all around me, shadows everywhere....

before i start todays waffle (although it is being written the day after) i wanted to say a big WOO-HOO. finally had a pic of mine used in the weekly blipblog. congrats to Barker and Missing on a fine effort. and now on wih the show.....

...........well thats it over. another whirlwind visit back to the homeland. still had that same old sinking feeling when i left but it doesn't seem so bad just now. maybe it's because i know that soon i shall return, this time for good. at least my other half now has a better idea of the areas she would like to live in.
had a major panic earlier on, well blip related panic anyway. i lost my camera. i had just said my goodbyes to my bro after meeting him for lunch (a very rushed one, sorry dude) and as i was walking towards jenners i fancied taking a pic only to find no camera. was not a happy bunny. fortunately someone in the sandwich shop above hendersons had handed it to the staff. it restores your faith in humanity when people do things like that, i'm sure if i had done the same thing down here it would have been gone forever.
this leads me into the nicest event of today. after getting the camera back we had half an hour to kill before having to be at the station so we took a wander into the gardens. it would give lexie the chance to tire herself out a bit and for me to get some shots. anyway i was teaching lexie how to roll down the embankments when another guy and his son came along, the boy could only have been about two. well in the way that kids do, they took one look at each other and without a word started to chase each other around the grass, rolling down the hill together, even holding hands and running down the hill. all i could think about is that it was the most amazing and beautiful sight. then i thought that this could only happen with kids. you need that innocence, a mind not hindered by prejudice. but why does it then change so much as you get older? it can't just be our parents influence and only a complete fool would be taken in by the crap that the media spews out every day. why the sudden mistrust of anything different from ourselves? i know people will always fear things that seem strange to them but surely it makes sense to speak to people, to try and understand before making up our minds about them. again i know that as we grow older it's hard to maintain that innocent view of the world, especially as we know that it really is a nasty, violent place out there but it still contains some real beauty (a lot of it captured by you fellow blippers).
you know i'm not promoting any solutions or telling you how to live your life, we all have to find our own way and in an ideal world we would think more about others and try and show more kindness and understanding but...........we don't live in an ideal world, do we?
you know most of this ramble was inspired by wingpigs blip the other day. it was a powerful image and while i supported his sentiment, i feel we are a long way off from finding a solution to it all. there will always be greed, corruption, hate and war, at least in my lifetime and my daughters and probably my grandkids life as well.
i guess we just have to do the best we can and hope that if we do spread (sorry to go all tree hugger here) the love and are just a bit nicer to people, then maybe, just maybe if enough of us start acting this way it may just spread. ah, if only it were that simple.
sorry to go on like this but it was such a refreshing sight to see my daughter and this total stranger playing like they had been friends for years. in fact when we had to leave to get our train he started following us out the gardens and bawling his eyes out when his dad had to stop him.
so todays pic, seeing as thats why we use this site (and not to spout my random bollocks). it's not the one i was going to use. i was going to go with one of the shots of my baby and the little boy sitting side by side (again like they had known each other for years,) but as my mrs pointed out i should really have gotten his dads permission first. since this is unlikely to happen i shall end my short trip the way it started. this is a shot of platform 9 at edinburgh waverley. i have obviously used the sepia again but i really pushed up the shadows as it reflected my mood as i was leaving home, again.
right of to try and get a handle on this weeks "urban textures" assignmment. have a great weekend blippers and lets hear it for Scotland, c'mon boys you have a whole nation (except wingpig and sp33dway) behind you.