Boats. Boats and more Boats

Part 12: Haggis Vindaloo

The day started off really slowly and we did'nt get up and moving offically until 11:30 in the morning. The first thing we did was drive out to a friend of my Aunt's who needed some books delivered to her. We hada mug of tea with her and her dog joined us shortly.

(on a side note, her dog was awesome, a perky yellow lab who brought all of his toys in to show to us. adorable.)

Then she invited us to stay and watch Wimbledon, but we had to get to Portsoy so we politely declined.

Before we got to Portsoy we stopped in Buckie to get lunch as, though the tea had been nice, we were starving. The place we found was called the Bengal Brasserie and is the only Indian Restauraunt in town. Really really good food, though I think I saw through time when I first tried the spicy curry. Oh, p.s. Benjamin Franklin says "hi".

Part 13: The Portsoy Wooden Boat Festival

So, one of the highlights of this trip was that it coincided with the Portsoy Wooden Boat Festival. The Boat Festival is one of the most exciting times of the year for those in the fishing villages as it celebrates something they have in spades. Which is..well..wooden boats.

Last night the festival took place and it was really an interesting cultural experience, an interesting mix of ancient and contemporary themes, they had explanations on the evolution of the techniques in the process of boat making as well as local artists interpreting what they Sea means to them.

However, in the evening we went to a concert. The first part of the concert was traditional music in the nature of sea shanties (which surprisingly included a song about Baltimore and the Chesapeake bay) , but the second part that was....weird. I think the singer was a local hero because everyone seemed to be really into him, but every song he had was even more depressing than the one before, allow me to give you a window into this world:

Set 1:

A song about mermaids

A song about leaving your home country

A song about dying old in Canada

A song about three friends dying in a car crash

A song about a man who becomes mute and weaves objects out of grass

A song about a man who gets MS and arranges to kill himself

I'm not even going to talk about the second set.

Of course, after over an hour of up-beat sea shanties, MS suicide theatre seemed to come out of nowhere. We found out later that the singer is a member of the Scottish Parliament as well as the former director of Edinburgh University. Go figure.

The other thing to mention about this particular concert was that I was the only person there under the age of 55.

Q: Does that make me a loser?
A: Yes.