Tag Archives: Scotland

Top Ten Ways to get your baby weight to stay

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I don’t have much to say today. Except that we’ve reverted back from nice summer to our usual non-existent summer…

…and I’m not too happy about it. (For those of you who work in Fahrenheit…the above pic translates to…)

An American on twitter responded to my posting of the above screen shot by saying: Wow that’s cold what’s the normal temperature in the middle of the summer there?

Bless his American cotton socks… :) Because let’s face it…this IS the normal mid-summer weather in Scotland!

Anyway, I was MOST cheered up on an otherwise dreich day by the posts on my lovely American who lived in Scotland friend, Caroline (who is well aware of the sucky Scottish weather as she has experienced it firsthand) announcing some very special news today….she’s preggers with baby Collie number 2!!!!!! :D

It’s been a while since she did one of her ‘Top Ten’ posts, and this one about the top ten ways to make sure you never shift your baby weight made me giggle.

I’m worried by the lack of digestive biscuits, jam, cream & scones in South Africa….how is she going to cope through this pregnancy?! ;)

Love you muchly Caroline – Congratulations to the Collie Family!!

PS If you’d like to see the guest ‘Top Ten’ I did for Caroline a while ago, you can check it out here. Unless you are called Lynn and you work as a Children & Families Pastor. Then you really shouldn’t read it.

FOS Friday: Scottish Money

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Yep, we have ‘different’ money in Scotland. When the Payne family were visiting, we got money out of a Bank of Scotland cash machine (ATM for my American friends!) and JT was memorised by the utter coolness of the money.

South of the border, they just get plain old Bank of England money, but here in Scotland you might get a Clydesdale Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland or Bank of Scotland note!

Usually the £5 notes I get back in shops are Bank of England ones, but the other day I received a pretty Bank of Scotland one. JT wanted to know ‘who the guy with the big nose’ was, so for your information…it’s Sir Walter Scott. He has a monument in the centre of Edinburgh that features in one of my favourite ‘ignorant tourist visiting Edinburgh’ stories!

The only problem with these notes is that folks in England tend to look at you as if you’re trying to pay them with Monopoly money. Sigh.

Michael McIntyre does a really funny sketch about it, which my friend Laura (who was in my team at SITC Durban last year) likes to joke about. We both used to randomly break out into Michael McIntyre impressions and anecdotes. What can I say? She did suggest that I should bring tons of Scottish Money to one of the Soul Survivor conferences and use it in the bookshop so she could hide behind a table full of bibles, jump out and proclaim to the salesperson ‘Excuse me pal! That’s legal tender!‘ if said salesperson didn’t let me pay with the Scottish notes.

You can see him do it here if you like – but I should warn you that he can use strong language, and before the Scottish money one there’s a John Smeaton/Glasgow Airport joke and it may offend some people (which is why I haven’t popped the video up on my blog).

FOS Friday – 80s Children’s TV

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Yes, I’m a child of the 80s. And yes, I was allowed to watch TV.

In Scotland, we have 2 national languages – English & Gàidhlig. So when I was little, there would be a time in the day where after the English-speaking tv programmes, they would put on Gàidhlig ones straight after.

Some of my twitter friends wanted to get a flavour, and these are the only examples I could find of…

Padraig Post (Postman Pat) – (it’s in the background of this other Scottish 80s TV show…)

Donnie Murdo (Danger Mouse…basically they went with 2 common “Highland/Islands” names to keep with the DM logo!)

….and the best for last (apologies for poor quality) Dotàman. I had to introduce you to Donnie MacLeod & his guitar.

Ahhh…Dotàman…the Mackay clan originate from the Highlands, and our surname accounts for about 35% of the Isle of Lewis (at least). So I’m actually the first generation of Mackays not to speak Gaidhlig, but because my Dad, uncles, great aunts, granny & grandpa etc could, I convinced my peers at school that I could as well. So I used to ‘translate’ Dotàman for them.

A few years down the line, my little sister came along and she used to watch Pingu. It was always after (or before) the Gaidhlig version of Fireman Sam. So can you understand why it took me a few years to realise that we didn’t always just catch ‘Gaidhlig Pingu‘ but in fact, Pingu was just speaking…well…penguin, I guess. :)

Happy Coomanay?

