Shutdown

This building, until today, was the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh - the Sick Kids. From this morning the new (much delayed) building is at Little France in Edinburgh adjacent to the New Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

This building is well known to many. Our children had to go there and my wife and I recall taking shifts overnight sleeping on the floor to be beside our daughter. My wife worked there for a while. Years previously her late aunt worked there before eventually going back to Northern Ireland as the first nurse trained in public health there.

The main entrance is imposing - with a scary lion engraved above the door as part of the crest which I may blip another time. However in more recent years the emergency entrance has been from a side street.

There have been some recent social media photos of giant octopus legs dangling from the building. But sadly no sign of them today.

One of the great advantages of Blipfoto is the ability to go back in time not just to look at pictures but to read the narrative of what lay behind the pictures. I’d forgotten that this time last year I was running around trying to get the contents of my late aunt’s house cleared so that we could get it on the market.

The candle vigil was, as far as I could see, sparsely attended on our street. But it was so windy (and later wet) that any candle would be snuffed out. As the extra shows my battery operated candle worked fine.

It gave a moment to pause and reflect on those now gone, including a friend who died last week of a brain tumour and of my father who would have been 97 today. Instead he passed away aged 68: an age which seems awfully close now.