for I have left in Edinburgh, Northhumberland and London not only my work but the interpretation of other peoples wishes and hopes. There are many ways to bring happiness and I feel that art is the most successful and long lasting, be it in paintings, pots, furniture, jewelery, designs of door handles, staircases ( this is now going to be a current problem for me as Michael and Zoe wish me to create something of an art staircase for their new home in France, so any gooooooooooood photos or ideas are welcome) practically every thing that you use when it is good design brings pleasure, that of seeing and ease of using. So when the Scottish councils and new parliment see money as their resource they forget the soul of the Nation is in its heritage and the culture, the sad loss of the Edinburgh Glass trade which easily rivalled that of Venice must show that museums are no use if the trades die out, like Zoo's can only show samples of what has been.
I have felt for a long time that the only way to save animals is for humans not to find them in the first place, still this is a bit late now and I guess my friend Mike Faulkner (http://www.thebluecabin.blogspot.com/) now living on Strangford Lough can only watch as the new wave of turbine power is installed into an area of preservation! This is a clip from his blog...
'When it goes operational, the SeaGen Tidal System, designed and built by Marine Current Turbines of Bristol, will use the narrows' eight-knot tidal run to deliver enough electricity for a thousand homes; and the long term aim is that this and other tidal bottlenecks will provide up to 10% of Northern Ireland’s power needs within five years; indeed, the same percentage figure is claimed for the UK as a whole using sites like the Solway Firth and the Skerries, off Anglesey'.