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Last night, @dg4G discovered a something a little strange on his Australian calendar…

I confirmed that his was indeed true. 2nd January is a Bank Holiday in Scotland. Like I said in my previous post, New Year is a huge deal here…big parties and celebrations and traditions on the 31st (known as ‘Hogmanay’) and ‘first footing’ neighbours, friends, family houses from Midnight on the 1st Jan.

So why doesn’t the 2nd January Bank Holiday have a name like ‘Christmas Day’ ‘Boxing Day’ ‘May Day Holiday’ ‘Easter Monday’ and so on?

Well. Um. Yeah.

What is the purpose of having a Bank Holiday on 2nd January AND 1st January, when no one else does? (even South of the border….they go back to work on 2nd!)

Remember how I told you a while ago there were many Scots words for being drunk?

Well, most of us don’t get to sleep until 5/6 a.m. on the 1st January having partied all night. Then around lunchtime we’ll stir, have a good fry up, and continue the party usually visiting family and friends with food and drink and yeah, ending up not getting to bed until the wee hours of 2nd January (for my family we went to bed around 3/4 a.m.).

So we really need that extra day to recover. For most of Scotland, a suitable term would be ‘Hangover Day’. Somehow I don’t think the business world would approve of calling it that, so Scottish bankers just went ‘uh yeah, 2nd January holiday’.

Well, the tweeples (folks on Twitter) weren’t going to stand for that. We decided we needed a name for this extra Scottish Holiday.

Suggestions were made…

And so it was decided that we’d go with @dandanglover ‘s suggestion of the animal theme, changing ‘Cowmanay‘ to ‘Coomanay‘ (after the good ol’ Heelan Coo – or Highland Cow if you’re going to use English-English).

Much cheering was had, the call to ‘go for it‘ was tweeted. And so the tweeples have spoken.

2nd January Holiday will now be known to us as ‘Coomanay’.

Happy Coomanay!

Happy New Year

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New Year is a huge deal in Scotland, our Hogmanay (what we call ‘New Year’s Eve’) celebrations are world famous. The fireballs in Stonehaven, the massive Edinburgh street party (with its tradition of being called off due to gale force winds more than a few times!).

When the bells ring at Midnight (Greenwich Mean Time) there’ll be fireworks from the seven hills of Edinburgh, balls of fire flung into the sea at Stonehaven harbour, the clinking of glasses, cheering, hugging, kissing and the shout of ‘Happy New Year’, the singing of Auld Lang Syne.

apologies to Sarah, as we sang this in the traditional fashion at her 30th birthday ceilidh earlier this year…

Tomorrow morning there’ll be drinking of irn bru and eating of fry ups to cure many hangovers, people jumping in the North Sea for the New Year’s Day loony dook underneath the Forth Bridges and people ‘first footing’ friends and family. The act of bringing food/drink to the home as a symbol of blessing the New Year.

And yes, I got a bit of a Hogmanay miracle…a letter from my Dad. The first communication he has made with me since my 24th birthday.

So to everyone, Happy New Year. May the year 2010 be filled with excitement, blessing, learning and most of all, love.

Edinburgh’s Christmas 2009

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And all because I know lots of my blog readers like to see pics of Edinburgh at Christmas & Hogmanay…and I like a good excuse to hang out with my friends and have fun taking pictures with my camera…

Last night I met up with (newly engaged!!!) friends Jenni & Gaz to sample the delights of the Edinburgh Christmas Markets…it was a clear night, and you could see the Christmas Tree on the Mound (thank you Norway!!) and Edinburgh Castle…

At the German Christmas Market we were able to sample some yummy crepes and mulled wine…

Yummy Banana & Nutella crepe (more french than German, but am I complaining? but oh how it made me yearn for Kilau).

We were informed that ‘Tippers make better lovers. Fact‘. Who knew, huh?

Jenni and Gaz were able to sample the mulled wine. I can’t drink wine. I know, huh? However, I only found out last year that mulled wine actually contains wine. I began drinking a cup of it and started to feel really ill which led me to pose the question ‘does this have wine in it?‘ To which someone looked at me as if I was the stupidest person in the entire world. ‘uhhhh….yes. It’s mulled wine.’ Yes, I know, another malteser moment…whatever. But is there mince in a mince pie? No!

Excuse the red noses! What can we say, it was FREEZING outside!!! :)

But then we saw a concerning sight. I turned to Jenni as I saw this ‘carnival booth’ and said ‘Um, is it just me, but does it look like Santa has hung himself?‘ 8O

Jenni’s reply: ‘maybe the credit crunch got too much for him‘

?!?!?!?!???!

