The Bloody Vodka Bottle

A funny thing happened while waiting for the #30 bus to Clovenstone. I was standing in the bus shelter, minding my own business, when in rushed a young man holding a liquor bottle. In his early 20s, he was dressed quite stylishly. He was accompanied by a pretty woman in her late teens, who wore a nice dress and sheer black stockings.

“Sir,” she asked me, “Would you like to buy some vodka? Really cheap.”

The bottle still had the grey plastic security device clasped to the vodka bottle’s neck.

I declined politely.

The man started to jimmy the plastic off the bottle using a knife they’d apparently borrowed from the neighboring kebab stand.

The girl coaches the lad, admonishing him that he’s got the technique all wrong.

“You’re going to bend the knife!” she cries.

Sure enough, the knife gets bent, then slips, cutting into the boys knuckle.

“Oh, now you’ve done it,” she says, then puts her lips to his wound, sucking on it. She then straightened. “The kebab bloke’s going to be pissed.”

He continues to saw away at the Smirnoff’s. She periodically draws her index finger over his bleeding knuckle and licks at the blood, as if it were a fine delicacy.

Finally, the device pops off, freeing the vodka for consumption at last. The girls then furiously starts to unbend the knife on her thigh. She seemed to be more concerned about getting the 40 pence knife back to its rightful owner than the place the illicit bottle came from.

Seconds later they dashed out into the night and I was left alone in the bus shelter once again.

Anyway, this is the second to last night in Edinburgh. Its been quite a trip.

But my adventures are not over quite yet...

Tomorrow, Antony, the fellow who runs the tiling school, will pick me up and take me to a job he is working on. It is quite a high-end project, with expensive tiling and fixtures. I hope I don't break anything.

But now that I've been through the mill, I feel ready and keen to take on projects of my own. 

So thanks for bearing witness to my little tiling journey in Scotland. I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did.

In closing, here are a few last photos...

This is the tiling bay before

 ...and this is the tiling bay after (only the requisite bits were done)

Note the superb siliconing job

Here's Stuart taking a photo of one of my tricky cuts for posterity

A little souvenir of my participation in class (the red in the maple leaf was blood from my left forefinger)

Sterling Castle (this is where I went today)

Another shot of the castle

So its goodby from the Peffermill Industrial Estate. See you when I get home!

Mark



Saturday Night At the Slug and Lettuce

So here I sit in the middle of the ancient fortress of York, at the Slug and Lettuce, with a glass of Pinot Grigio at my side.  From my seat I can see the River Ouse flowing like black lava under the ancient stone bridge of Low Ousegate. (In York, a gate is a street. York is a walled city, so all gates (streets) inside are reached from the outside world through openings in the wall, each of which is called a bar.) So here I am, sitting in a bar, which is on a gate, which is protected by a bar.

The Mickelgate Bar

The old convent I was booked into has lived up to its name. Built in 1686, and called the Bar Convent, because it is next to one of the city gates… I mean bars. Whatever. Anyway, it’s the oldest functioning convent in England.

When I arrived last night, I was greeted at the convent door by name. “You must be Mr. McGee,” said a tall, somber man in his seventies.

He led me into a glassed-in courtyard that featured an incredible Victorian tile floor. Apparently, the young girls who were educated here were not permitted to set foot on the tiles. They had to use the runners which had been set up along the edge of the room.

A Splendid Array of Victorian Encaustic Tiles

My host led me up one floor and gave me a brief tour of the facilities. He showed me where the shared bathroom and shower was, then led me to the library/sitting room. The library was filled with such Catholic page-turners as “Sister Eva of Friedenshort”, “A Montessori Mother”, and “Strictures On the Modern System of Female Education” (this last one was dated 1801).

I was then handed the key to my lodgings, the St-Luke room. Nuns in those days must have been short little dears, because I had to duck my head to enter. “Some people compare these rooms to prison cells,” remarked my escort, with a little smile. “But,” he added, “it’s a convent, what should they expect?”

Actually the room, while narrow, was perfectly comfortable and seemed to be very quiet. I thanked my host, shut the door, and settled in.  I lay down on my single bed and closed my eyes for a moment. It had been a long day. Moments later the convent bell tower, which I had not noticed but now discovered just meters away from my window, gonged 5:15.

The Convent Clock Tower

I immediately got up and left the room, intent on tracking down my concierge.  I eventually found him off in a corner, putting away some folding tables. I gave the poor fellow quite a fright, I'm afraid.

