The Wee Weegie Wonkies

The weekend before last was a winner winner chicken dinner.  Packed in the fun like it was going out of style.  First, a littel stopover in paperwork town (otherwise known as the dodgey end of Glasgow) for a little finger print, eye-scanning frivolity.  I'm IN the matrix.  Incidentally, I now have my new visa, allowing me to camp out here in the Frozen North for another 2 years.  For better or worse, in sickness and in health, it's me, Stu and Eburger for the forseeable future.

After the fun times at the Home Office, we moved on to the Weege city itself.  Great city.  Gritty, funky, flashy.  All the things Edinburgh in its calm, conservative nature is not.  I love them both for different reasons, though I haven't spent nearly enough time in Glasgow to completely appreciate all it has to offer.

We were joined in our Glaswegian adventure by a rag tag bunch of companions, including the delightful Meghan all the way from Toronto on holiday, Stu's 7 month pregnant sister Emma, her partner Tommy, and their little boy Louie, and my friend the feisty Fifer Ross, our source of local knowledge for the duration.

It may surprise few of you that the photographs depict an early group effort to concentrate on cultural pursuits. The high brow content of said pursuits diminishes as the evening progresses, and the death knell would probably be when they brought out the Tequila slammers. 

Meghan is the meat in a Kimsey sandwich.

I play the meat, but really it'a all cheese.

I should mention that earlier in the day, I was shat on from a great height by a pigeon with Delhi Belly.  All over my trench coat.  It was disgusting, and I was in the middle of a busy shopping street literally wailing for Stu to clean it up.  It wasn't my finest moment, but it certainly helped me appreciate the plight of every statue in St Georges Square.

The Glasgow Modern Art Gallery.  I think the traffic cone is meant to be some kind of juxtapositional statement.  Discuss.

We don't know what it means either.

But I love the colours regardless.

Quite frankly the best balloon twisting I've ever seen - he made a very passable Luigi (Mario Brothers) for Louie, who was thrilled and trailed that balloon around for the next two days.  His steps were punctuated with the occassional pop.

Emma, Tommy and Stu.  Can you spot the siblings?

The glorious Meghan.

Seriously delicious food at dinner - pork belly, roasted apple and roasted new potatoes.

More food porn - my pizza was deliciouso.

Umm ... tequila.  Ross, meet Tequila.  Oh, you've met?  And you don't see eye to eye?  Kiss and make up.

Tommy lurves him some Tequila.








Earnest discussion:  Ale vs. Lager.

My contribution to the discussion was poor at best.

 


Time to go home. 

Stu and I dropped Meghan at her hostel in a taxi, and we went back to our dingey hotel over the river (the derro side).  We were all merry, but not outrageously drunk, and it was a good time to go home before things got messy.  However, I got a call from Meghan just after we got back to our hotel.  She had attempted to go through the hostel bar to get up to her room, but the bouncer had refused her entry, stating (I kid you not), that her eyes were 'glassy'. According to the bouncers' manual: Things to Say to Drunk People When Refusing Entry, this was most definitely 'a sign of intoxication'.  Intoxicated.  In a pub.  In Glasgow, Scotland, UK.  You'll forgive my incredulity.

What if she had actually possessed a glass eye? What if she had just been crying and her eyes were wet with tears?  What if she had been legitimately blind, rather than 'bloind'?  Meghan was outraged, considering the night before she had been down in the bar having a few light ales when in stumbled a retchedly drunk couple who had all but vomited on her shoes and were still getting served at the bar!  I'm convinced it was some kind of anti-Canadian conspiracy.  Actually, I'm not, but wouldn't that be something?!

Mid-week Pick-me-up

Stu had his 28th birthday last week, so I baked.  What better excuse to have chocolate fudge cake with butter cream icing and raspberries?

I made him take most of it to work so we wouldn't be tempted to polish off the whole lot.  I have to rely on his word that it actually got there.

And Into the Fourth Decade We Go ...

Like many before me, and many after me, I have recahed and turned the inevitable corner.  Of course, it pays to remember that turning 30 is by no means an inevitability.  Only if you're very lucky, if you have your health, enough to eat, enough water to drink and enough will to live.  I have all of these things, in spades.  And so on to 30.  It's a weird one, this fourth decade.  Suddenly you want time to start slowing down. 

My childhood was packed with physical injury due to personal clumsiness, and moving states, and sisters, and fighting with sisters, and car trips.  My teens were typically awkward and I would sooner have been out of them than in them.  My twenties started off a little shaky, what with my lacklustre uni performance peppered with a LOT of partying.  I only really started to gather momentum during the second half of my twenties.  Call it 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration, it took me a while, but I discovered the necessary pride in myself to make a few long overdue changes.  Next thing you know, I'd shed some excess baggage, moved to Japan, met some random dude who turned out to be awesome, and uncovered the life I'd never known I wanted, but subconsciously craved.

It's been a seriously good 5 years, and as a consequence, time is flying.  Without becoming anxious about the speed at which life seems to propel me into new adventures and experiences (I'm just about to embark on my third year in the glorious Edinburgh, with all its meteoralogical madness and sparkling inhabitants), I intend to relish every minute.  If life is what you make it, then it's time to get creative.

To celebrate my 30th, the only truly appropriate course of action was to gather the able bodied and willing, and commence a weekend of eating, drinking, merriment and karaoke.  Though the weather wasn't warm, we were blessed with clear(ish) skies, a light breeze and a peek-a-boo sun.

On my way into town with Stu and Martin, an abandoned building captured my imagination.

At the top of Calton Hill.  Stu was peeing his pants in excitement at the arrival of his bestie Martin.

The almost-Parthenon.


Oooh, eye bags betray a late night on Friday.  Didn't really get any photos of the Friday, probably for the best.

The 2 Merediths, dinner at The Cambridge Bar, the best burgers in Edinburgh.  They even have an Aussie burger, but pineapple, beetroot, bacon and egg on a burger's a little overkill for me.  Stu took one for the Aussie side, and he loved every bite.

Really, really good chips.  It's freaking me out a little bit that I no longer think of them as 'hot chips', and that I've started saying crisps.  Brainwashed by the constant ribbing from Stu I guess.

The lovely Lara gets down and dirty with a chicken burger.

Uh oh, drunk eye.

I'm not drunk, just appalled.  I forgot how excruciating karaoke can be.  If I say so myself, Lara and I kicked arse with our duets of 'Fernando' and 'Big Black Horse and a Cherry Tree'.  I think in Lara I've met a soul mate.  The first time I met her, we were chatting about what she wanted to do now she's finished uni, and she told me she wanted to be a copy editor and edit novels.  Now is that just weird or what?  That's the same answer I give people to that question.  She also has awesome taste in music, a great voice and when we're together we natter away like we've known eachother for years.  It might be love.  Kismet.

Martin and Stu didn't feel they needed microphones, shouting was good enough for them.

Abby and Matt came up from Carlisle, and worked those mics HARD for their effort.

Victor (Lara's man) was happy enough to be the audience.

Where DO we go now?  Answer: Random house party my friend from work told us about.  Fun times, Harry's always a cracker.


Ahhh Victor, I knew we'd get you eventually, NOBODY can resist the karaoke.  Lara looks bemused.  So cute.