Rent Boy

Yep, that's me, after the boy and I went out to Saughton and hired a lock up. For electric guitars and a sofa and fridge, obviously. And his joinery bench and tools. After that, and a fine lunch, it was off to see The Homesman at the Filmhouse. What a pleasure it is to see a good looking Western. You can't beat it. And later still, it was down to the Edinburgh hustings event at the Grassmarket.
And as I walked through the twinkling Christmas lights and thronged hostelries, I paused at Currie's Close (above) where my great-granny Catherine Flaherty had been born in 1859. Her parents were Irish and had come to Edinburgh at the time of the famine. My granny, her daughter, used to relate how, when my father was a month old, she laid him on her bed and went through to the other room for a moment. There was a crashing sound from the bedroom and she rushed back to find a chair had toppled over. It was only the following day that she found that, at that time across town, her mother Catherine had collapsed and died, knocking over a chair as she fell. My granny was full of such stories - the supernatural for her was just a part of life.

The Grassmarket a year after Catherine's birth.