I explained my fear of being awakened by the quarter-hour chimes. “It’s kind of like waiting for the other shoe to drop,” I explained apologetically. “I’m afraid I’ll never get to sleep.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “The sisters turn the clock off when they go to bed.”

“And when is that?” I asked, imagining the nuns playing military whist until 2am. It was a Friday night, after all.

“They retire at 10pm.”

Phew.

Before I returned to my room, I continued to wander around the place. Up on the third floor I came across another guest lounge. This one had a pool table in it, plus a large, flat screened TV. Very un convent-like, I thought. So I sat down and joined another fellow (a guest?) and watched the BBC announce that Hosni Mubarak had finally seen the light and had abandoned his post as Egypt’s head of state.

After that, I left the convent and sauntered into the centre of Old York, ending up at the Slug and Lettuce with my aforementioned glass of Pinot Grigio.

***

I will spare you the pain of reading about someone else’s touristic wanderings. Suffice to say, York is a charming city, full of interesting museums and a course, York Minster, Northern Europe’s largest gothic cathedral. Truly impressive.  I will instead let a few photos speak for themselves…

A Dame Edna-like Sax Player In a Public Square

York, full of tourists even in February

What they come for: to see York Minster Cathedral

 

Interior Shot

Crumbly Minster Stones To Be Auctioned Off As Lawn Ornaments

New Gargoyle Under Construction

Old Gargoyle Still On Duty

A Few Fine Examples of Vintage Toilets

(the one on the left was eventually declared a public health hazard)

My parting thought for this blog is this:

I’m starting to feel sorry for the Americans.

This morning, I was having breakfast, I noticed a very handsome family all decked out in their finest clothes. All generations were present, including the grandmother. She was a very distinguished looking woman in pearls and when I bumped into her later in the hallway, she mentioned that the family were all about to attend her grandson’s confirmation.

I expressed my congratulations, and she replied by saying, “You’re visiting here from the States are youy?”

I replied that no, I was a Canadian, coming down for the weekend from Edinburgh.

“Oh, I am so terribly sorry. I should never have assumed you were an American. I made the same mistake with a fellow from Alberta just the other day!” I could tell this kind, very dignified lady was mortified by the error she had made.

But she is by no means the first person to be so apologetic in mistaking my accent for American. As soon as I say I’m Canadian, they invariably relax and say how much they dislike the US.

This is a real shame because there are, in my opinion, a lot of very decent Americans out there.  I hope their reputation can be salvaged one day.

In any case, here are a few more photos of the York railway museum – another must see the next time you find yourself in this part of the world.

Royal Crest of Queen Victoria's Train

King Edward's Study On Board

The Last Steam Engine Built In Britain

(it was completed in March 1960, the year I was born - okay, now I feel old)

The Watch Maker

Last Wednesday I was still feeling the grip of my cold, so I thought I’d play hooky from the tiling school and remain in bed at my B&B. But by 10 am I was so bored, I packed up my laundry and went up Clerk Street to hand in my dusty jeans for cleaning. The Internet store was just across the street, so I popped in there to post my last blog. Afterward, there was a Starbucks just around the corner, so I thought, “Well, I’ve gotten this far, why not stop in and order myself a Café Americano.”

Well, that was all I needed. Fortified by a gigantic steaming cup of coffee, I ventured deeper into the Old City. Tiling be damned. 

Edinburgh, to those who have never been, sits on some pretty interesting topography. Its old town was built on a hill, with some odd little undulations that appear out of nowhere. As you head north on Nicholson Street, you are under the impression that you are travelling on steadily rising, but more or less even ground. That assumption is false. At one point, if you look to your left or right, you will find that a dark little street, called Cowsgate, passes underneath.

Drawn to dark spaces by nature, I took a twisting alley down below. I then looked up from whence I came to see Nicholson Street suspended high overhead from a dripping stone archway. Cowsgate, so named for the beasts which once travelled here on their way to the slaughterhouse, was in deep shade. Seemingly half abandoned, the grimy stone buildings that stood to either side had gone mossy and soot stained with the passage of time.  Few people were in sight.

Cowsgate

Even though it was mid day, I felt uneasy here, so I turned left and headed downhill towards the crags of Arthur’s Seat. As I went, the Victorian gorge that was Cowsgate widened and the sun returned. I crossed an intersection and continued down Holyrood Road, when I noticed a Watchmaker’s sign on a dusty storefront window. Within days of my arrival in Scotland, my watchstrap had broken, so I figured this was an ideal opportunity to get a new one.

