Leith is who we are.
Leith is where we are.
The Leith Agency's weblog.

To the extent that our printer up here on the fourth floor has started making little rips in documents. You know, while it prints them out.

What goes through its head I wonder? Feeling a bit hot and grumpy today so d’you know, to spite them all, I’ll print their stuff but I’ll make sure each document has a series of small holes in usually the final page, just so they know that I’m in control…

Rant over. I’ll go back to studying my little ripped debrief.

To great fanfare, a new identity was launched this week for Dundee, one-time city of discovery. The fine product of lots of people’s labours actually, you can see some of the work they’ve been doing here. Sir Alan was mostly instrumental in this - if you believe his version of events - though I think he received a fair amount of support from beautiful Anne before she set off to discover South America, Gillian, currently discovering Glastonbury, Brian, currently discovering Mull and of course all the lovelies at Blonde who brought the website to life (of which, more here) and Stripe. I think I’ve laboured this discovery pun rather too much so yes, have a wee look and discover Dundee for yourself.

Groups yesterday in Glasgow, a fairly thorny and sensitive subject matter and I’m reminded, for one, how remarkable people are and for two, what an extraordinary and peculiar job this is.

One lady in my group was in a motorcycle accident years ago. She broke 36 bones. She was immobile for a while, wheelchair bound for 3 years, walking with 2 crutches for some more years and is now down to one crutch but still needs fairly frequent pain relief. I made some utterly inadequate expression of sympathy and she said ‘well it’s a tribute to how far you can go if you try, isn’t it?’ Isn’t it.

Another lady had all sorts of medical complications and a few years back, lost both her kids in the space of 8 weeks. Her 16 year old daughter and then her 21 year old son. As she said, they hadn’t really had a crack at living by then. She cried a little bit and then pulled herself together.

A further lady then apologised because she’d “only” had a stroke and that was a couple of years ago and now she felt fine.

I hope I am delicate enough in these situations. For what an extraordinary privilege this window into other people’s worlds really is.

As part of this year’s Leith Festival we asked Leith based amateur snappers to send in images  they felt best defined their manor. To be fair we weren’t expecting a huge response but thanks to some publicity in The Leither and some cunningly placed promo material in local haunts we were inundated with 100 plus images.

The quality was top drawer and the best 30 shots or so were lovingly curated and turned into an exhibition by Babs  on board the good Mary of Guise. The crowds then flocked in during the Festival to see how Leith had been faithfully captured by Leithers.

We particularly liked this one taken by Steven Taylor.

Spotted at Waverley Station

This morning, a bumper wraparound cover and a 4pp centre spread. Lovely stuff.

(Relatively) trivial and un-ad-related but this blogpost was signposted by a friend of mine with a remarkable litter obsession. I like the apocalyptic vision of angry gangs of gulls roaming the streets of Edinburgh.

The other thing which enormously impressed me today was a bunch of ads in the Metro. I don’t normally pick up this scrappy (but much read) publication but am between educational tomes at the moment so was forced to. And I’m glad I did.

This was on page 6.

Followed up with an ad for maggie’s hair salon on page 11. For Jinx’s happy hour on page 15. And then this little beauty on page 22.

All of them referencing a time (9pm), Wednesday’s date and a perky pertinent web address, for example, www.easydosh.biz. Lovely stuff.

So of course I’ve just placidly looked up all of the websites and it takes you to the sky website and specifically, their pre-promotion for The Take which starts on - guess what - Wednesday night. I admit to mild diasppointment at this. I’ve seen tonnes of posters for the show, none of which has remotely picqued my interest. And indeed, looking at the sneak preview trailer, it looks like nothing so much as an expensive, perhaps slightly higher octane version of Eastenders. With a prettier cast. Not nearly pretentious enough to tempt me.

But full marks to them for a brilliantly imaginative teaser press campaign. Very smart thinking.

Ad hunting again for a client presentation and as ever, the experience is vastly improved by a whole bunch of ascerbic commentary from Jason Stone for David Reviews. Ed and I frequently chat about his wit. And it does make a fairly time-intensive process pass with a little more zing.

My particular favourite today is his observation about Apple’s ad for the ‘greenest macBook ever’. If I may take the liberty of quoting him:

This animated ad boasts of all the steps taken by Apple to make their latest MacBook the greenest yet. It fits in with Apple’s image that they would go after this accolade and no doubt their muesli-munching, sandal-wearing devotees will swing their kaftans with delight.

Delightful.

I dipped a toe into the water of the Leith Festival last night. A chap called Liam Rudden, arts editor at the Evening News, is directing a play as part of the Leith Festival, round the corner from us at a fabulous little café / coffee bar called Kitsch.

The play is called “Cock and Bull Story” and it’s written by a couple of chaps called Richard Crowe and Richard Zajdlic. It’s a measure of my innocent eyes that I saw no insinuation in this until my play going colleagues started investigating the website. Or maybe it’s a measure of the fact that I’ve been brought up on terrible amateurish plays with poor puns as titles. Whichever. The title turned out to be infinitely cleverer than I had anticipated.

I shan’t spoil the surprise but shall let the director’s note speak for the content here. The play is “set in the working class, testosterone fuelled world of a boxing club” and tells the tale of a long-standing friendship. One of the boys is teetering on the brink of boxing stardom. The other is his coach, mentor and best friend. And, as it turns out, rabidly anti-gay.

This production is proper festival stuff. A tiny stage. Seats stuffed into a humming with fridges venue. But actually, the production values far outstripped (without the slightest disrespect meant to Kitsch) the relatively inauspicious surroundings. The acting was superb. The two boys were brilliant (and pretty – which helps).The lighting was cracking. And Mr Rudden directed beautifully, particularly considering the stage must have been all of eight foot square.

The script bursts into life in the first act. But by the second act, is showing its age. It was written almost twenty-five years ago so I guess it’s all credit to how times have moved on that it starts to seem slightly far-fetched as we bounce through act two. But the boys do it as much justice as you possibly could so the end is as poignant as you could hope.

It’s on til Saturday. Along with a whole array of other delights as part of the festival. Not least of which is, I believe, my photo in one of the art exhibitions. I shan’t tell you where.