Redecorating Glencairn

On October 1st, our original lease expired. In the lead-up to that date, Mike and I seriously considered moving out to North Berwick, a perfect little seaside village with a 30 minute commute to downtown Edinburgh. We looked at a number of holiday flats that owners let out cheaply over the winter months, but none of them had a landline let alone an internet connection, so we had to rule them out. We did find one place that was a regular rental, right across from the train station too, so it would have been convenient for commuting. It was in a relatively new building and had a landline already installed. We got all excited about the view of Bass Rock out the living room window and the huge kitchen with all the mod cons. Unfortunately, the landlord didn't return our calls for over a week and when she did she went back on the "fully-furnished" condition, so we had to turn it down. Fortunately, during that week long wait our current landlord offered us a new lease with a reduced rent, so we took it.

One of the things that I (AJW) got excited about with the North Berwick place, was that it wasn't decorated. You see our Glencairn flat came fully furnished including artworks. And while it was nice to have things on walls, the art is not what we would have chosen ourselves. So to compensate for the lack of a seaview, I made a few purchases of local art. Nothing fancy, nothing expensive, but something that we chose.

During the Festival Season in August there was a big craft fair in one of the old central graveyards. Unfortunately, I only managed to make it to the fair on the last day, but on that day I spied some funky, reasonably priced print-on-canvas art by local crafter and graphic designer, BoxArt. So I ordered a set of 5 8X8 canvases to go over our bed (pictured above). BTW, according to lease agreement we are not allowed to put any holes in the wall, so all the art purchased had to fit our landlord's previous hanging arrangements. The second purchase I made was a poster for an exhibition of bird prints by Alice Melvin at an Etsyesque shop called the Red Door Gallery on Victoria Street in the Old Town.

So now we have two rooms that look a little more like places where Alette and Mike dwell.