The History of the Gra (y) (innit) e City

I am a sucker for story telling and decided one way of getting my fix in a small town like Aberdeen would be to book myself into a guided tour of the city.  Not long ago, I had gone on a private tour of Aberdeenshire where our Scottish tour guide (a fiddler by profession) puff-chestedly dismissed Shakespeare’s Macbeth as pure fiction. Time for another one, I thought, and this time about the Granite city itself.

So booked myself a walking ‘medieval history’ tour.  The weather, predictably, was bad.  After 3 days of glorious sun, just on the day I decided to go on a walking tour, it pours.  And it didn’t stop for a good half hour at the beginning of the tour.  If I had been the tour guide, I’d have said with a flourish of my hand ‘Welcome to the Grey-innit City!  Expect grey and never be disappointed!’ But ours didn’t. Instead, how she pulled her parka hoodie on, fished out the laminated notes from her water-proof messenger bag and went on with it, without so much as a whimper about the spoilsport rain.  Like, it was just the way of life.  ‘We do everything in the rain here’! Her attitude seemed to scream.

Btw, tour guide was ginger enough and accented enough.  Talking of accents, the pronunciations of R was most interesting. Pointer no. 1: Scots lurrrve to over-pronounce their R’s and refuse to pronounce their T’s. Some samples : I-run smith (Ironsmith).  

Today’s tour was another reminder that Aberdeen is no Edinburgh.  The other 12 ladies who turned out today (pretty good number I would say) were ALL local.  Most of them in their 40s and 50s. Disadvantage? No one asked any questions.  And the tour guide took a lot of Scottish words for granted.  Like Brae. And Wynd. For the uninitiated, Brae is a hilly street and Wynd is narrow alley-like street that connects 2 parallel bigger streets.

Btw, the most interesting part of the tour was how she said ‘Pay attention to the street levels’.  I’d have never thought about it.  And I never did, in the 2.5 years that I’ve lived here.  Apparently, the city is built over 7 hills each of them connected to each other by bridges.  The much-in-news, Bon Accord Gardens is the most (may be the only?) green of the valleys today.  And through it flows the Denburn river. Yes!  There is a river flowing through those gardens.  Under it to be precise!  What a story!  For under those gardens, right next to the railway tracks flows the Denburn river.  All culvert-ed and discreet.  The very river from which the city gets its name.  Aber-den, meaning mouth of the River Den.   Intriguing. 

Some of the other interesting titbits –

1)     RGU’s student halls in Woolmanhill were once called ‘Rotten holes’ coz that’s where young unskilled labourers from the nearby mill lived’. Wicked thoughts as I make parallel connections.

2)     The site of Trinity Centre was once a thoroughfare.

3)     The Green was an open market-place.

4)     All those streets called Baker’s lane, Candlemaker’s lane etc. all leading up to the Green make complete sense

5)     The site of a certain hotel/gym today could have been the site of the Harbour once upon a time

6)     Shiprow, now a street, could have been a parking lot for boats.

Rather an interesting 2 hours. 

I’ve got 2 more tours booked one for each, so watch this space for more in the month of June and July. 

You know what would be interesting to know?  The areas around the city centre, how they developed and who lived there.  Like Balnagask, Peterhead, Fraserburgh etc. Will keep my ears and eyes open!

Grease is the word

Gotta give it to those guys who came up with the concept of Sing-A-Long in theatres. After all, they've not only been able to sucker audience into theatres to watch old movies at 3 times the price of an ordinary cinema ticket but have also managed to make a ‘genre’ out of it and have sold many a show, in many cities over many years! Kudos!

I mean, seriously, would you under ordinary circumstance, go to a cinema, leave alone a theatre to watch a movie that is 30 years old? No.  Right?  But Guess what? I did! Last Friday. It was sold to me as a ‘Sing-A-Long’. I was totally the Eskimo bought some more ice if all that white stuff that surrounded me wasn't enough!

