I can’t recall what brought my short-lived Cubs career to an end nor much about what we did in the Scout Hut, but I do remember the Haunted House next door.
In these less innocent and imaginative days haunted houses seem to have gone out of fashion.
But the ghosts and ghoulies haven’t gone away, and with all of us consigned to our houses these days you’d better not have been ignoring them.
Scotland’s Scary One
Bram Stoker was certainly alive to their presence and spirited up the Dead when he was inspired to write Dracula on a visit to north-east Scotland.
And placed the nocturnal room in Slains Castle in Cruden Bay as the dwelling of one Count Dracula.
Although much like his crypt if you delve inside you’ll find there’s lots to sink your teeth into.
Dublin’s Bram Stoker Festival is always finding new ways of reinventing themselves and they’re billing this year’s digital offering as a Grave New World.
Slains Castle
Which is what we’ll all be doing too, turning our homes into Haunted Houses… and The Scary One and her Mini-Me have been dressing up for the part.
Now I don’t know where the Scout Hut is in my new hometown of North. Berwick but my mother-in-law never sees a guising.
Pumpkin time
And here’s an Irish Halloween blessing to keep away the gremlins…
At all Hallow’s Tide, may God keep you safe,
From goblin and pooka and black-hearted stranger
From harm of the water and hurt of the fire
From thorns of the bramble, from all other danger,
From Will O’ The Wisp haunting the mine,
From stumbles and tumbles and tricksters to vex you,
Rosh Hashanah, Happy Jewish New Year, and because we want to see off this bloody year, and pray to Yahweh for a better new year, here is when and where all our cultures see out the old and bring in the new.
Hello, Chinas
Pandamonium
The Chinese New Year: And sitting down for our annual Chinese New Year celebration with Wendy Wu Tours in Dublin in January at Chai Yo we gave sympathy and Chinese tea (and every food known to man that you can eat with chopsticks) for the plight of the poor people of Wuhan.
Little did we know, of course, that we would be suffering too within weeks. The Year of the Rat should have been a warning.
And what are you all having?
Next year when it will be celebrated in February will be the Year of the Ox and he is much more our reliable carrier of all our human burdens.
And rest assured I’ll be back in Chai Yo next year with Wendy’s friends, the Two Johns, before hopefully we follow The Son and Heir out to Wuhan’s neighbour Chongqing.
Nowruz (Iranian New Year): And there is a diary date in my calendar which I can’t bring myself to delete – my trip to Iran which was deferred after the Americans fell out with them again and then this virus came along.
I do hope that when I do get out there it’s in a March when they celebrate Springtime when it coincides with the Northward Equinox.
They trumpet in the day, colour eggs and eat a hearty soup, Ash-e-Reshteh noodle soup.
Sri Lanka is my cup of tea
Sri Lankan New Year: And here we have two Sri Lankan cultures celebrating a date, April 14.
Aluth Avuradda, the Sinhalese New Year, marks the end of the harvest and is one of only two occasions when the sun is directly above Sri Lanka.
You’ll be eating small oil cakes called kavum and plantain dishes.
The Tamils of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka celebrate with new clothes, music, sweets and rice colour kolams (street art).
The Tamil Diaspora too celebrate April 4… so Malaysia, yes, and The Maldives too where one pasty-faced Scotsman once became an honorary member of the staff’s football and cricket teams. Yes, Mr Jim is coming back to Kuramathi.
While if you’re Irish (lucky you) you’ll know about the greatest Sri Lankan-Irishwoman, my old friend Tess De Kretser and her Olcote in Ceylon resort.
Ethiopia will take years off you
Enkutatash, Ethiopia: And this has become a fixture on my calendar in Dublin over recent years thanks to my friends at Ethiopian Airlines.
It, of course, takes years off you, not just the meaty food which you scoop up with your bread, and wine and Ethiopian coffee.
But also because it’s on the Julian Calendar which means that this will take seven years off you.
Scotland, the home of Hogmanay
Scottish Hogmanay: And in the words of the greatest dustman in television soap opera Norman ‘Curly’ Watts who decided the Scots owned New Year.
Well, they do own Hogmanay. And why Hogmanay which is what we call New Year’s Eve.
An early reference to the term is from The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence as deriving from the Greek word agia mine or ‘holy month’.
More like a hooley though as many libations are taken to keep out the cold.
Which is probably where the tradition of bringing coal, shortbread and whisky with your when you go first-footing, being the first person to cross someone’s threshold (first-footing).
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO WHOEVER YOU ARE AND WHEREVER YOU ARE
And back in the day when Daddy’s Little Girl was littler I used to make her mocktails.
When I was making us ‘grown-ups’ Summer Breezes, Mai Tais, Tequila Mockingbirds, Singapore Slings and my go-to Strawberry Daiquiris.
