A family getting well hung and tender (beef, that is) at the farmer’s market.

This photo is available on Redbubble: Feeding the family.

Redbubble is celebrating their 100,000th anniversary (100 000 pieces sold and shipped!) by offering all buyers free shipping for the next week… and all sellers twice the money they normally receive. The coupon code to receive the free shipping offer is 100000masterpieces – you just enter this during the checkout process to receive the free shipping offer. Click on this red button to go directly to my Redbubble profile – but the free shipping applies whoever you buy from, until one minute to midnight on Thursday 30th October.

If you’d like to choose your own customised calendar of photos from Looking at Edinburgh, check out It’s Edinburgh, but is it Art?

The French Market shows up a couple of times a year: at Christmas and the Festival and sometimes for Bastille Day. There will also be a Continental Market on Castle Street from Tuesday 16th to Sunday 21st September, apparently: Essential Edinburgh.

These photos are available on Redbubble: At the French Market and At the French Market.

Redbubble is celebrating their 100,000th anniversary (100 000 pieces sold and shipped!) by offering all buyers free shipping for the next week… and all sellers twice the money they normally receive. The coupon code to receive the free shipping offer is 100000masterpieces – you just enter this during the checkout process to receive the free shipping offer. Click on this red button to go directly to my Redbubble profile – but the free shipping applies whoever you buy from, until one minute to midnight on Thursday 30th October.

If you’d like to choose your own customised calendar of photos from Looking at Edinburgh, check out It’s Edinburgh, but is it Art?

This is the other side of coastal Edinburgh: the deep-fried food and shiny fun parks. There are fairly obvious reasons why this is so: if you go for a sunny day on the beach, it will probably rain. All of these places have been around for decades – if they’ve changed ownership in twenty-five years, they haven’t changed name or function.

Fun Park Amusements, by Pipe Lane, faces a breakwater: it’s been years since I went inside, but it looks just the same as it did when I used to dig out my spare change, figure what I could afford to lose, and gamble on something like a copper waterfall or a six-horse electronic racing machine. Mainly, it’s shelter from a wet and windy beach.

Round the corner from the main entrance, facing the beach, is a vendor’s window:

A closer view – note the signs:

(The ones saying This is not Burger King. You don’t get it your way. You take it my way, or you don’t get the damn thing. and Prices subject to change according to customer’s attitude. as well as the ads you’d expect for Flake 99, the aerated “ice-cream” that is supposed to become a luxury treat by having a short stick of flaky chocolate stuck into it.)

As far as I can remember, the kitchen looks just the same as it always did – complete with a sign praising the virtues of granny’s kitchen.

Further along by Figgate Lane is Tower Amusements. This also sells fried food, but for some reason, I never liked it as well as Fun Park. (The Tower, behind Tower Amusements, is the oldest surviving building in Portobello: built in 1785 by William Jamieson.)

I stopped to look for the public safety notice I remembered, and it’s still there, or it’s been replaced with one exactly like.

Reassured, I went back to Fun Park’s window and ordered a small portion of chips from the boy working in the kitchen, who may not even have been born when I last bought chips from the window: I think they cost 60p then. They cost £1 now.

I’ve been doing this blog now for six months, at least one photopost a day. I have done 210 posts (not counting this one), well over 210 photographs, and from 36 views for the four days of February, the total number of views for six whole months is now 9711. In the first week I did this blog I got 4 views: in this 26th week I’ve had 641 views, and 93 views today. It seems likely that I’ll have my 10,000th view before the end of August. I really appreciate everyone who’s visited, especially people who linked or left comments.

*waves* I’m happy I started doing this. Looking forward to the next six months…

Because the first photo on my blog was the farmer’s market in February, this post should be of the same spot in August:

Notice the irony of the Tescos bag? Neither did I till I looked at the photo at home.

This photo is available on Redbubble: Crowds at the farmer’s market.

You often see people with flyers and clipboards wanting to get the attention of shoppers at the farmer’s market. But it’s not often you see someone with a clipboard full of sheets that say “Obama for America”. (Of course, someone attempting to sign up voters for McCain would be even more unlikely.) But there he was: wearing a faded green t-shirt that said I’m so excited to be here. (Update: although I recall a faded green, in this photo the t-shirt looks blue. Weird.) From Colorado, originally, a somewhat right-wing state, but said he was hopeful that some of the 250,000 Americans in the UK could be persuaded to register and vote for Obama – he was an official Obama campaign worker, and said this was the first time any Democratic campaign had made an official effort to get Americans living outside the US to register and vote in a Presidential election. Well, good luck, I said: I hope he wins. (I wonder if Avedon Carol knows about this Obama outreach? Usually if I want to find out what ex-pat Americans know about US politics, her Sideshow is where I go…)

And then I bought a copy of the Big Issue:

This week’s Big Issue has Sean Connery on the cover. He’s back in Edinburgh complaining about the state of the capital. Well, Sean, if you paid taxes here you’d have a right to grumble about it like the rest of us. As you don’t, STFU.

These photos are available on Redbubble: The Market Below The Castle and Big Issue Seller.

These photos were all taken at the farmers’ market, Saturday 28th June, on Castle Terrace.

I always walk up through the market to the coffee stall at the upper end (and always order a medium latte with skim milk and an extra shot):

I love Arran cheddar. In weeks when I don’t eat a lot of cheese, it’s hard to have the self-control not to stop by their stall anyway.

I just wander down the market looking at stalls if I don’t have anything in particular in mind to buy, like eggs or chutney or cheese:

I found that a stall I hadn’t seen since 22nd March was back at the market; they told me they would always be there “the last Saturday in the month” but they miscounted: it would be the fourth Saturday they’re booked for, I think. (Five Saturdays in March.) This was Hudson Home Baking:

this time with gingerbread bears:

They seem very nice people, and their savoury pastries are delicious. (I tried one of their sweet pastries this time, too – apple and date crescents – but it was just sweet/flavourless.) I bought three savoury pastries for tea and lunches, and enjoyed them all.

As I left, I saw two friends sharing a meal:

A shop on Victoria Street, Edinburgh, where you can buy rhubarb vodka (and other things) by volume. Demijohn.

This photo is available on Redbubble: Demi John.

A beautiful sunny day for the farmers’ market this morning. One small yet sophisticated shopper was wearing her coolest sunglasses.

Look, you all know where the farmers’ market is, right? This photo is available on Redbubble: Sophisticated Shopper.

I saw the violinist who plays at the market:

And the Caurnie Soaperie, which bills itself as The Worlds Oldest Cold Process Soapmaker, or The Soaperie within an Organic Herb Garden: and claims that it was tested on 86 year old babies. BogMyrtle and Nettle Soap:

I also saw the Carmichael Estate Farm, which bills itself as Scotland’s oldest Single Estate family operated farm (established 1292).

A friend recently asked me if I were a vegetarian on ethical principles: I’m not. I’m a vegetarian because I was brought up to be: meat and fish look and taste rather unpleasant to a lifelong vegetarian, as well as giving me nasty indigestion. My ethical principles are that if you’re going to eat dead animals, you should treat them well while they’re alive, kill them humanely, and eat with relish. So I like farms like Carmichael’s, even though they sell nothing I can eat (except for eggs):

I saw people having lunch together:

And as I was leaving: I saw St John’s on Princes Street in the front of a 22 bus.

It was cold today for the Easter weekend:

A happy shopper:

The band from York that played at the market today:

Happy shoppers:

This photo was taken here. It’s on Redbubble: In The Forest.

The Forest is an organic cafe and a not-for-profit arts space. It is a perfect place to sit, dream, talk, surf the Internet, drink tea, and relax.