Get this peeps. I went to a house-full show last Friday, where the audience dressed up as characters from the movie, got judged for those dresses and given a prize and had no qualms making a fool out of themselves by following, to the letter, all that the ‘host’ had instructed them to do! It’s amazing how grown-up adults thoroughly got a kick out of receiving a brown bag of ‘goodies’ and listened to the host who told us what to take out of the brown bag for which song and what dance moves should be made etc.  It was almost like the Brits said to themselves 'Ok.. We know that there is something called 'public place decorum'.  So if you want us to gather in a theatre, dress up crazy, pay stupid amount of money to watch a movie with loads of songs, sing along to all those songs and still be classified under 'socially acceptable' behaviour, then we'll be happy to comply'. 
See waht I mean?

Now, can you see how the 2 business guys who came up with the idea would have discussed this?

Scene: 2 guys during a (defintely) Sunday Brunch after a drunken movie night out!
 'Omg Bob!  You were so outta control at the cinema yesterday, singing like that! Every song that too! What are you like?' (Note that ridiculous British phrase?!).

'Oh, shut up, Scott!  Admit it!  You loved it.  And so did that old woman. And those kids.  Look at all the support we got when the stupid cinema guys threw us out.  No sense of humour those guys have got! Balmy buggers!' 

'Cept for that red-faced Scunner! He totally, wanted to skelp me, didn't he? You know what (a commnly used British phrase when someone is agitated) Scott!. There's a market out there for this.  Do you see it.  I mean.. people like us need to go crazy without upsetting other people.  See? so here's what  we do..'

And thus was born the concept of Sing-A-Long.

Nevertheless, can’ t say I didn’t altogether enjoy myself! Did sing at the top my lungs with the rest of the crowd and hooted with delight whenever Rizzo arrived on the scene.

Still.... guess what? They can sucker me only once!

We the Kings

Legend:

Long, long ago there was a time in Britain, when if you were not born into Royalty, or Aristocracy or didn’t have money to build stately mansions, you could still get your kicks out of being in fancy-ass places as long as you can work yourself into a high placed government job.  Like becoming a Provost (Scots for Mayor).  You just go down to the King and go ‘Uh… boss, we need a new office to work from.  Here’s the plan.  We gotta build it from marble, make it as ornamental as possible and for good measure, include an elaborate style fit for a mini-palace.  Let’s make it a wannabe palace. Howzzat?!

And the king said, ‘Sure!  We got plenty of dough coming from the colonies anyway.. no place in the treasury to put it all in.  Besides, who wants to be called Unca Scrooge, anyway? Go on. You can have your money to splurge on the Parliament House’.  And thus was built the Glasgow City Chambers.

Ok.. I totally made that up and there might be a few brickbats flying in my direction.  But seriously, while the architecture itself is commendable, which the Council has no doubt gone about gloating in a 10-page brochure, the purpose and reason for such expenditure is absolutely ridiculous!  Especially when so much money must go into its maintenance these days too! 

Whether its the Marble Lion at the foot of the elaborate marble staircase,  or the councillor's chamber, or the fit-for-a-king Lord Provost's office, or the defintely, unnecessarily super ornamental alabaster fireplace in the Satinwood Salon, the banqueting Hall with Cuban wall panels or the Upper Gallery, it all speaks of an extragavance on the scale of 'No bread to eat? Feed them cake' sort of abusdity!  But the prize for the extravagance actually goes to The Banqueting Hall. A mammoth of a hall during the desciption of which, the tourist guide's chest was puffing so much with pride that I was almost afraid he would either burst or would float off into the ceiling and get stuck like a helium balloon!

And when he gloated about all the effort and the money that went into cleaning of the 3 massive chandeliers (or Electroliers as he called it) in the ‘Golden Room’, I was like ‘Aha.. let one more person mention the word ‘recession’ in this country and I’ll know just what to say’!

Well.. atleast Glasgow will have the Gold-plated silver mace to pawn if UK recessess a-la Greece.

All said and done, there is one thing though.  Will admit that I was impressed with the Council Chamber.  At the end of the day, this was the primary purpose for which the building was proposed.  It was suitably impressive without being stupidly extravagant!

