Well as regular readers know we have been up and down to Edinburgh for the last few weekends only I have been too lazy to post anything thanks to that bloody virus I had the other week.
So trip one was for the Samhuinn celebrations on October 31.
Here comes the Green Man with the crone and torchbearer narrowly avoiding a traffic cone, as they parade down the Royal Mile from the Castle. They were followed by hordes of vividly painted dancers and black clad drummers.
The parade ended in front of St Giles Kirk where the ritual of the death of one year and the birth of another was enacted by the hordes of fire dancers and acrobats to the hypnotic beat of the raven masked drummers. I got right down the front and could feel the heat of the flames as the drumming intensified towards the climax of the performance. Haven't felt like that since Hawkwind in the 1970s.
Brilliant show and all for free, can't wait for the Beltain Fire Festival up on Carlton Hill next year.
Anyhow after all that excitement we tried the Bank Hotel's bar but got driven out by an over amplified folk singer so we went to the Auld House instead.
The following day we had a couple of hours to kill before our mid afternoon epic train journey so we had brunch at the Amber restaurant beneath the Whisky Centre, where we fell foul of Scotland's bizarre licensing laws. No booze before 12.30 on a Sunday! So the wine got canceled and my heather ale arrived after I'd finished my venison sausages. The home made tomato and onion soup was divine though.
So still with an hour or two to go we wandered down Cockburn Street looking for somewhere to get a drink and found Secretarcade, a Polish Vodka Bar. Plenty of different types of vodka including juniper, rose and kosher plum. What a find.
The trip home on the train was an endurance test though, a diversion from Edinburgh to Carlisle and then on to Newcastle added about an extra hour and half to our journey, National Express had somehow managed to sell far too many tickets for the train so the trolley could not move because people were standing for six and a half hours in the aisles and when we got to Kings Cross once again half the bloody tube network does not work as London gets ready for the sodding Olympics.
was you vaccinated by a phonograph needle