I’m going to miss out the Highland Christmas market pics for now until I get copies of Jenni’s ones. Let’s just say there was some hat trying on and we looked kinda hilarious.

But for the finale, we took Jenni to see the Christmas tree in Jenners, which she had never seen before. (Jenners is the Harrods or Macy’s of Edinburgh if you like)

Christmas is coming…

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Ok, so I’ll stop judging the people who already have their Christmas decorations up now…because today is December 1st.

I said it last year, and I’ll say it again this year – Edinburgh is one of the best places to live at this time of year. The German Christmas Market, the Christmas tree on the Mound, all the Hogmanay celebrations from 29th Dec-Jan 1st…I love it! I am going to work on getting plenty of pics this year, and may even go back to Spaghetti Bay to get a picture of THE house one night.

And will I record myself reading out ‘The Night Before Christmas’ in my Scottish accent as was requested last year? Um…is that not weird?

Here are a few photograpic highlights from Christmas/Hogmanay last year.

St Andrew’s Day Blog Carnival

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Today, it’s all about Scotland and St Andrew’s Day. This year is a little bit more special because of Homecoming 2009. Lots of historical sites have been free entry all this week including Edinburgh Castle!

Edinburgh Castle

I do love being Scottish. I love that we seem to be a nation that has a achieved a lot of great things – Scots have had a hand in pneumatic tyres to penicillin to pain relief in childbirth (woo!) to basketball to the Bank of England (oh, the irony)

I love that pretty much anywhere I’ve been in the world, I’ve been welcomed as a Scot. My Uncle Ivor (who lives in Australia) told me a story of how he once asked in a Parisian hotel for some directions – they wouldn’t give him any because they thought he was English at first, but when they discovered he was a Scotsman living in Australia they suddenly became super-helpful. I love that we have our Scottish banknotes. I love that men here are comfortable enough in their sexuality to wear a kilt (with no underwear). I love that here, coca cola isn’t the #1 drink, it takes 2nd place to Irn Bru. I love it went people try and do Scottish accents. I think Hollywood’s take on Scottish history is hysterical (sorry to break it to you, but Braveheart isn’t quite how it happened). And if they do make us stop singing Flower of Scotland at sporting events because it’s ‘racist’ I’m pretty sure there’ll be a revolution. I love the Scots words and phrases like wee, numpty, ‘Yer Ma!’ and clarty. And we’ve been blessed with some beautiful landscapes.

I don’t like how in English soaps, the Scottish dude is always the ‘bad guy’. Seriously, like every single time!  And you know, it would be nice to experience some warm sunshine a little more often. And the long dark winters are a bit of a drag. And I get a wee bit annoyed when I go to places and they say ‘Scotland, that’s in England yes?’ (No). And I have been the Scottish person who has come to someone’s aid in a shop outside of Scotland and gone ‘Excuse me, but I’ll think you’ll find that’s legal tender. It’s still the pound, it’s not monopoly money‘. I also find it amusing and a little frustrating that people assume I’ll know everyone in Scotland because you know it’s such a tiny country. It’s small but not that small.

But when I land at Edinburgh Airport or see the ‘Welcome to Scotland’ sign on the Scottish/English border, my heart always lifts. Especially when I see the words in Scots Gaelic too!

Even though I’m usually seeing the sight through sheets of pouring rain!

I don’t know what you think of when you think of Scotland, but I’m looking forward to reading other people’s posts today.

If you have a post, please give me a link by e-mail or comment below and I’ll add it to the list. Don’t forget to tell folks on Twitter with the #scotlandrocks hashtag! :)

Here are some of them:

Initial Conditions

The State That I Am In

Learning to Love

Dan on Music

Ruthy’s Ramblings

Musings of a Scot

Thinking out Loud

From Africa, With Love

Fran Brady’s blog

Caledonia

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Yep, we’re getting excited about St Andrew’s Day…I know of 3 blogging friends that plan to be part of the St Andrew’s Day blog carnival.

Hoping some more folks will be joining in with us on Monday, and looking forward to seeing what people decide to do – it can be anything as long as it is some way relating to the bonnie land of Scotland.

If you’d like to help spread the word on Twitter, Carolyn has decided on the hashtag #scotlandrocks :)