View allAll Photos Tagged squeezed
8 Apr. 2011 'To revive my drooping spirit' I give the delightful Ann a quick squeeze in the school assembly hall after my godson's Confirmation. In the background is his friend Tyler again!
Mass transit in Tokyo, I should emphasize, is NOT as bad as the stories you've probably heard. Ten or twenty years ago, the stories of super-overcrowding were apparently true. Now, they aren't: the network has matched capacity demands, or at least become closer than it was. There are pushers at the largest stations during the height of rush hour, but you will never encounter one if you sleep past 9 AM every morning. (I leave for the office around 9 now, and can usually get a seat on the train through the center city.)
Crockett's Land, 1705, pressed between a 1735 building to the left and a late seventeenth century one to the right. These three are about the only survivors of the West Bow, which rose in a steep zig-zag path from the Grassmarket to the head of the Lawnmarket. Lined with narrow lands (tenements) like these, the tourists (and me) would have lapped it up, had it not been for the Victorians having other ideas; in an effort to improve access to the west of the Royal Mile, Victoria Street was driven through the area in the 1830s, destroying most of the neighbourhood in the process. As nice as their efforts are, it's a shame so much was lost. The other group of surviving buildings, at the top end and including a crazy old timber building where a tartan tat shop now lives, was demolished in the 1880s.
(To get an idea of how steep the old street was, stand at Victoria Terrace at the foot of the northern stump of the West Bow, now called the Upper Bow, and consider that the road used to go from about there to the lower bend of Victoria Street, just to the right of this photo.)
The wee holes at the top of the gables were apparently wee doocots, the birds being kept for a reliable supply of meat in hard times. Tom and Barbara from The Good Life would approve.