7th August 2026

 

Festival time in Edinburgh

Today's expedition to the kitchen, in search of the noble pairing of bread and cheese spread, took an unexpected linguistic turn.

En route I passed Gopal, our hopefully temporary nephew-lodger from Nepal, who's over here for twice-weekly dialysis. He was in full conversational flow, firing out Nepali at machine-gun speed. Unfortunately, my grasp of Nepali remains stubbornly limited to basic linguistics" and Gopal's slight deafness has, I suspect, affected his pronunciation. The result is a verbal blur that reaches my ears at approximately the same level of intelligibility as a the Beatle's Helter Skelter played backwards.

He's currently very focused on his diet, and amid the torrent I distinctly caught the words "protein" and "kidney beans." It did make me wonder whether he thinks they're called kidney beans because they're especially good for your kidneys. If only food naming conventions were that helpful. We'd all be tucking into Heart Biscuits, Liver Lollies, and Jelly Babies for the pedos.

Just as I was pondering the mysteries of legume nomenclature, Fulmaya appeared and asked me to take 11-year-old Lia back to my daughter's house, where she's staying. Despite not having seen her mother for the past week, Lia was more than ready to head off and get back to Dawa's. Children have an uncanny ability to know exactly where they want to be, usually five minutes before the adults have organised how to get them there.

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Dalry Road, Edinburgh.

I posted this photo on the Practical Photography Group WhatsApp page because I thought there was some humour in the expressions on their faces, and I wanted to highlight the contrast in their clothing during the Edinburgh Festival.

The photo was removed almost immediately. I can only assume it was because of the wording on the T-shirt – "Police Bastards."

I have to admit I found that disappointing. The intention was clearly to share an interesting candid photograph, not to make a political statement or endorse the slogan. It feels disappointing in that the image was judged solely on one element, rather than on the context or the photographic merit.

Bob posted:  Hi Albert - think the issue was the reference to the police on a tee shirt that was not a view I guess we would share - to be honest I didn’t notice it myself. Its always a risk with street photography that we inadvertently capture things. Please don’t worry about it these things happen but equally, we don’t wish to upset anyone either. Otherwise, its a really interesting picture and I would have photographed them too!

I was right. it was the words on the t-shirt.  However, the photo was replaced so I guess they had second thoughts.

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