One word for the Glasgow City Chambers!  Meh!

Braemar trip, something's begun!

Had a spur of the moment decision to go to Braemar for the weekend.  Major eye-roll moment right? The choice to go to a non-fancy village in Scotland?  But guess what?  Some weekends gotta be spent just like that.  Relaxed, wandering about on quiet roads in a mini blizzard and then going to a bar to get a warm drink.    And then you are lucky if Serendipity takes over to make things go from quietly pleasant to fantastic. 

As it happened on that dark, Sunday evening.  After a long walk in the snow, the plan was to get hot chocolate at the local bar and go find some place to eat.  (Which left us with exactly 2 places.  Our hotel.  And this bar!  The only 'fancy' restaurant is shut on Sundays(!)  and the only coffee shop in the village closes at 4! Oh, while we are at it, I might as well tell you that we had to actually knock on the the fancy restaurant's door on Saturday evening to be let in for dinner.  Funny place Braemar).

So there we are at the near empty bar, sipping warm chocolate, when my eyes wander to the Liquer bar lined with fancy bottles and colourful jars.  'How about a drink before we go?' me ventures.  PIC (Partner in Crime) agrees.  And thus began Yours Truly's discovery of the magic liquid called Liquer!  (Baileys and Kahlua? ***scoff scoff**). So after a few shots of various colourful liquids, (which we just randomly picked based simply on the bottle's design) and prentending to be novice connoisseurs, another very amused (master) bartender, becomes interested in our ways!  He says, 'Well, I can whip up a few cocktail shots or proper cocktails for you ladies if you'd like'.  
What the heck, we thought, we got the time, after all.  'Option A' we screamed.  Ah... Best.Choice.Ever.

'Thought you ladies might like that!'

Whoo to great bartenders!

 Got a gorgeous bottle of Chambord sitting in my cupboard now.  Roll on Cocktail parties!!

Would you send a Clavie please?

I jumped at the prospect when N suggested that we go to another Pagan New Year festival.  2 NY celebrations in one year?  'Hell, ya'.. I said.  'Nope! Not that one, a smaller version of it' he calmly responded.  Unbeknownst that any such thing existed, I waited, a little confused.  Soon found out that the said celebration was to be at a little known village called Burghead, about 3 hours drive from Aberdeen, on the Northern tip of Aberdeenshire. 

Celebrated on the 11th of Jan, this is Burghead's version of Hogmanay.  Adopting the Georgian calendar back in 1660, meant that their Hogmanay fell 11 days after the new New Year.  So while the rest of the UK celebrates 1 New Year, Burghead gets to do it twice!

I decided early on, that I  had to compensate for the Stonehaven debacle.  So at the risk of losing my friends,I tried to get as close to the Star performers as much as possible.  In brief, this is what the festival all about:

On the night of the 11th, the Clavie, a wooden barrel filled with wood shavings and tar is nailed to a post.  Didn't see this part of the custom as we didn't get into town till about 6pm.  Rumour has it that the same nail is used, year after year. The Clavie is then carried to the home of one of the town's oldest residents, the Burghead Provost, who lights the clavie with peat from his own hearth. We got in town just in time to see the elected Clavie King , along with several other men - usually fishermen - come out of a garden and then carrying the burning clavie clockwise around the town, stopping now and then to present smoldering embers to various householders. 

Dying for a proper photo, me starts chasing the Clavie King, only to have a burly bellow into my face to get out of the day.  Soon am swept by the crowd, losing friends but am too focused to be worried about being lost. Following the Clavie from a distance now, I made my way to the ancient alter in a stone fort on Doorie Hill.  The rest is explained in the photo and the video below.

Just watch as the Clavie is wedged between wooden stoves and burned till nothing is left off it!  The entire hillock is on fire.  Apparently the fire show on the hill, in ancient times, was for all the neighbouring villages to see and herald the New Year.  Burn away the old and ring in the new!

