Precipitous City

In the early 80s I spent over 3 years living and working in the centre of Amman, Jordan, where the houses run up the steep hills from the central wadi, with switchback roads and short-cut flights of stone steps running between them.

Every time I use any of the many flights of steps and steep pends that make the bones running down from Edinburgh Old Town's fishy spine, I am reminded of the flow of people (mostly men and boys) up and down those Ammani stairs.

Maybe the cities should be twinned.

Amman is in my mind just now - I think I noticed it has disappeared from the list of cities that comes up at the beginning of shows at the Filmhouse. I wonder what this might imply.