from Pillar to Post: a traveller's guide to stuff: The Ed

The first weekend of my return to Edinburgh was quite action packed starting off with Dan's birthday party (Dan is one of Lee's housemate) where the requirement for entry was being dressed either as an old person - Dan was easily the winner there - or as a ned (a Scottish term for the similar category of peoples to English chavs and Aussie bogans/wiggas.)
The 25th was our official Australia Day (as it was a Sunday and it was being celebrated in Australia that evening with the time difference) and we certainly made a day of it. The 25th also corresponded to Robert Burns evening (the famous Scottish poet) and so we had a bit of a mishmash of cultures. We invited a whole bunch of Aussie and Kiwi friends around and Lee and Susie again came up with the idea for lunch: a traditional Scottish feast of haggis, neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes) along with TimTams and the Scottish equivalent, Penguins, and of course a whole bunch of Aussie music - everyone singing Farnsie's "You're The Voice" at the top of their lungs was the highlight!
Feeling insanely full of food we all painted our faces with green and yellow and pushed off in the early evening for the surprisingly quiet Oz Bar for a Pale Ale and where we could watch replays of AFL bumps, biffs and brawls and listen to the Triple J hottest 100. Good times! Especially with the fact that we had a celebrity in our midst: Hughesy! Well, not really, but this guy would have to be his long-lost twin brother or something - he looks, speaks and acts exactly like the man himself.... Funny bastard too...
The next night was the real Oz Day and the celebrations picked up considerably in the city's only Walkabout (that messy Australian bar chain in the UK), it was going off! The majority of our clan met up again and had a bit of a bum wiggle while they played that song with the lyrics, "Am I ever gonna see your face again?" to which everyone in the bar classily shouted in reply, "No way! Get fucked! Fuck off!" Hadn't heard that one in years...
A few days later I got to spend a little time again with Malin and her friend Therese when she came up from Dublin for a short trip. We ate Mexican. Shortly after, I was treated to the second snowfall I had seen on this trip so far - hard to believe since it was technically over 2/3 of the way through the "season" of winter. The meadows, an expansive park-like setting, was completely and beautifully white, the footpaths were dangerously slippery and the temperature was sub-zero, yet women still found the necessity for high heels. They are an odd breed... It has since snowed a number of times and I find it so much fun every time it does - the meadows and Arthur's peak turn white along with my clothes, people build snowmen and throw snowballs, and the photographers come out in force.
I met John by chance in Burger King while we were both there using their free wifi, we got to talking and turns out we're both quite into music. We have caught up a few times since jamming about, including the meadows in the snow (a bad idea), and are planning to take part in an open mic night some time soon. That's exciting.
More recently, Dan, his mates, and Meg (the newest South Clerk housemate) managed to convince me to come out to a house party in what is commonly known as "the caves" - part of an underground city that stretches all the way to the Edinburgh castle - on the night after Lee and Susie left for Morocco for Lee's birthday. Stopping first at The Jazz Bar, which is in fact a jazz bar, to watch a few bands we soon found this subcity fortress which is actually a flat but looks more like some sort of WWII bunker for one crazy party with DJs, all the alcohol you could ever want, holes in and graffiti on the walls and the constant struggle in order to move just 5 metres. That place was packed to the brim against some sort of fire regulation, I'm sure.

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