I opened the shop door to the sound of an old-fashioned bell, and was immediately transported back in time. The front room was alive with the ticking of dozens of mantle clocks, the type they made by the millions back in the 1920s and 30s. There was all sorts of bits and bobs lying about, none which seemed of recent manufacture. Oak display cases displaying various bric-a-brac flanked each side of the room. The flocked wallpaper was shabby, and I don’t mean in a chic way. They looked as though they’d been installed when Harold MacMillan was Prime Minister. The room smelled of recently-eaten lunch.

Behind a cluttered bench sat a vigorous looking man in his late 60’s. He’d been fiddling with the works of a porcelain-faced chronometer that must have been well over 100 years old.

“How can I help you?” he asked, jumping up from his bench.

I showed him my grandfather’s gold wristwatch and he turned it over in his hand.

“Lovely piece,” he said. “Nice ornamentation on the lugs. They made them well in those days.”

I explained my situation and immediately he seized upon a few watch straps in a display case.

“This one’s handsome,” he said, producing a rather dull brown item. “And it’s only ten pounds.”

I politely declined and pointed to another strap next to it.

“No. That one’s too wide. Won’t fit your watch. Now how about this one?”

He went to the window and retrieved a red strap.

“This one is nice. Oxblood. Its only 14 pounds.”

“It looks sort of pink’” I replied.

“True enough. It’s been sitting out in the sun too long. I’ll have to discount it.”

I then went over to the other side of the room and pointed to another watch strap.

“How about this one?”

He looked at it. “Och. That’s too expensive. Its 16 pounds. Not worth it.”

“Well,” I said. “I rather like it. I think that’s the one I want.”

He nodded and agreed it was a fine choice. He then went back to his bench and consulted a sheet of paper tacked to a wall.

“Oh, I see they’ve raised the price on this one. It’s now 18 pounds 50 pence. It’s a terrruble price to pay.”

“I’ll take it,” I repeated, through gritted teeth.

“Okay, that’s fine. It’s a handsome strap.”

He studied the watch again. I remarked how the glass dome over the watch face was now covered with little cracks.

“Let me replace it,” he offered. “Since you are such a good customer, I’ll do it for free.”

He then withdrew a thin, grimy carton from a wall and started to riffle through a series of little paper envelopes. Eventually he settled on one and, using a bizarre tool I can’t even begin to describe, he removed the old watch face off with a twist of his wrist. He then gave the exposed gold bezel a tender wipe with his rag before jamming the new cover back on.

“Nivada, Aquamatica,” he murmured, reading the little lettering on the watch face, and pronouncing each syllable with pleasure.

“How old is it, do you think?” I asked.

“Could be the 1950s,” he replied. But he estimated the age of the piece at somewhere between 1963 and 1966.

I did not doubt him.



A Touch of the Sniffles

This will be a short blog, because I am dead tired and suffering from a cold. Two others at the Tiling school are in a similar state.  So its lots of oranges and fruit juice.

Stuart came up with another amusing story today. He recalled the time when a former student went to a customer’s house and started a job. The client asked him to tile over a dodgy bit of the wall, which the fellow did, with some reservation. As he was about to put on another tile into place, one of the tiles came loose and landed on his foot, piercing his shoe and embedding itself into his flesh. Blood began to pour out of the shoe.

For some reason the client, who was standing beside him, thought this was very funny and began to laugh. The tiler turned around and punched him in the face, breaking the man’s jaw.

The two men eventually realized the inappropriateness of their actions, and the tiler later returned to finish the job. 

Here is a photo of the tiling bay that I must start to tile. Every surface is "squint", that is, not quite vertical or horizontal. In future blogs, you will see how I progress...

My hat flew off my head again yesterday. This time it landed in a tree. I now realize why no one in this town wears baseball caps. Its just too windy.

Just two more days until the end of the week. I then take a train down to the English city of York. My lodgings there will be in an old convent, just outside the city wall. The nuns there have assigned me St. Luke’s room.  I expect a divine sleep.

On the subject of churches and the like, here are a few shots of one of the prominent cemetaries at the foot of Edinburgh Castle:

Very Mossy Tombstones, Castle in Background

Tombstone Close-up: Note the Flanking Skulls

On this macabre note, I will sign off.

The Spray-On Bandage

Tiles can be very sharp.

Certain tiles are called vitreous, as in glass-like. When cut, their edges can be as sharp as glass. I found this out the other day while trying to tile a box-like surface in my practice tiling bay. The box was constructed deliberately so as to not have a single straight angle. It is a hateful device.

