My first full time job when I left school in Dundee was in Thin's Bookshop (University Department) on North Bridge opposite Surgeon's College in Edinburgh.
Bookselling, particularly if you were working for "Jimmy Thin" did not pay too well and, after paying for my accommadation and lunches, I didn't have too much left over. Luckily, good old Dad came to the rescue, sending me the money to buy a monthly bus pass.
From then on the whole of Edinburgh was laid out before me in a great panorama viewable from from the top deck of one of those maroon and white doubledecker Edinburgh buses.
A few weeks after I arrived in the City it was Autumn and Edinburgh was at her atmospheric best. The changing of the leaves, that wonderful smoky blue tinge of the late afternoons and the slight air of melancholy all added to my beguilement.
This was Romantic Edinburgh. This was the Edinburgh og Burns, of Stevenson and of the Old Town running down the Royal Mile all the way from that imposing Castle to Mary Queen of Scots Palace at Holyrood.
It was the City that, among the elegant streets of the New Town and the pends of the Old Town and in the history behind every street corner and the lives of those who once walked its streets was so much more than one of Britain's leading tourist attractions.
I am still beguiled by The Athens of the North and the purpose of this blog is, quite frankly, to celebrate Edinburgh, one of the world's foremost Capital Cities.
Whether you belong to Edinburgh, are planning to visit or remember it fondly from a previous visit I hope my postings on Auld Reekie will illuminate and entertain.
Don't miss Buster while he's in town!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Balloon-Man-Edinburgh-ebook/dp/B008NXTYXK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348573329&sr=1-1
