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Andrew Murphy

About Murphy's Edinburgh Website

This web site has been created to give people from around the world an insight into Edinburgh.

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, and like any other capital city, there is something going on in it all the time.

Edinburgh is a main tourist destination, with people coming from all over the world to explore the history, see the sights and to sample the food.  Some also come for a short time to try and trace their roots.

Many years ago people left the shores of Scotland and immigrated to other countries, but their roots were always in Scotland.  As the new generations grew up in the New World, their thoughts were always with the Scots

People are now interested in their roots and where their family originally came from, and tracing the family line back to Scotland can be done quite easily with the use of a computer.

With world travel now an everyday experience, people can travel around the world and go to many countries and locations that they could only dream about many years ago.

Scotland has seen a rise in visitor numbers over the years, and many people are selecting Edinburgh as their final destination.

Anyone who has ever come to Edinburgh has fallen in love with the city, now making Edinburgh one of the most famous destinations in the world.

These web pages have been created to let me show off some of my work to more people.  It could be said that it’s a worldwide photographic exhibition if you want to look at it that way.

If I were to hire a space to put on an exhibition it would cost me quite a lot of money to get the prints made up and to rent the space for showing it off, and then my time would be limited.

But by using the technology available to me through my computer, I have cut all that out, and I am now able to show a larger selection of my photography to more people.

Photographs of Andrew Murphy taken by Stanley Reilly

Murphy's Edinburgh Website established 7 June 2004

Drew's Shoeshine in Edinburgh 1987

Andrew Murphy cleaning shoes on the Streets of Edinburgh in 1987 rather than being unemployed

Firing the One O'clock Gun

Around about 1973 when I was 26 years old, I had a friend who was unemployed.  His mother asked me to help him get a job.  We sat and looked at the Edinburgh Evening News to see what jobs were available.  He picked one that was advertised.  I told him it was part time and it was for the Territorial and Volunteer Reserve Army.  He had made his mind up that he was going to go down and see what kind of money was being paid.  I run him down in my car and went into the drill hall with him.  He ended up signing on the dotted line, and so did I.

I got talked into it by the officer who was doing the interviews, and it was still one of the best things that I ever did at that time.  The deal was that you did a certain amount of weekend camps in a year and so many evenings.  As things went my friend never returned, but I did and was there for a numbers of years.

Sortly after I had signed on the dotted line I was unemployed myself.  As that part of the TA were going to Germany for their camp that year, I was able to go into the drill hall every day to help the PSI and civilian staff load the trucks for going to Germany, I got paid every day I went in.

The drill hall had full time staff working for the Ministry of Defence as civilian employees.  A gun fitter, mechanic, storeman, secretary etc.  I was in the drill hall mess one day when the PSI came up to me and told me that the limber gunner had died during the night of a heart attack, and did I want the job.  I jumped at it and took the job.

A limber gunners job was to service the heavy guns that the unit had and work with the gun fitter and mechanic. The One O'clock gun was also part of the unit that I was with, and it didn't take long before I was asked to stand in for the district gunner Dixie Dean.  He had gone off sick, so they needed someone to fire the gun.  I had been to Germany and I had also fired a number of 21 gun salutes.  So to do this wasn't a problem.  Beside I would get an extra days TA pay on top of my civilian pay for firing the gun.  In effect getting paid two days pay for working one day.

Dixie was suffering bad health at the time I was there, and I would always end up taking up the slack by firing the gun for him.  Sometimes six to seven weeks at a time.  There was one time when the firing mechanism went on the blink, and the gun refused to go off.  The gun fitter had a look at the mechanism and put new springs into the gun which was a 25 pounder field gun.

It was sorted, but it became an embarrassment when the gun failed to fire seven times in as many weeks.  Everyone was screaming it must be the gunners fault - in otherwise mine.  And there was nothing worse than coming out of the gun hut, loading gun with the cartridge and firing it when it failed to go off.  There would always be thousands of tourists watching you, and it was a disappointment for them.  But it was out of my control, it was in the gunfitters hands.  The tourist would ask me what happened when the gun failed to go off.  I would tell them too shout bang, because it wouldn't be going off that day.

