Monday, Monday, Monday

What better way to spend a Monday evening than at King Tut's Wah-Wah Hut in Glasgow watching the illustrious Mark Devine (cousin, drums) play with his effulgent band, The Twilight Sad?

Chalk & Cheese

Chadwick is doing is utmost to sabotage my scholastic life here in Edinburgh: Real cask-conditioned ales have been drunk, the Highlands have been visited, Royal Miles have been walked, the Proclaimers have been heard, museums have been ambled through, my homemade vegetarian haggis pizza has been eaten, pounds and pence have been spent -- all this in two days! Stay tuned for our Glasgow trip, when I introduce Chad to oyster ice cream.

The first rotary printing press was invented in Edinburgh (ca. 1850). This is a picture of it.

Kyle & Chad squint into the sun at Loch Ness (alas, we didnae see Nessie).

In the Scottish Highlands: Glencoe mountain range. The water is highly reflective because of its brown colour. The brown colour is caused by decomposing Peatmosses. Interesting . . .

Edinburgh Waverley.

Reading Weak

Some pictures of my Greek friend, Panagiotis, playing an open mic night at a local pub. He's helped me to understand why there are so many restaurants in Winnipeg called George's that serve Fat Boys. Apparently it was the Greek dream.

The evening started off fine . . .

But then, suddently, Panos' guitar attacked him! We were lucky to make it out alive.

Many Happy Returns

From W. D. Cocker's "Many Happy Returns"

Maggie.--I doot Duncan's no' very gleg, but he means weel, puir chiel. Ye hae to speak oot plump an' plain wi' the likes o' him. Ye canna say yea thing an' mean anither.

Nancy.--Weel, but this was ma birthday, could he no' see that this was his chance? Yet he forgot' a boot it; he never as much as wished me many happy returns.

Maggie.--Weel, he kens noo; he looked rale taen aback when I said the jumper was for yer birthday.

Nancy.--Did he? Ay, I thocht he lookit kin' o' frichtit like. Puir Duncan. It's no' that I'm wantin' a present. But if I thocht he would rather no' gie me onything it would be a sair dooncome to my pride. I shouldna like him to be meengy.

Trip number 2 to North Berwick (pron. 'berrick'). We spent most of our time trying to read in a local pub, but the Scots were getting steamed and watching football, so we ended up just gawking at them. One gentleman noticed that I was reading about music. "Music," he slurred. "Iiiiiiii like Goooooooood music -- you know, Meatloaf." With this, "The amateur triumphed over the musicologist: his taste, not the history of music, governs his system of classification" (Antoine Hennion, Sociologist).

Kyle (looking lovely as ever) & Alison (flatmate).

More sunset in North Berwick. I'm not exactly great at sunset photos. It was better in person.

kitchen stories

There are upsides and downsides to being unshackled from University Accommodation. A downside, for example, is that if your beautifully yellow, but apparently waterlogged kitchen ceiling decides, in the middle of the night, to surrender itself to your kitchen floor, there’s no one but yourself and your flatmate’s boyfriend to clean it up. Not even if you have a presentation to give in the morning.
We tried to tell the jokers down at the letting agency that our ceiling was leaking badly, but they took their sweet bureaucratic time to do anything about it, and now look at what’s happened . . .