The blog of D Kai Wilson-Viola

Author, advocate, designer, mental health advocate and parent. 

E is for Edinburgh

E is for Edinburgh

This entry is part 8 of 22 in the series AtoZ 2023 - The AtoZ of Me

Princes Street Walk


I am a native of Edinburgh,
Auld Reekie born and bred,
scrappy, beautiful, like our famous dog,
And a beauty over a gory, bloody history.

A melting pot of cultures,
loud bagpipes, in endless loops1
the Fringe, Hogmanay, Beltaine,
the city alive, beautiful, brilliant.

Athens-like Folly2, overlook
some modern shames, like the ever
tripline replacing trams3,
whose tracks warp, even in the
flash summers of Scotland.

The misheard street names,
that of Princes Street, in front of Queen,
we stand there, by the Scott Monument,
our picturesque ‘Goth Rocket’4
waiting, for the One o’clock gun,
tourists asking when, bemused residents answering,
asking one another “if it’s not just in the name?”

Look out over the gardens, then back,
A mishmash of souvenir shops, blaring
traditional music, the echo of bagpipes,
forever kept, the hotel fronts, or grab a coffee
and transport stops with dual purpose

Go down, past the galleries, travel to
Haymarket, and beyond,
find the woodlands, the water,
Go to the Braids,
solitude, space, and isolation, in the centre of one edge
or to the Pentlands to Water of Leith,
dance out in Colinton,
where Princes may have walked,
leading me back home.5

Notes

1 – I’m not complaining about the bagpipes, I actually like them, but for the month of the Fringe, it’s just a wall of sound. Understandably, but it’s a lot.

2 – The Folly referred to here, is also called ‘Edinburgh’s Shame’. It was built, and then ran out of money and was never completed. It was abandoned in 1829. It’s beautiful, and it’s also the backdrop for Beltane’s fire festival.

3 – No one really likes the trams, not anyone I’ve spoken to. There’s been a lot of backlash about them. i betcha though, saying this, I’ll be told they’re actually ok now. All I know is that they’re one of the major things both our families talk about as an issue with things happening in the city. Recently, the only thing they’ve been more annoyed about is the random bike lanes popping up like vines.

4 – No really, we call it the Goth Rocket 😉

5 – I used to walk from the centre of town, home. I’d start on Princes Street, after walking down from my now partner’s flat a few streets away, walk to Haymarket, then up to Fountainbridge, pick up the Union Street Canal, then come off it, onto the Water of Leith and home, to the Calders or Wester Hailes. It was a long walk, but I loved it, especially in spring.

Yesterday’s posts

D is for ‘Don’t call me that’
D is for Darkness #Elliotpeters
D is for DungeonBashers

Yesterday’s comments

Songbird’s Crazy World
Life after 50 for Women
Brizzy May’s Books
Arbitray Dust Bunnies
Shalzmojo
The Curry Apple Orchard

Catching up

Catching up

This entry is part 2 of 10 in the series Blogging From AtoZ 2022

A- D for the Blogging AtoZ challenge will be up in the next 24 hours or so, and I’ll be hopping around all of the blogs and hopefully meeting some new, neat people. We’ve got family visiting this weekend though, so, I’m prioritising the visit and a belated Mother’s Day celebration 🙂

Afternoon cream tea yumminess!

Previews…

  • A is for Alive, in a sense…
  • B is for Books
  • C is for Covid
  • D is for Dancing in the rain
  • E is for Elden Ring
  • F is for Fantasy
  • G is for Gaming
  • H is for home/hope
  • I is for Indie Authors
  • J is for July
  • K is for Kai and all my other names/Kairos
  • L is for Ludosport
  • M is for Magic/Mental health
  • N is for Never/Night
  • O is for open
  • P is for Psychosis
  • Q is for Quiet
  • R is for Run girl, Run
  • S is for Se.cu.ri and why I found a way to explain my perspective in sports
  • T is for Time
  • U is for unsustainable
  • V is for Victories, even the small ones
  • W is for White
  • X is for Xray
  • Y is for Years
  • Z is for Zzzzz

I may deviate, slightly, from this, and there may be more than one topic a day, but year’s the general plan. Plus the daily poem, and posts on other blogs 😉

Love, Muse #poetry #Nanowrimo #andmilestogobeforeIsleep

Love, Muse #poetry #Nanowrimo #andmilestogobeforeIsleep

The night before #nanowrimo21 and I’m sharing ‘Love, Muse’.
Sit down.
The dishes can wait.
No, the baby isn’t stirring.
That’s it.
Let me tell you a story.
It won’t take long
Sit down.
That wasn’t the door.
You don’t need more coffee
That’s it.
Fingers on the key.
We’re off.
Love,
Muse
by D Kai Wilson-Viola

A little about me

A little about me

And, more specifically my books.

I write under a diverse set of pen names, and thought I’d share the pen names and the genres they match up with.  On this blog post, I can explain how to simply grab the feeds that you want, unless you’d rather read everything I do, in which case, WOOOHOOO!

So – I write under the following pen names (the ones with *’s have already featured published stories)

D Kai Wilson * – thriller, slipstream and sci-fi
Kai Viola – Chick lit
Brittany Harkness – Romance
D. Kai Wilson-Viola *- Non-fiction
Sabrann Curach *- Horror
Fayth C Reeves * – Adult
Kai Wilson – Poetry

Over the next couple of days I’ll post about most of the stuff I’ve been getting up to recently, and how to support me while I start releasing the bits I have rights to onto the Kindle platform and beyond :)