Eventually the RAOC checked the mechanism and found that it wasn't the gunners fault, it was the firing mechanism after all.  The firing mechanisms were replaced in the four guns, and there was never a problem after that.  I was vindicated and went on to become the heavy goods driver for the MOD.  Going to various depots all over the country for equipment, but still firing the gun as and when required.

I did enjoy my time there, but I got itchy feet and wanted to set up a business, so I left the TA and my civilian job to move on.  But during my time with the TA, I was able to go to Germany, Holland, Norway and other countries with travel in Britain.

After a few weeks of originally signing on the dotted line in the TA, I got selected to drive the officers in troop HQ and got 2 promotions during that time making me a bombardier by the time I left.  I learnt a lot while I was there and was able to do a lot more because I was working as a civilian with the MOD while I was in the TA.  This allowed me to go on radio instructors and other courses and exercises that wouldn't have been open to me if I had been working for another employer.

The business that I started didn't last, I run out of money and had to return to more traditional types of work which I was already well equipped  do.

Written by Andrew Murphy 11 April 2007

There are many other people who have fired the guns at Edinburgh Castle over the years.  Some have fired it on 21 gun salutes, and others have fired the One O'clock gun.  There are many different stories linked with the gun over the years from the people that have carried out these duties.  Everyone that did fire the gun enjoyed what they were doing at the time, and all considered it an honour to be able to carry out this duty.

Working as a Shoeshine in Edinburgh

I didn't set out to be a shoeshine when I was younger.  When I left school in the early 1960s I started work in a wool merchants.  If you had suggested a shoeshine to me when I was young, I would have laughed at you.  I had worked in factories, in the building trade, done heavy goods long distance driving along with a whole host of other jobs.  Including being self employed.

In the 1980s, the job market had change all over Britain.  Jobs were harder to get, even if you were prepared to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in.  In 1984 I was working with a heavy engineering company from Buckie.  They had a contract with British Railways to pull out the bridge balustrades on Waverley Bridge in Edinburgh and replace them with prefabricated balustrades.  It was a nine month job, and was I able to get a job with them for that period of time.  It was seven long days a week with good money, and it was steady.

When that job came to an end, I ended up unemployed and on the dole again.  I found it almost impossible to find a job, because I didn't have any work experience according to the dole office.  That's strange, I started working when I was 9, still at school delivering newspapers, working in a butchers shop, greengrocer and many other types of jobs that gave me money.

I had also worked in 149 various jobs since leaving school.  It wasn't that I lacked experience.  It was because working practices had changed all over the country.  The jobs were no longer available due too the mechanisation of the factories and the changing work practices in the building trade.  Britain and the rest of the world was changing fast and they still are.

I was in my house one day with two friends when we got talking about starting a business and what kind of business we would like to start up if we had the money.  None of us had any money and we were all unemployed, so it was just talk, a bit of fantasy.  A shoeshine was mentioned by one of my friends who was younger, and we all laughed at the idea as being something none of us would do.

When my friends went away I got my thinking cap on and thought about a space on the pavement outside the Waverley Station for selling tourist gifts and cards.  I didn't mention it to my friends at the time, I thought if I got a street traders license, I would be able to set up a table selling these goods.  I had already worked on the Waverley Bridge for nearly a year with Hamilton Brothers so I had a good idea where I wanted to set the stand up.

The next day I went to the council offices and got an application form for a street traders license and took it home with me to fill in.  I sat and filled to form in explaining what I was going to sell.  Another section was filled in with a drawing of the location where the stand was to be placed.  The fee at the time was around £7 for a six week license.  When I had filled in the form I handed it back to the council.  It would go to a committee of councillors and they would decide if the license was granted.  About a week later I got a reply from the council telling me that the license had been refused on the grounds that my stand would block the pavement.

