09 January 2009

Festive wanderings

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Nordic warriors, frantic festivities and a few peaceful days by the seaside fighting off polar bears. Its fair to say that the last few weeks have seen it all.

Maria and I spent our sixth Christmas as our first Christmas apart. Maria spent the day with Elaine, Andrew and Munch the one year old destroyer of presents, whilst I discovered that my idea of 'Festive chicken with all the trimmings' and Middle East airline Etihad's idea 'Festive chicken with all the trimmings' diverged significantly. Nonetheless, they gave me a small chocolate to mark the occasion. I was moderately whelmed by their generosity.

I have finally discovered what it takes for me to fall asleep on an plane. Needless to say, being Christmas, I enjoyed a few festive glasses of wine on the flight to Abu Dhabi. This halfway point was where I ran out of steam previously, but I discovered a magical place called the 'Ghazal Lounge'. For 100 thingies (about £18) I got 5 hours worth of buffet food, open bar and a shower and wifi. After skyping Maria to have our prearranged Christmas chat, I was in the mood to get my 100 thingies worth, and the lovely girl behind the bar just kept filling my glass with whiskey as I chatted with an interesting Swedish sheet metal worker. I am usually quite nervy going through security in airports, but by the time I left the lounge I was relaxed almost to the point of being horizontal. Luckily the security guys in Middle-Eastern airports are a bit more laid back than their British counterparts. I actually fell asleep while the plane was taxiing, slept right through take off, and only awoke when the hostess asked me what breakfast I wanted. Since the plane was practically empty, I then settled down across a row of 4 seats and had some more kip. After a couple of hours I woke again, this time with a hangover. Hangovers and turbulence don't play well together, however I managed to nab a 1.5L bottle of water and used it down half a packet of ibuprofen. The breakfast of champions!

Maria drove down to Heathrow to pick me up, and rather than going home, we drove to Broadstairs in Kent to visit Tad. I'm a big fan of ring roads. I can't imagine what it must have been like around London before the M25 was built. What I am not a fan of is the increasing tendency around here to build enormous factory outlets at the junctions of the motorways. The result of this tendency is that if you try to drive from one side of London to the other on boxing day, what you actually spend your time doing is parking. Then moving a few yards and parking again. We ended up getting to Tad's place and enjoyed a brief evening of tasty conversation and erudite supper. Brief, because I couldn't keep my eyes open after about 7pm, despite my 3 hours sleep in the last 30. Of course by 2am I was wide awake, but enough whining from me.

We did drive back to Hull the next day for a teary reunion with Domino. After I removed his claws from my lap the tears dried up and we were friends again. After only two sleeps we were off again.

The 29th saw us on our way north for Hogmanay. We joined Annabel (who is marrying Maria's brother, Shaun, in August and is a resident of Edinburgh) and her neighbors Roy and Geoff on the Mound to watch the torchlight procession. This was the official opening of the Hogmanay, and is definitely worth a look next time you find yourself in Edinburgh on the 29th of December. Plenty of people in the crowd had torches (of the pitchforks and witch burning variety) and in advance of the procession, someone came along to help everyone light their torches. Leading the procession was a troop of pseudo-vikings from Shetland and Orkney, complete with swords and shields and flaming wooden torches, resplendent in their armor. They raised a great racket and and were a fearsome sight indeed. Trailing the vikings were pipers and drummers providing a fitting soundtrack. We joined the procession with the rest of the torch wielding crowd and followed it down the mound. A quick right turn onto Prince's Street and it wasn't long before the procession bottlenecked at the bottom of Carlton Hill. After quite a bit of shuffling and friendly use of elbows, we made our way to the top of Carlton Hill, where we waited for a while for everyone else to make it up the hill. It was properly cold waiting up on the hill, but I'm guessing that many of you aren't surprised that standing on the highest point in Edinburgh in late December is a wee bit chilly.

Set up on the hill was a bonfire consisting of a lion rampant at the top of a wicker tower. The vikings did what vikings do, and it wasn't long before the whole thing was ablaze. I can say without any reservation that it was the best ceremonial burning of a heraldic device by a troop of pseudo-vikings I've ever seen. Once the lion had been sufficiently cleansed by fire, we were treated to a marvelous display of fireworks. Its a shame that the breeze blew the smoke directly into the crowd, but it was spectacular nonetheless.

After we climbed down the hill we dropped in on Paula's clan (a close friend from Australia), all of whom had descended on Edinburgh for Christmas and New Year. After a quick beer and a chat, we retired to Annabel's for dinner and discussed the temperature: -4C. A bit chilly indeed.

The next day we met up with Paula and her squeeze Geoff et. al. at a cafe we know in Edinburgh that does flat white coffees. Having caffeinated sufficiently, we moved on to Mary King's Close, to try and get tickets for a tour of this historic street, sealed off when the council chambers were built. The tours were all sold out that day, so tickets were organized for New Year's Day instead and we headed to what must be my new favorite shop in the world. The shop front was about 10 foot wide and in the window was not very much of what was an entire pig. The shop was called 'oink' and all you could buy was a roast pork roll. And how good was it? It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that it was the best dedicated roast swine emporium I visited all year!

We washed down our pork with a few cleansing ales from the pub across the road, an excellent establishment with a number of guest ales on tap. Maria and I departed for dinner with Annabel and Paula's gang moved back to the flat white cafe for dinner. We joined them for desert and had a few glasses of wine to cleanse our pallets. To be honest, I ended up cleansed enough to require help with the stairs.

On New Years Eve, I went in search of a suitably tartan waistcoat to wear, but discovered that these aren't items which can be bought off the rack. I was told that having selected the correct tartan (of the many hundreds of registered tartans) it would be made for me. Not really an option, so I selected a suitable bow tie. Maria and I cut dashing figures of sartorial elegance, even I do say so myself.

Annabel put on a wonderful risotto dinner for us and a few of her friends, and then we had a cocktail reception where Roy and Geoff and all of Paula's mob turned up for a drink and some nibbles before we headed off to the Hoog. A squadron of taxis duly arrived and we barreled off to the assembly rooms.

The Hoog was a big party including a Ceilidh. A Ceilidh is scottish country dancing where all of the moves are called out and includes reels and so forth and quite a lot of bumping into each other. I tended to find that I worked out exactly how the dance went just as it finished, but no matter. It was all a great deal of fun, and we danced and recovered and danced some more, pretty much continually for about 5 hours. The only major break was for us all to rush out and watch the fireworks at midnight. The fireworks from the castle were duly spectacular. I must admit that I was expecting some spontaneous outbreaks of Auld Lang Syne (it being Rabbie Burns and all) but perhaps a street party was not the place for that.

On New Year's Day we emerged fairly late for brunch with Annabel and Co. before joining Paula's clan for a tour of Mary King's Close. The Close is much the same as it was in the 17th century and the displays do a fine job of evoking a sense of how difficult life must have been for many of the inhabitants of Edinburgh in years gone by.

We had a farewell dinner with Paula's mob, as her parents and grandmother were off to Egypt the next day, and the rest of the clan spreading to all parts of the world. Paula's parents had bought 'prizes' for all of the people of the tour and gave them out during the dinner. Having seen the dinner suit I wore to the Hoog, they decided that it could have been improved with the addition of a pair of Royal Stuart tartan trousers, which I duly wore for the remainder of the evening. Maria received a quite tasteful present of a decorative plate. Why does she get the tasteful presents? Actually on second thoughts, don't answer that one...

Paula's parents were terribly generous to us during our stay in Edinburgh and we are more grateful than we can reasonably express in a blog.

TBC

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