Ulla’s Amazing Wee Blog

I am on my third day of maternity leave and its great, I can sleep how much I want, which is a lot. I haven’t yet got my nesting instinct as the flat still looks a mess. My parents have furnished the nursery though and the little one is kicking around in my belly and loves music,  the baby is supposed to be a boy.  For some strange reason he seems to like in particular Opera and choir music, both not my favourites, but I just put the CD player under the duvet and let the little one wriggle away.

I found the Pregnancy and Parents Centre in Edinburgh so far a really helpful resource to prepare for the birth and parenthood.
The Yoga for pregnant women is not just about stretching your limbs, but we always have good talks about what happens to us and other members of the group in our pregnancies and its also in particular helpful for the members of the group to come back after the birth with their little ones and talk to us about how it went. The babies are always so gorgeous to see, too.
My partner and me also went to one of the Birth Preparation workshops, which was very helpful as the free workshops offered by the NHS, the National Health Service,  were only offered during the day and my partner could not attend.  Also I really liked the practical, hands-on focus on being massaged, although I nearly fell asleep after lunch as I got suddenly so tired.
I would really like a water birth, and first I was very keen on a home birth but that seems a bit unpractical in our 14 floor tower block with little sound-proofing. Also my mum is coming for the birth and she was insisting I go to hospital, in her opinion that’s where the best care would be available especially in case something goes wrong.  I thought a little bit about it and then decided for the hospital, mainly because so many women and babies in the world actually don’t have the option to be under such excellent free medical care during birth.  So we are actually quite lucky to have the option to decide whether we want to go to hospital or not, and we choose the smaller, quieter hospital a bit further away of which we heard good reviews, as the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary tends to be a bit overcrowded.
In Britain in theory there is also the option to go to a midwife-led birth centre – a compromise between home and hospital birth, but there is none yet available in and about Edinburgh, they have been  in the process of building one, but it won’t be ready for us this month, I suspect.

I haven’t been blogging for the last months as there are so many new developments in my life.

First of all: I am pregnant! And totally excited about it! So we have been trying to get ready for the baby, by searching for lots of baby items second-hand, getting a load of stuff from the former freecycle recycling group “freegle” and my partner’s work colleague even handed down a cot bed to us, too, which was fantastic. There seems to be quite a bit of discussions and disagreement amongst mothers and mums-to-be about whether its better to get baby items second-hand or new; my mum is a fan of used items, especially clothes as she fears residues of pesticides and chemicals, whereas other mums don’t like any potential transfer of bacteria or germs.
There might also be an issue of pride here, as some prams seem to hold a status symbol reputation, like cars, too! Especially MacLaren!
So the last months and the following ones are going to be taken up with such exciting topics like reflecting about nappy types, breast-feeding’s potential pitfalls and how to keep the bump in check as well as hunting for further baby and maternity accessories.

Second of all: My guinea pig Guinea Lee died start of March because of a lung infection. Now Minilli is all alone and I have to find either a good new home for her or a new partner. Guinea Lee was such a cuddly, charming, curious and happy guinea pig, very attached to humans and food, and he is sadly missed.

Thirdly I have got friends visiting me in Edinburgh at the moment, it is quite fun to be a visitor in your local city although the recommendations of the tourist guide are sometimes not quite understandable. In Dumont’s Compact little travel guide a highlight of Edinburgh is the Traverse Theatre, Stockbridge and Dean Village and a pub called “The Dome” as well as the National Gallery and the Modern Gallery. I would have rather added Rosslyn Chapel, the Forest Cafe and South Queensferry with the Forth Rail Bridge and a trip to Incholm Island with the abbey and the small fish restaurant as a highlight. Yesterday we went to “The Real” Mary Kings Close, a five star tourist attraction, and were quite disappointed because of the lack of original features in the underground vaults. Most of these seemed to be painted white and plastered with added wooden flooring. Though the costumed tourist guide was quite entertaining, everything was conveyed in the format of little tales and stories, many of whom I had heard before on other tours. Its a good underground tour for children and the average American tourist as the main purpose of the attraction is to entertainingly bring alive medieval times, but historians and intellectuals will be a little bit disappointed. The remainders of the Close is only about 20m or so long and dimly light and you just have a quick walk through of about 5-10min at the end of the 90min tour.
We had the best fish’n'chips I ever had in the Doric Tavern, unfortunately we did not frequent the bar menu area as I got a bit confused with the rooms, but we sat down in the restaurant bit, which was much more elegant, had a bit more of an expensive menu and lacked the pub charm my friends were so looking for. Never happened to me before that I was dragging guests into a too elegant establishment!
On Sunday we had a look at the beach and a walk along the sea, where we found thousands of starfish washed up dead on the beach. It was quite shocking!
My friendly guests invited us to a meal and we chose the Indian vegetarian restaurant Kalpna. It was brilliant as ever and even the meat-eaters were delighted. I loved being able to share the dishes and have so many different tastes, and the dishes were also all quite unusual compared to the typical Indian restaurant. Afterwards we had quite a big discussion about the added service charge of 10% to the bill – how to deal best with it. If an additional tip for the waiter would be appropriate or not, if so how much, if the service charge is enforceable and if it actually goes to the waiter or the staff or just directly to the restaurant owner.