The shopping centre next door had put in an objection stating that I would effect their business, and the police had put in a report stating a stand there would block the pavement.  I didn't believe them, so I got another form and filled it in stating that I wanted to set up a shoeshine stand to see what the response was - and yes I did put in the same map that I had drawn up.  I paid another £7, and again it went to the council committee.  This time I got a license for six weeks from the council.  I now had a license to clean shoes, something that I didn't really want to do, and something that the council probably thought I wouldn't do.  Later on I applied for a three year license and was granted it, even though I was only there for seven months.

I adapted an old chair in the house and made up a board with the prices for the shoeshine.  I got some brushes and some shoe polish and decided to do it because I needed to do some kind of work.  And off I went to my space at Waverley Bridge.  I did the shoeshine for seven months, but the people of Edinburgh were not ready for it.  

Edinburgh's unlike London, South America and other parts of the world where shoeshine's are common and an everyday  sight.  Most of the people of Edinburgh were surprised to see a shoeshine and were too shy to use it, although I did have customers who used the shoeshine, and you were never alone.  People of all ages would come and talk to me about Edinburgh and all sorts of other things or they would ask for directions.

On the first day that I went down to shine shoes I received my first customer.  It was a retired American man who was on holiday with his wife.  He came to my stand and I told him to put his foot on the stool.  He had on a brand new pair of shoes that had never been polished before and they looked dull.  When I put the polish on the first shoe the colour changed drasticly, so I kept talking to him about Edinburgh hoping that he didn't notice until I had done the other shoe to make them look the same.

Once the polish was on the other shoe they both looked the same and they had a fantastic shine.  The couple were having a holiday of a lifetime and had come from California.  They were an extrovert couple, and if the sun shines in California, I think they had brought it with them.  They were a lovely couple with bucketful of charisma, they just wanted to talk to me about the city which I know well.

That man came back the next day for a chat with me about Edinburgh and brought another pair of shoes with him for shining.  During my time on the Waverley Bridge I spoke too many people, the young talking to me about the New Town - I was brought up there, and the elderly talking about the Old Town of the past along with the high class shoplifters who were out on the prowl in the shops of Edinburgh.  Some of them looked like business people in the way they were dressed, a suit and an overcoat full of pockets to put what they had stolen in it.  I talked to all types of people on Waverley Bridge without being too critical.

Once a German man came down for a shoeshine, I asked him to lift his leg onto the stool, he lifted his leg to put  it onto the shoeshine stool and nearly fell over.  It was then I realised that he had an artificial leg.  I told him to keep his foot on the ground and I shined his shoes on the pavement.  In conversation he asked me where he could get a woman, which was what he was really after in a strange city while he was on holiday.  I told him where to go, but found it quite funny at the time.  If he had asked me at the beginning, I could have told him where to go.  He was looking for a brothel, so I sent him off in the direction that he wanted.

I would listen to anyone of any age who wanted to stand around and have a chat with me, sometimes advising tourist where to go for certain types of shops, services, ancient buildings and sights.  You never knew what you were going to be asked from day to day while standing there.

While I was doing the shoeshine I hit a quite period for about a week, so I decided to go down to Princes Street with a keyboard and sing for my supper.  Sometimes I would get people who would throw some money in the keyboard box, but the money from the shoeshine was better.  As far as I was concerned, I was working hard for my money, and if it meant lowering my standards a bit then so be it.  At least I was trying my hand at something rather than sitting in the house doing nothing.  It wasn't quite sex, drugs and rock n roll at the top, this was it at the bottom of the pile, but boy did I see life the way some other people see it, and to be quite honest it's not really all that bad when you have a home to go back to at night.

I have never classed that part of my life as a waste of time, I learnt a lot by shining shoes and talking to all types of people on the streets.  It was a learning time in my life, and it doesn't matter what problems you may have, you'll always come across someone else who has problems that are twenty times worse than the problems that you might have.

While I was on the Waverley Bridge shining shoes, the shopping centre that had objected to my stand to sell tourist goods offered me a space in the shopping centre.  They approached me, and asked me if I wanted to work shining shoes on their premises.  I gave them the reply they deserved, and that was no.  I didn't want to work inside their shopping centre, the life on the streets of city was much more interesting.