The Box From Hell, Completed

Somehow in my tiling frenzy I managed to cut the top of my left hand, above the last knuckle. Stuart told me to wash the wound. He then produced a little blue aerosol can. He sprayed the affected area and ordered me to return to my station.

This “spray-on plaster” is a wonderful thing. The wound is protected from the elements and is allowed to heal with no sticky bandage. Marvelous.

Tiling Bay of Fellow Student Campbell Showing "Bessie" the Kneeling Pad At His Feet

The next day I set off to work with my RAF buddy Sgt. John Crawford, under threatening skies. It was actually quite warm, but the wind was up. We’d just passed Priestfield Road when a gust of wind ripped the Dickies baseball cap off my head and flung it into someone’s back yard. I was set to climb over a high stone wall to retrieve it when John said, “That’s private property mate. It’s trespassing. You’d best go around and knock on the door of the bloke who owns the place.”

I followed his advice and rang the bell of the owner’s home. After a lengthy pause a door opened, sending a waft of stale cigarette smoke my way. A bleary-eyed woman of about 50 asked me what I wanted.

“Sorry, but my hat blew into your yard. Can I go and get it?”

“The yard door’s locked,” she mumbled. “ I’ll have to go around.”

I went around to the driveway, and a moment later my hat came sailing over a high wooden fence.

“Cheers,” I said, and went on my way.

The rest of the morning was spent trying to complete tiling that bee-otch of a box. Lunch was a cup of lentil soup, followed by a piece of twisted pastry called a “Yum-Yum”. A “Yum-Yum” it was not, let me assure you.

Awoke Thursday morning to a driving snow squall. Trudged off to the Tiling school, with leaden feet. Once there, we were told that two of our five-some would not be in that day. They were both from the Glasgow area and the evening’s snowfall had made roads too congested to travel on.

This points to a big shortcoming in the Scottish road network. Between Scotland’s two biggest cities, Glasgow and Edinburgh there is a single “dual carriageway”, a two-lane highway in either direction, with a few whirling roundabouts at either end. In North America, where car is king, this would be a four lane expressway plus a reserved bus lane. As a result, commuting around here is a nightmare.

Learned how to tile around a toilet today. Now there’s something for my CV.

Tiling Around Odd Shapes: It's Simple Trigonometry My Dear Chap

As I was bent over the potty, Stuart stood over me and commented on the general impression Scots have of us Canadians.  We are seen as polite, happy, and perhaps (although he did not say it) just a wee bit boring. I replied testily that since we live in a land of plenty, we have nothing to be particularly grumpy about.  Hmmm. It seems Canadians can get grumpy, especially when they are overseas trying to tile around a goddamned toilet. 

He also lamented that whenever Scots are depicted in films or television they tend to be loud, physically abusive alcoholics. Not sure about that, but I wasn’t going to argue the point in case he decided to have a go at me with his tile nippers.

Dinner was Chinese take-out. Won-ton soup and king prawn chop suey with rice. (Shrimp in Scotland are called prawns.) It seems that every shrimp served here is a “king” prawn no matter how small and , well, shrimpy it is.

Reading the Guardian tonight with its stories on the Egypt crisis, Australian cyclones, and Silvio Berlusconi’s “bunga bunga” parties. Absolutely no news about Canada.

Such a nice, boring country.

Spent Saaturday wandering around the city, collecting tiling catalogues from posh designer stores. (I think tiling is becoming an obession. I may need an intervention.)

Here is a few non-tiling shots of Edinburgh, as a reward for reading this far:

Scottish Monument: A Victorian Pile of Sooty Stone Seemingly At the Point of Collapse

Jenners Department Store

Bridge Over the Water of Leith - Note the Wee Man Upstream

Near Dean Bank: One of Many Delightful and Unexpected Corners of Edinburgh

Back From the Rellies

It’s Monday evening and I am writing this blog from my room at the Rosevale. A strong wind roars outside, making spooky moaning sounds through the cracks in the window casing.

I just spent a very enjoyable weekend with relatives. They live in the small town of Ardrishaig, which is about four hours away by bus, on the west coast of Scotland. Until the herring stocks collapsed in the 1920s, it was a prosperous fishing village. Although its seafront row of shops was demolished forty years later, it remains fully inhabited, with about 1500 retirees and a smattering of younger folk.