There's more.  Once the barrel falls to the ground in pieces, the Clavie Crew started throwing pieces of ember down the hill towards the public!  'Oh, that's very nice'! I thought totally indignant.  'Set the onlookers on fire! Or maybe its a sport.  To see if people can avoid being burnt!'  But while I was thinking all this, guess what the onlookers did?  Clamber towards the burning embers, up the hill, grabbing them!!  Apparently, wood from the burnt Clavie is supposed to bring good luck and families took home the best and biggest of the embers they can find to keep in their homes!  As bewildered tourists we just stood and gawked as children and adults screamed 'Here, throw it this way' at some of the crew members. Once we watched the last of the locals skipping along with their treasures for the day, we clambered up the hill to see if there was anything leftover that would bring us any luck.  Sure enough we found bits of wood which was good enough.  That would just have to do for the time being!!

Btw folks, while researching the Clavie festival discovered that Scotland has a lot of Pagan festivals going on and aboot!  Some of the ones that I aspire to get to eventually following are:

• Beltane, Edinburgh, April 30th
• Burning of the Clocks, Brighton December 21.
• Guy Fawkes Bonfire, Lewes, East Sussex, November 5,
• Up-Helly-Aa, Shetland, 28th Jan 2014

Woohoo.. bring it on

When Snow White isn't the fairest of them all..

Well.. can't live in the UK and not go for a Panto during Christmas time, can I?  So, for the sake of traditions, yours truly went right off to check out for herself what the fuss was all about.  Now gotta admit that I wasn't all gungho about it.  I did have my doubts. The posters weren't quite appealing.  It was a British musical. But I went anyway.  Gotta admit: going with a  'Surprise me' attitude had its upside.  Came away with a 'Whoa, glad did that one!!'

Part of the decision to go to a Panto was influenced by an old flatmate Alena who went to this Sing-Along show and came away very happy.  (No points for guessing what's on the next 'To do at the Theatre' List!!).  She may have suggested it at some point of time.  Thank you my dear!

Anyhoo, back to the main point.  The panto was just brilliant.  Because I didn't know what to expect, I found the entire concept of topical humour woven into an old fairytale just fantastic!  Like the intro of the main characters.  In walks a man, his head stuck in a bin.  Like the poor devil from October who was looking for his 'bonnet' inside a bin right in the middle of the city by sticking his head into it.  There's the photo if you are not from Aberdeen and missed the main news of that day.  (Check out the passerby who is pointing him to his 'mate'!).   

Anyhoo, the character who gets introduced is Bobby, the 'glaikit' son of the Dame, the main heroine.  Yep, its not Snow White, peeps who is going to get you, but the Dame.  The Dame and the Son are just hilarious and thoroughly adorable.  .

Every bit of the panto was fun! Inclduing the names of the characters that were made up a-la Asterix. The Prince was Peter from Culter, the 7 dwarfs were Jokey, Snoozy, Bossy, Grouchy, (can't remember if the other 3 had different names as well or had the original ones)! Sadista is the Wicked Queen, although her dancing to 'Gangman style' and Spice girls made her more of an 'Adora' than a Sadista!

Ofcourse its the age of the 3D and Pantos have to keep up. So when Sadista conjures up a dragon to slay Snow White, it not only grows big but also flies out into the audience! Yes it does! Now why the dragon evenutally didn't go after Snow White is probably contained in all the Doric bellowing that the Dragon spews but talking dragon is great!

The amusing  observations of local areas was another fun bit.

Not only was the entire Panto adorable, but the closing was bang-on.  Sadista's decision to get a new life and then walking in as the Aberdeen Busker was just un-comparably funny.

All in all, the fairest of them all is the Script! Whoever came up with is a genius!

Oh.. if anyone else ever sells you the 'stiff upper lip' concept about Brits, kick them in their ass (Uh.. arse) and show them this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foHh3Sg47ok

That's what we did at the Panto..

Here's a pic of the entire cast doing a Gangman.

Guess who's gonna go be at the panto in 2013. Elaine C Smith and gang.. you've got a new fan!