AT RISK

This building has been steadily decaying in Market Street for years. There is all talk and no action of building a science centre here which would be nice but for now it is just crumbling away with nothing happening to it, just like so many other sites in Edinburgh city centre. Meanwhile the council and the planners seem obsessed with wrecking any nice open areas in favour of not bothering with the nasty open areas like this one.

Mind you, in a way I kind of like it. I hadn't really noticed before until I tried to photograph it but as you can see it has a weird perspective. Nothing lined up at all so I just gave in and so you have it in all its M.C Escher type non-glory.

It is so unsettling that it puts me in mind of the Winchester Mansion a little. (caution - irritating sound track at link). The mansion was built by Sarah Winchester who believed that she was being followed by the ghosts of all the people who had been killed by her late husbands rifles. If she kept on building more and more rooms in the mansion, then the ghosts would have enough space and not bother her. She slept in a different room every night so the spirits couldn't find her. Money was no object since the cash flow from the Winchester Repeating Arms Company was enormous, some $1000 a day at the end of the 19th century. The result was a huge sprawling mansion with staircases that led nowhere, doors that open out into thin air or into brick walls and chimneys that stop short of the roof. Sad story.