 Ardrishaig with the Crinan Canal in the Foreground

Traffic signs in the village: polite but firm

The bus which left from Glasgow Buchannan Station travelled in the dark, so I did not have much to see. The one highlight was a 15-minute rest stop at Inverary, a very picturesque village that is the seat of the chiefs of Clan Campbell. The walls of the men’s room stall in the public lavatory there was full of ribald sayings and primitive artwork. The only one I can repeat here is this:

“Weegies go home. Yer village is missing its idiots.”

I later found out that a “weegie” is slang for Glaswegian, someone from Glasgow.

I stayed at my mother’s cousin Grace’s house. She has a charming home that has a view of Loch Gilp, which is the body of water that borders the town. She also has an evil black cat called Stimpy, who will, without hesitation, bite the hand that feeds it.

The Evil Stimpy

Grace and Mark

(I cropped out her grandson because he had his eyes closed)

The following morning I got up and went to the bathroom to take a shower. The problem was, I did not know how to work it. There was one dial for the water intensity and one for the temperature, but twiddling either one produced no water. I was damned if I was going to call Grace over for assistance, especially after having spent a full week on my plumbing course so I spent the next ten minutes examining the shower from every angle. Finally, I spotted a full chain which dangled out of the ceiling. I pulled it and voila! Water.

Fresh from my triumph of learning how to take a shower all by myself, I sat down to a tasty plate of scrambled eggs. The day was then spent visiting my mum’s other cousin, John. He lives in the house my grandfather grew up in. It is a stone building high on a hill and built the year he was born – 1903. According to cousin John, his father, Dugald Campbell, purchased it for $750 and had it paid off by 1918. A thrifty Scot, to be sure.  I was also informed that this Dugald fellow was a man of the sea, and once served as captain on Cornelius Vanderbilt’s yacht back during the reign of Queen Victoria.

Dugald Campbell and His Wife Jessie ca. 1908

(that smart little fellow in the sailor suit is my grandfather, next to sister Magsa)

The Current inhabitants of grandad's childhood home: Smartie and Douglas

That evening, Grace’s son Paul showed up for dinner and over a bottle of wine we talked about all sorts of things. Daft laws was one of the topics. Apparently in Liverpool a woman can’t work topless, unless she works in an aquarium. And in Tennessee, it is illegal to cross state lines with a duck on your head.

Fair warning.

Parting Shot: The Other End of the Crinan Canal

On To the Weekend!

It’s 11:30, local time and I’ve just returned from Goldie’s Pub on Rankin Street after having consumed multiple whiskies with my tiling mates. Almost all of the world’s problems were solved.

The evening started out with a wee bit of Cornish Cruncher cheese consumed at my bed sit, with a roll and bread. It seems my days here at the Rosevale Guest House are numbered however. As I prepared to leave my room for the evening my landlady informed me that I’ll have to clear out of here two days sooner, on account of the Wales vs. Scotland rugby match. It seems that she has hordes of other paying guests and my custom is no longer required.

Informed that “there’s no way I’ll find accommodation anywhere else in Edinburgh for that weekend”, it seems that I’ll have to evacuate the city entirely. Future blogs will reveal where precisely I’ll end up.

But that is weeks away, so for the time being, I am secure in my own wee bed.

In the meantime, I really must try to find a green vegetable…

Frankly, I don’t understand why there is not an epidemic of scurvy in this town. There doesn’t seem to be a green salad on offer within miles of here. The best I could manage so far this week was a single piece of cauliflower and a few peas next to mounds of potatoes and a few slices of pot roast. The rest of the week was creamed this and creamed that. The menu at the Peffermill Snack Wagon remains stubbornly rooted in fried tatties and mystery meat.

Today I learned how to bend copper pipes and how to install electric shower units. Never mind that we do not have electric showers in Canada, the experience was memorable nonetheless. In among a lengthy discussion of mixed showers, silicone profilers and combi boilers was the understanding of new words:

Pikies = gypsies

Scrappies = recycling yards

Tomorrow I complete my plumbing course and head off to Glasgow, where I’ll meet up with a very sweet lady called Grace, my mother’s cousin. From there we’ll journey on to Ardrishaig, the seaside ancestral maternal home of my Scottish forebears.

It should be a treat.

For now, I will share with you a few snaps of bonnie Edinburgh…

$12,000 Bottle of Hooch

Edinburgh Castle

Wee Fish Easting the Skin Off the Soles of Dutch Tourists' Feet

A Hidden Corner

The Fabulous and Very Chic Peffermill Public Housing Estate...

... and Where I'd Much Rather Be

Edinburgh Royal Mile