Kate Atkinson
It was one of those landings you unfortunately experience now and again when the plane swings erratically from side to side on the approach due to strong side winds and then lands with a heavy thud and you are more than a tad thankful you have not just died – the situation becoming awkward when you sit in the window seat as I did and the nervous people in the middle and aisle seats both glance in your direction and you try to look cool & reassuring as if – hey guys that was nothing!
I took the tram into Edinburgh’s city center and to the very grand Balmoral Hotel where I was to meet author Kate Atkinson who a week previously had been interviewed by Dagens Nyheter’s reporter Lotta Olson – her interview in Swedish. Having arrived early I looked around the hotel and realised that the environment was not suitable for the images in which I wished to portray Kate .. I lay my hope in asking Kate to spend 45 minutes with me outside to do a shoot in the city which she said yes to do immediately. Nice. Thank You Kate.
Walking to a small side street which I knew of in the old town of Edinburgh I thanked her for going outdoors in the windy and biting cold day, I mentioned the dodgy landing I had just experienced and she looked at me with a broad smile and said “I love turbulence” she went onto explain that on a recent flight to London City Airport the pilot tried to land twice unsuccessfully and because the pilot rule book says on the third attempt you have to go to a new airport (Southend) she thought they should of “had a go” anyway.
Flying was also the theme of her new novel A God In Ruins that relates the life of Teddy Todd – would-be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot, husband, father, and grandfather – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.
