Les toits d'Edimbourg..

Les toits d'Edimbourg. No sign of Albert, Pola, Louis or Fred. (No prizes either for spotting the allusion.)

Was just listening to a piece on R4 (may it broadcast for ever) about cities in literature, and it was accompanied by a reading of that passage from the beginning of Bleak House.

"Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights...." and Dickens uses fog as a metaphor for all that is wrong in the great city, especially in the workings of the Law.

Edinburgh has been adopted by writers - Walter Scott, R L Stevenson, Muriel Spark, Ian Rankin among many.... - and its grey, damp Presbyterianism is a strong platform for many stories.

Anyway, plenty of mist here. The Pentland Hills behind and to the right - and yes, you can just see the ski slope snaking between two chimneys. And the Braid Hills nearer and to the left.