The Northern Lights of Aberdeen
Are home sweet home to me
The Northern lights of Aberdeen
Are where I long to be
I’ve been a wanderer all of my days
And many’s the sight I’ve seen
But hark the day I’ll be on my way
To my home in Aberdeen
In nine years in the Granite City I saw bright lights (more nightclubs than libraries) but never the Northern Lights.
It wasn’t an Aberdonian at all who wrote the Northern Lights but Londoner Mary Webb who had never even been to Scotland’s third city.
She wrote the song with her husband Mel for a homesick friend Winnie, at the hospital where they worked.
While I’ve been a wanderer all of my days I did get to return to my home in Aberdeen A light in the north.
But not to Iceland where the Heavenly Dancers have a shindig almost every weekend from the looks of it.
I’ve kept up close links with the Icelanders since I started this scribbling lark.
And sent many a scribe to the Land of Fire and Ice, and many then onto the Oo Es of A.
Our friends at Icelandair www.icelandair.com have given us the lowdown on all things aurora borealis.
The best time to see them is between October and March.
But they have also been spotted as early as August and as late as April.
To save me more verbal diarrhoea let me just point you to these websites…
For the aurora forecast from the Veorstofa Islands, the Iceland Meteorological Office https://en.vedur.is/weather/forecasts/aurora/
Icelandair fly daily to Reykjavik. And it has 18 gateways to the US.
And looking at Icelandair’s list if what to bring I’ll have to leave a lot at home.
No, The Scary One’s coming with me… more baggage allowance, you see.
The bells, the bells
My first Hogmanay in Edinburgh I goosed a random lassie at the Mercat Cross at the Bells.
Which means at my first New Year in Edinburgh I kissed a random girl at the Market Cross when the clock turned midnight.
It was where people went then back in the early Eighties before it was turned into the big music party that it is now.
It’s still Hogmanay but it has lost a little bit of its identity, its old traditions of moving from house to house, flat to flat for a party.
And you would put yourself forward as the tall, dark man with the lump of coal and dram (short) of whisky which signifies health, wealth and happiness.
Edinburgh is one-way from Ryanair from €14.99. I know it’s overdue but I will give you a city guide of the place I called home for ten years.
And here’s one I prepared earlier of the Dear Green Place, Edinburgh’s great rival, Glasgow, from €9.99 one way, where I spent the first 17… https://jimmurtytraveltraveltravel.com/2019/04/15/sportstraveltraveltravel.
And Hogmanay? Well, maybe it’s not as Scottish as we think.
And that Mary, Queen of Scots, who was brought up in France introduced it.
The drinking she left to the locals which after much practice they perfected.
And while we’re at it just off the blocks… Ryanair have a saving of up to 25% off selected flights.
If you book before midnight on Sunday.
MEET YOU IN THE SKIES
