Gran Caffè, Edinburgh

Yes, it’s another photo-overload folks: sorry!

This Sunday, my sister-in-law, Jolene, invited Terry and I to afternoon tea with her and Terry’s brother, John. Now, afternoon tea is one of our very favourite ways to spend a Sunday afternoon (Or, you know, any other afternoon), so we met them at Gran Caffè, at the Signet Library in Edinburgh and prepared for the inevitable sugar-rush.

This was actually my first time inside the Signet Library, which is tucked away behind St. Giles cathedral, on the Royal Mile, and as you can see from the photos, it’s quite a venue, especially for those of us who love books. I definitely fall into that category: in fact, libraries (and, er, malls) are basically my “happy place”. It feels like nothing bad could ever happen in a library, and the very smell of all of those books, just waiting to be discovered, is enough to make me smile. Walking into a library always reminds me of being taken to our local library every week as a child, to pick out a new stack of books, which I would rush home to devour within a few days. (Not literally, obviously. I ate normal food, too. ) I can still vividly remember the excitement of browsing the shelves, hearing the soft thud of the librarians stamping my selections and handing them over, with all of those new and wonderful worlds tucked between their dust-jacked covers. I do most of my reading on my Kindle now (Yes, you can scold me all you want for that, but we were running out of book space in the house, and it’s easier than taking fifteen paperbacks on holiday with me…) but I still love visiting libraries, and even although this one is filled with law books (Which my younger self probably WOULDN’T have been all that interested in…), it was still a fantastic place to have tea.

(Actually, writing this, and visiting the Signet has made me determined to do more reading from now on. I was the kind of child who was almost surgically attached to a book at all times, and that didn’t change much as I got older – I chose English Literature as my degree subject purely because I saw it as a good excuse to read even MOAR books, while calling it “work”, and when I graduated I applied for a bunch of jobs in publishing, for the same reason. Over the last few years, though, life has gotten in the way, and I’ve been reading less than I’d like … When I do have a spare hour, I tend to watch something on Netflix, or tool around on the Internet, rather than picking up a book, and I really miss it. I think over the holidays I’ll make a point of making time for reading again. I mean, SOMEONE has to read all of those books about mysterious old houses with terrible secrets, don’t they?)

Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t quite as nice this weekend as it was last week, so I only managed to grab a couple of wind-blown photos before my hair rose up and ate my face. Honestly: I saw LOADS of people walking around with hair the same kind of length as mine, and they all looked perfectly normal and well-groomed, whereas I only seem to need to set one foot outside, and I instantly look like some kind of strange Hair Monster. I ASK YOU.

In better news, however, The Others were much better behaved than they were last time, and no one so much as screamed in our faces or made bitchy comments about my photos: that’s as much as you can ask for, really, isn’t it?

[♥ Jacket: New Look ♥  Skirt: ASOS  ♥ Shoes: French Connection ♥  Bag: Marc by Marc Jacobs*]