Just looking at the stats for this blog.

One of the most often viewed and linked to entries is the unique article about the “Wild West” in Edinburgh, summarising the history of the cinema at Springvalley Gardens. Its also  linked from a website about the  buildings of  Scotland’s Cinemas ,  which includes a lot of historical entries like the Springvalley Gardens Cinema, with pictures from inside of the building. I always loved this house for its character, its surroundings and its atmosphere, it is something really special.

The other most popular entry is of course “How to catch a lost hamster”. It seems like in the whole wide world of the Internet nobody else has tackled such an ordinary but yet difficult problem. Fluffy would be proud of his contribution to hamster welfare, would he still be alive. The entry has 72 comments all of people chasing after their little pet. I never really replied to any of them as all the principles of catching a hamster escapee are either in the article or in the video and I don’t have the time unfortunately, either, for personal hamster catching advice.

At the moment this personal blog has about 150 visitors looking at the site per day.

This morning I smelt a disgusting stink when getting up, quickly dismissing it as “the kids have set the rubbish chute on fire – NOT AGAIN“.  So I wasn’t too alarmed when three firetrucks pulled up in front of the house. But quickly it turned out to be much more, as the ladder was brought up and the firemen wore gas masks and oxygen bottles, and the smell became more, not less intense.

fire brigade in front of Fidra Court

We got a bit more alarmed when a fireman on his ladder rushed by in front of our window on the way up.

The rectangular squares are part of the anti-pigeon netting, obviously   .

Anyways, the firemen knocked on our door several times and asked us to stay indoors, open the windows and the balcony doors and if we are all okay.  I asked where the fire was and was told it was on the ground  floor, but still they are all zooming around here as if there would be something more going on in the upper regions of our little 14 storey skyscraper.

At the moment – a few hours after the first signs of the fire – the fire brigade still are around and seem to check that nobody passed out or got too affected by smoke inhalation. It seems they are breaking into a flat upstairs at the moment – I can hear the noise.  There will be more detailed reports in the papers later I assume, as there were quite some press photographers around.

Wednesday was an incredible bad day for me with nearly everything going wrong which could go wrong. The only highlight was that I finally was able to make it to report from the protest at the Edinburgh city chambers, against the privatisation of the social care and support services. Report and pictures as usual on Indymedia – UK for pictures and Scotland for local report and networking. I even brought the camcorder along but it was a bit too dark for filming. Nevertheless, hopefully I’ll have time to produce a little video, but not more than 2 minutes length with voice-over only.

Deaf Action in action

Reading the local Bavarian paper on the internet, my attention was drawn to a video clip about the cold war nuclear bunker in Nuremberg.  I did not know there was a nuclear bunker in Nuremberg at all, let alone underneath the main pedestrian  shopping zone.  Compared to the secret bunker in Crail in Fife it is a civilian not a military bunker though.  In 2006 the German government decided that it was unlikely that the bunker would be needed anymore in future and therefore gave up its maintenance, handing it back to the local authorities. In the case of Nuremberg, the local the fire brigade ended up with the obligation to look after the building.

I just got into watching old movies with the 1981 Australian “The killing of Angel Street”, describing a community struggling against commercial property development in the 70ies in Sydney. It is based on the history of activist Juanita Nielson , who was murdered because of her opposition to the high-rise developments. The film is now hard to get.

