After the fire

On 7th December 2002, a fire began in the Cowgate, below North Bridge, that burned for two days. It destroyed a unique part of Edinburgh’s Old Town. No lives were lost.

Five years later, the location is still a gap site: archaeologists have dug there, developers have launched plans to build there, and graffiti artists display their work there.

The script on the earth is only visible from the art studio in the GRV where I took this photograph: it reads

we were an affair

I don’t know what that means.

When I showed this photo to a friend in The Forest, although she’d never seen the area from that angle before, she recognised it iinstantly because she was there when the black graffiti in the right-hand corner was painted: she and several friends were getting drunk in the corner by the steps, and one of them got miffed and walked off and when they went to find him, he was lettering the black graffiti.

I took this photo here. It’s available on Redbubble: After the fire.