undeadbydawn

I finally did the tour. It was a lot less scary and a lot more informative than I expected. The tour guide impressed me pretty much instantly by debunking the ‘legend’ and concentrating on historical fact. I will not spoil the tour itself with descriptions, but I will say that an hour passed incredibly quickly. I was part of a full 20 person tour, half of whom were [I think] Dutch with very poor English, who talked among themselves loudly and often. The guide took this in her stride and very politely brought everyone to attention as required.

The tour actually follows three parallel Closes via interlinking rooms, most of which flow together as they would have. Only at one point did I think the tour was inaccurate, and this was confirmed by the guide afterwards. As I said, the tour was not – to me – remotely scary, but does give a good, rounded idea of what Edinburgh was like 400 years ago. Models and lighting/sound effects are set up along the way to demonstrate certain dark moments, and these were all fairly well done [you’ll probably have seen them in promotional materials anyway]

The one point where I was genuinely surprised was at Annies room. I expected to feel nothing at all, but was hit by a feeling of intense claustrophobia, head pressure, and very mild depression the moment I entered the room. That may be because the room is very small. I don’t know. It was certainly more than I anticipated by a long shot.

The facilities pre and post-tour [ie, the shop and cafe] are well appointed with lots of quite good quality tat to buy, including varying values of notepads, postcards and interesting literature. The Plague Doctor face masks are, unfortunately, open-nosed so you can’t stuff them with ‘authentic’ herbs. And you can’t buy the hat or jacket. This disappointed me because I WANT THEM REALLY BADLY.

First, I’ve just switched to MarsEdit [demo] which seems to be much better than MacJournal – other than the nasty Windows-esque default in-app font. It at least shows all of my available categories!!

I have discovered [much to my surprise] that i get a lot more work done when I’m not being constantly distracted by shiny things on my Mac. I have loooads of shiny things. Not all of which are necessary or remotely helpful. So things are being switched off while I attempt to write. I prefer to keep SongBird running though, because I struggle to think in silence. I do avoid songs with words though. Nice dark ambient music tends to be best.

Flathunting is not getting far just now, though I have only tried two. My budget is a major downer, at least until I have my debts paid off.

The level of frustration, though is ironically giving me quite a lot to write about. The idea to have were-rats is working incredibly well. I just wish I had a firmer grasp of the environment, which I very badly want to get right. The story itself is important, but I want to write about the City as a living entity – a character in and of itself if you will. I may even take that concept somewhat more literally.

On a lighter note I just won a copy of a 3D home interior design app. Which is nice.