Those cocktails have killed some brain cells and eroded my memory so I can’t quite remember what was in my Daylight Strawberry.
Dublin’s fair city
Of course Daddy’s Little Girl has moved onto big people’s drinks.
And we have clinked glasses around with my travel partners and friends around my erstwhile home, Dublin.
These days it’s the sleepy rugby and golf retirement town of North Berwick where we grabbed us some cocktails.
At our new local, the Fly Half bar at the Netherlaw.
And cocktails at home
Where confirmed dudeist that she is she went for a White Russian, in homage to her new favourite film, The Big Lebowski,
And I flirted with The Monaco which was listed on the menu.
A cursory look on Cyberspace pointed towards a drink with amber beer although my cocktail waitress reported that hers consisted of Prosecco and Chamboise.
Something lost in translation there… just like it was in Cannes where we went for Dawn drinks at some spanking hotel.
Dudeist Laurie
And the barman put a dash of Prosecco and Aperol and big scooshes of orange juice and soda and charged us €18.50.
I was doing them for less than €1 at home.
Better when you’re on the French Riviera, and you will be again, going to Mandelieu La Napoule.
The Scottish teacake is a very different cousin to its English relative just as your favourite blogger is very different from my very own Little English Teacake.
The Scottish teacake is a semi-circular chocolate-covered cake with a marshmallow filling and biscuit base.
While the English equivalent is a sweet bun with dried fruit, typically served toasted and buttered.
How do you open tbis?
And us Scots celebrate our teacake as an important culinary and cultural part of our identity.
Glasgow is my cup of tea
So that when Glasgow hosted the Commonwealth Games, dancing teacakes jumped around the track as part of the Opening Ceremony.
But while we all agree that we love nothing better than eating a teacake with our tea we will often spend the time arguing about how to ear them.
Oh, you broke the chocolate…
So are you a gobbler or a nibbler?
Apparently according to a survey of 100 Scots conducted by onepoll for the Chester Hotel in the Granite City of Aberdeen one in four of us eat the filling first and then the biscuit base.
While the second most popular method is to strip the chocolate first.
And it seems my age group, the 35-54-year-olds, are ten times more likely to be chocolate strippers than the next generation.
Where are you from?
One in ten of us are nibblers with more women than men going that way.
And 13% of us whack it down in a oner.
And if you want something else too
Even within that there are regional variations with some surprising conclusions.
While Edinburgh is seen as the refined capital of Scotland its citizens like to munch big mouthfuls of their teacake while Highland and Islanders will stick the oil’ teacake in their mouths in a oner.
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond they like to eat the biscuit base first.
Don’t eat with your mouth full
One from each shelf?
I’m not sure how my fellow Glaswegians eat them, but outside of genteel Kelvinside I’m afraid that loquacious lot that they are they probably eat them while they’re still talking!
I know Aberdeen is in temporary lockdown but when you do get back out you should book yourself an afternoon tea at the Chester Hotel in Queen’s Road from €26.50 while a Champagne afternoon tea is also available.
Takeaway afternoon tea – provided in the Chester Hotel take-away tea caddies – are available to book online
Seeing we’re back on the road. and spurred by the excellent PBS series ’10 that changed America’ https://www.pbs.org/show/10-changed-america/which also includes monuments and bridges among others…
I give you my favourite streets I know from around the world…
The Beale Deal
That’s Handy…. Memphis
Beale Street, Memphis, Tennessee: And naturally I channeled my best Marc Cohen, took a selfie next to WC Handy, partied the night away at BB King’s Jazz club and scoured Elvis’s tailors Lansky Brothers.
History under your feet. Photo by Anna Urlapova on Pexels.com
And a walk I would regularly and will yet do again. At the top of Edinburgh’s High Street is the Castle, in the middle St Giles kirk where Jenny Geddes threw a chair at the preacher.
Then there’s the spot where Deacon Brodie, the inspiration for Jekyll & Hyde was hanged on the gibbet he invented where locals spit on the ground in disdain. Before you get to the foot and see the new Scottish Parliament and the Queen’s residence, the historic Holyrood Palace.
When in Rome. The Scary One and Daddy’s Little Girl on the Appian Way
Appian Way. Rome: What did the Romans do for us? Well, they built roads to last.
We didn’t get to the Appian Way and the Catacombs when Mrs M treated me to a 40th Birthday treat but it was all the better for taking the kids half a dozen years later.
Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem: And the one I have still to visit when I will walk in the footsteps of Our Lord. The winding route from the former Antonia Fortress to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is about 600m.
And particularly as I put work first and turned down and joint Jerusalem and Jordan trip because I didn’t want to leave my employer in the lurch for a fortnight. See https://www.itraveljerusalem.com.
So I’ve missed out your favourite. Let me know and we’ll share. And I won’t tease you. I’ve got another five More on the Road coming hot on the heels.
