and determination

It might be my habitual head-down-fast-walk (now superseded by the look-into-nooks-for-pictures-fast-walk) but I'm spectacularly bad at spotting large-scale changes to the makeup of the streets where I live. I will often walk past a shop or restaurant then suddenly pause and stare suspiciously at it until Nicky points out that it's been like that for at least three years. I usually have more time to notice things when walking around with her as the pace is slower. I'm not too bad at spotting entire buildings appearing or disappearing (like the old shabby thing on Bristo Place which is now a pile of rubble and the former Timberguard premises next to the mosque opposite Crichton Street Car Park (which I hope people will continue to call the new building even when it's a building and not a car park)) but unless I try to go in something and find that it's shut (RIP Mex2Go) retail premises can happily change hands without me knowing about them.

This yellow grit-container on the corner of Pleasance and East Crosscauseway is vaguely similar. Every few weeks I walk round the corner in a slightly different way and suddenly catch sight of the yellow thing and wonder for a second or two if it's always been there. As "always" in this case is only since they finally completed remodelling the junction at the end of last year it's not too bad but I do sometimes wonder if someone occasionally borrows or hides the container (quite possible as there's a council depot thingby just round the corner) just to freak people out.

Maybe I just noticed it today as the pavement was extra-shiny and I walked past it four times as I popped home at lunch this lunchtime. I didn't have my lunch at home though.

After being promised riots and diverse alarums by the Union Formerly Known As Amicus at the work AGM today nothing much seemed to transpire. Apparently as an extra precaution our esteemed leaders got taxis from the office to the conference centre, a distance of less than two hundred metres. It wasn't even raining at the time. In a possibly connected move there appeared later some accounts of customer dissatsfaction on the railings outside the office. Unfortunately they were facing the building rather than the road so I couldn't get them and the office in shot but there were a few people wandering past for a little human interest.

It wasn't raining quite heavily enough for me to get a shot I've been waiting for it to rain heavily for for a while so I just got these grumpy buggers waiting for a bus on Clerk Street instead. If buses and bus stops make them so unhappy why don't they walk a little bit? It might have been raining but it was nice warm rain and it wasn't particularly heavy. The wettest I got today was when I stepped on a surprise paving slab outside the blood repository.

One day they'll understand.