The people that I met and talked to on the street were genuine people, and that's what I liked about working on the streets.  I was very streetwise and knew Edinburgh inside out before I did the shoeshine.  So I was not likely to take any nonsense from anyone before I did it.  This was something new, and I was prepared to have a go at it even if it was for a short time.

I wasn't likely to make  fortune shining the shoes belonging to the people of Edinburgh, but the gossip and listening to other peoples way of life was interesting, and you were never alone while you were working on the streets of Edinburgh.  So I never did make my fortune shining shoes, but believe me it was a good experience.

I gave up the shoeshine after seven months and got a job with the council as lorry driver with the buckets for six months until I was shifted over to street cleansing and was put on driving the water butt.  They made me chargehand after two years, but I decided it was time to move on after working for four years  with the council.  I then did a typing and word processing course for fourteen months.

I then took up the video camera for four years solid before I went back to photography, something that I learned and had done off and on from the age of fourteen.

  Written by Andrew Murphy 12 April 2007

Seeing Six White Sparrows

A pure white albino sparrow with red pink eyes

If someone were to tell you that they had seen a white sparrow, you would probably give them a strange look and move away from them a little bit.  If they said that they had seen six white sparrows, you probably think he was a bit of nutter.  Could he be stoned or drunk?  Has he flipped his lid this time, or is that the way he is all of the time?  You would probably answer him by saying  you had seen a pink elephant walking down the road beside you.  I know I would if there was no proof of the six white sparrows.

It started in 1982 when I moved into this house on the Royal Mile,  I hadn't been in the house for long when I heard a light tapping at my window.  I looked over at window to see what it was.  There were two blue tit birds at the window tapping it with their beaks.  I liked wildlife, so the same week I fitted two birdfeeders beside my window.  It didn't take long before I had chaffinches, sparrows, a wren, robin, coaltit and greenffinches coming up to the window to dine on the peanuts, wild birdseed, raisins, currants, cherries and dried peeled fruit and other delights that I put out for them.

Over the years, I have watched the wild birds from my window, which is on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh and looks North over to Fife.  It's a top floor house so I get a good wide view of the area, and I can see North Bridge, the Calton Hill and St Andrew's House, plus right over to Fife.  In that small area there are all types of wildbirds, crows, gulls, magpies, blackbirds, thrushes and the other types of birds that you would expect to see.

Not long after moving in and settling down into my house, I started to notice the bird patterns.  For about two or three months of the year without fail the swifts used to come over to Britain, I had a flock of them that used to hunt for insects within a one mile area outside my window.  They used to do that year after year and you could almost set your clock by them.  Over the time that they were here, I got to see them flying, and they would fly straight towards my window, and within a few inches of it they would turn and go in the other direction.  It was a great sight while it lasted, watching them for hours on end from the comfort of my house window.  For the last ten years, these birds have not returned.

I also have a flock of sparrows that comes up to my window every day to feed on the birdfeeders.  They have fed there since I moved into the house and put out the birdfeeders out for them feed on.  In the Summer they come up with their young to be taught how to feed off the birdfeeders.  Sometimes in the Summers the window is open, and  a clearer and better view of the birds can be seen as they bounce across the window box which is in full bloom with roses, lilies and other types of flowers.

In 1991, I was sitting in the house on a day off from my work when I heard someone ringing my bell.  I answered the door and spoke to an elderly neighbour who lived on the floor below me.  Nora and her sister Maggie had already lived here for over thirty years when I arrived, so they had told me all about the area, little things that I didn't know, like the people who had lived here in the past and other little snippets of news.

Nora asked me to go down to the stair window and look out at a bird that was sitting on the drying green area at the back of our houses.  She asked me what kind of bird it was because it was white.  I looked out of the window and watched the bird for awhile.  At first I thought it was a budgie that had flown away from its owner, until a sparrow came down from the birdfeeder on my window with food in its mouth to feed the white bird.  It was then that I realised it was a young sparrow.  It wasn't able to fly great distances yet, and its mother was showing it where to feed by stages.  I was quite excited at seeing the sparrow, I then told Nora what kind of bird it was.

