1 What is your earliest memory of Edinburgh? I remember coming here to visit my parents' friends in the early 1980s. I remember huge rooms, high ceilings and bay windows with lots of places to play hide and seek.
2 What are your memories of schoo
l? I remember we grew watercress on blotting paper at Cradlehall Primary in Inverness – that's what you did in the 1980s.
3 Where is your favourite place in Edinburgh and why? I love Agassiz Rock in the Hermitage of Braid. It was here on an outcrop during the 1830s that the Swiss academic Louis Agassiz finally found proof for his new science of glaciation. Sadly, he died without knowing his theories would be vindicated.
4 What are the best things about Edinburgh? Edinburgh's builders have, for the most part, been thoughtful, imaginative and respectful, and these values are reflected by the people here.
5 What would you change about the city? Appleton Tower – part of the University of Edinburgh's remodelling of George Square in 1966 – would be gone, totally, and with extreme prejudice.
6 Describe a perfect Edinburgh day/night out. It would begin with breakfast at the King's Wark at The Shore followed by a walk up the Water of Leith to one of the art galleries. I'd enjoy lunch in Princes Street Gardens. In the evening, I'd head to The Stand followed by a civilised drink in the Canny Man's.
7 Which sports interest you? I walk around golf courses searching in long grass for a little white ball and sometimes shouting at it.
8 What was your most embarrassing moment? I took my class of 15-year-olds on a trip to Argyll last year, where they insisted on karaoke. Being pupils at a Steiner school, all of them can sing. Not me. They forced me to warble my way through a duet of Summer Nights with my colleague. The little monkeys posted it on YouTube.
9 What is your greatest achievement? It has to be helping my class of final year pupils to successfully run our school canteen as a business. We made enough profit to travel to Poland for three weeks on a cultural trip.
10 Sum up Edinburgh in three words. Salt and sauce.
The full article contains 394 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