Yesterday I watched marxist (?!) filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s “Alphaville”, a classic 1965 film about a totalitarian, de-humanised and computer-controlled society.  It came with a pack of videos some artist dumped on us in a tidy-up action, along with Luis Bunuel’s 1964 “Diary of a Chambermaid”. I found both films quite hard to watch, they are quite intelligent and heavy, definitely challenging and disturbing the audience more than any current Hollywood superficial blockbuster.  Especially the Luis Bunuel film shocked me. Unbelievable that such films were made in the early 1960ies.
Jean Luc Godard’s new film “Socialisme” will be released next year, will try to catch up on his other movies till then.

“This Revolution” could be subtitled as “Indymedia goes Hollywood”; and is a hommage to the 1969 film “Medium Cool”- half documentary, half movie. Unfortunately it seems that not much exciting protest action happened at the RNC convention to document, except that the police accidentally arrested the leading actors as a suspective subversive group, contributing to a sudden end of the movie.  Still quite nice to watch though therefore not that much action included.

For several months now I have tried to arrange a visit to the Earthship in Fife. But the opening times were incredibly restricted, with the whole of August closed and in June and July it was only openend the weekends, and also not every weekend either.  Yesterday we finally made it to see the ecological building, and again it was closed, but we had come nevertheless and were able to walk around in the park.  A notice on the front door of the closed Earthship explained that it was due to a lack of volunteers. It was quite disappointing to realise that actually nobody lived in the house like the ones in the US – in Fife it was basically just a pretty unused showcase it seemed, absolutely not representing the amazing enthusiasm and philosophy of its founder, which got me so fascinated with it in the first place when watching the documentary “Garbage Warrior” about the history of the earthships and the realization of the sustainable living idea.

Afterwards, we went to Kirkcaldy – the town of parking spaces – and had a meal in a pretty new restaurant. The people there tried incredibly hard to establish the “Red Bar and Kitchin” and we were happy that they cooked from fresh with mainly local ingredients. Their pricing was also quite fair with the non-alcoholic drinks costing around a pound each.

We went and visited Scotland’s Secret Bunker the other day. I was really fascinated by the nuclear bunker in Fife, that I totally forgot to look at the exhibits in a critical way.  At the moment I am still wondering how much of the exhibition in the bunker was actually authentic or not, and if it is, from which time period. As the bunker was decommissioned in 1992 or so, but build in the early 50 ies, there are for example a wide range of red telephones from different decades on show.

However, it was very exciting actually seeing the bunker, which is based in the middle of nowhere near Crail, about two hours drive away from Edinburgh and South- East of St. Andrews.

It looks a little bit like a farmhouse from the outside.

Scotland's Secret Bunker

However, the entry fee is now a little bit less than 10 pounds per adult person, but the canteen in there has good prices and is very lovingly preserved. The owners seem to put a lot of enthusiasm and energy into the attraction to make it exciting; it was nice to see an exhibition about the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament included in the bunker.  I also have forgotten how the toilets smelled in the past; in the 70ies and 80ies when I grew up, it was taking me right back into my childhood to have smelled the bunker toilets and to use the extremely thin toilet paper in order for the pumps to be able to cope. I have totally forgotten that even the toilets made progress and became more powerful in the last thirty years.

I would have totally bought the story of the rooms being authentically been rebuild, even though some visitor behind me was wondering what the German army rifle would do in the  general’s command room,  if there wouldn’t have been a flag with a swastika been hanging in the communications room. Well, I guess the owners want to make the bunker attractive to all visitors, but that was going a bit too far for me – though they are possibly trying to cater more for people interested in military history at that point as they had a collection of army knives on show, too. Another room they had a lot of East German army exhibits, which had at least thematically to do with the Cold War, but of course, had nothing to do with the bunker in reality either.

the radar room

Though, in total, for me it was really worth going there, as I have never seen anything like it, but am sure there are many more nuclear bunkers existing all over the world.  I would have liked to have heard many more personal testimonies of people who actually worked in the bunker or used it before it was given up, but as the Official Secret Act still applies, it seems the owners have difficulties finding people. There was only one short interview with someone who used it as a short term accommodation during some military exercise; to that point I had never even thought about that there weren’t any showers in the bunker or that there wasn’t any food prepared in the bunker, but that it was brought in from the outside.

I was very fascinated by the red phones (with the sign beside it reading: early missile warning)  and the underground  BBC radio studio.

Red Phones