Silver Man.

Pentax K1000, Kodak BW400CN, ISO 400

When our alarms went off at 6.30am this morning, M and I didn't exactly jump out of bed! No hangovers, just tired after a week's hard work. We were aiming to eat breakfast at home, but after an extremely sluggish shower there was no time, and we just walked to the train station and got a bacon roll on the way. It's quite a short trip to Edinburgh from Aberdeen, but Mum and Dad still beat us there by car - it's the halfway point between us and them. Dad had a cup of tea with us at a nearby gallery before heading off to the zoo for a day of taking pictures for paintings. Mum, M and I all stayed at the gallery and had a look at the Vogue fashion photography exhibition (£6 an entry: I reckon a little too high). It was really interesting and I was surprised by just how drawn I was to the older film photography rather than the airbrushed newer stuff. Models in the 50s had to be naturally beautiful, not just thin.

Afterwards, we took a walk up the Royal Mile to see a few performers. Crazy as usual. We stopped to watch a man on a Chinese pole doing acrobatics 22 feet in the air with no harness; he must have been incredibly strong. He was a real showman and worth a watch. Walking a bit further up we saw this tin man, painted entirely silver with creepy silvery contact lenses - he had to be my Blip, given that last year's was a golden girl.

When we'd exhausted the Royal Mile, we walked across the city to the Edinburgh Photographic Society building for the 151st International Photography Exhibition. There were some lovely pictures there - about 50% - but I was stunned by how many of the pictures were HDR, then fiddled with incessantly until they didn't look like photographs any more. I find that effect very ugly! I can't help but feel if you need to tamper that heavily with your images, something is going wrong somewhere. I do lots of tampering with my digital photos - that probably says something :o)

We had coffee and cake at Glass and Thomson. It was really good (the second time in as many Fringe Festivals) - Mum had a cardamom and coconut cake and M and I both had a strawberry frangipane tart (not a frangible tart, as my computer wants to correct it to) which were all gorgeous. Having looked the place up on Trip Advisor though, it seems we were lucky not to encounter a waiter with a bow tie!

After our cakey lunch we walked back up to the Gardens and saw a guy called Todd Various in an absolute cracker of a show - he's a contortionist, magician and all-round funny guy, with acerbic wit and a talent for impromptu/observational comedy. He even got M and another random guy from the audience up to help wrap him in a straightjacket and chains, which he then escaped from. He was very funny, carrying out a running commentary on M's ability to tie the chains tightly, and making fun of the other (slightly feminine) guy as well as a few of the audience members who were clapping less than enthusiastically!

We had one last walk up the Royal Mile and found a cafe with Schiehallion ale and haggis bon bons, and I took a couple more photos. By the time Dad came to pick us all up we were shattered! We ate our dinner in South Queensferry in a nice bar with a cracking view of the Forth Road Bridge, then M and I fell asleep in the car as Dad drove us back to Aberdeen. Fantastic day!