A few days later, I was sitting in the house looking out of the window when I saw the sparrows coming up to the window for a feed.  They still do it today, they always come in a flock and feed together, that way they can watch each others backs for predatory birds.  That day the white sparrow arrived at the window with its mother to feed on the birdfeeder.  The mother started feeding it with its beak for a while before taking a break and feeding itself.  The other sparrows on the birdfeeders did not attack the white sparrow, which is what I expected them to do because of the bright colours.  On looking at it I noticed that its eyes were pink and all of its feathers were white.  It was a pure Albino sparrow.

I started to write a record on what was happening with these birds, so the next section comes from my book that I kept a record in:

3rd  July 1991 One white sparrow spotted on drying green area.  The mother bird was darting up to the birdfeeders on my window.  At first I thought it was a budgie with its white feathers, but the mother was a full coloured brown and black sparrow.  When it started feeding the white bird I realised it was a sparrow.  A young one.

4 July 1991  White sparrows on the drying green area in the morning.  They flew over the roof, while another white sparrow was spotted with the mother, two of them later on in the afternoon.

A photographer came down in the afternoon from the Edinburgh Evening News because a call had been made to them about the albino sparrows.  The photographer waited for awhile expecting the birds to appear on command.  But the birds were just not there.  I think he thought it was a jape, and was ready to go because he hadn't seen them on demand, but just as he was about to go the birds appeared.  First one, then another and another.  The photographer was amazed at the sight of albino sparrows and got his photographs, before leaving.  Later on that day I saw the three white sparrows in the tree at the back of my house.

5 July 1991  White sparrow spotted in the back green area, mother feeding it from the birdfeeder on my window.

6 July 1991  White sparrow on bird feeder with mother learning to feed from it.  Sparrows twice in one day, don't know if it was the same white sparrow.  On this day the Edinburgh Evening News run a story on the white sparrows.  They reported:  Close Encounters of the White Kind.  Residents in an historic close are all in a twitter over three albino sparrows outside their windows on the High Street.  The birds have red eyes and pure white feathers, a condition an expert admitted he had never seen before in sparrows.  David Mitchell of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said albinos were more often found among starlings and blackbirds.  In the cities, they were less likely to fall victim to birds of prey, but made easy targets for cats and rats.  Poor eyesight also reduced life expectancy.

7 July 1991  White sparrow spotted in the back green area and on the birdfeeder at the window.  Three times at half hour intervals.  Six sparrows in total seen today.  All pure albino with white feathers and red eyes, no other colouring seen in these sparrows making them pure albino sparrows.

8 July 1991  White sparrows on the birdfeeder and on the windowsill  most of the day.  After this day the white sparrows were never seen again.  They had gone to wherever it is sparrows go.

So you see there is a record of those white sparrows.  Oh, don't forget later on that year I was sitting in the house again, when I sat and watched a squirrel coming up for a feed on the bird feeder.  This squirrel must have been a high flyer because it came to the window from 8 September 1991 until the 28 September 1991 before moving on.

This year, I have had sparrows - no not white ones - starlings, chaffinches, blue tits, great tits, a sparrowhawk, greenffinches a coaltit and various other types of birds at the window.  Yes I have a sparrowhawk floating about my window this year.

Edinburgh does have wildlife in the centre of the city if people take the time to watch it.  White sparrows are not something that you see every day, but they do exist from time to time.  The birds will continue to get fed on the bird feeders outside my window because I just don't know what I'm going to see out of that window.

The mistake a lot of people make with birdfeeders outside their windows is the lack of food.  They get a birdfeeder, put it on their wall, put food in it and forget to fill it again.  When you keep it full all the time, you will see all types of wildlife.  So don't make the mistake of thinking the birds will continue to come when the birdfeeders are empty.  The birds will give you great pleasure over the years, and they will continue to come for food year after year.  And who knows what you will see as time passes by.

Written by Andrew Murphy 13 April 2007

Andrew Murphy at the Pleasance 2007

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