The Tarts and Tramps was always a rite of passage for Aberdeen University Freshers students in the Eighties, and I dare say it’s their Pride and joy still.
Quite whether students get a chance to glam and glum it up in a meaningful Freshers week in September remains to be seen.
Hugs around the world
But encouragingly Pride events will be held around the world this month.
It’s one of those annoying Government buzzwords so let’s claim it back with a Rainy Days and Songdays Green Lighting megamix around the world. Our favourite songs with ‘green’ in the title and the countries where they transport us.
As a recruiting call for Ireland our pals at Tourism Ireland would have been proud as in true singer style Johnny namechecks everywhere on the Emerald Island.
Quite who the girl from Tipperary town with the lips like eiderdown is Johnny would never say, perhaps because June would have killed him.
The old rogue Burns was pure rock’n’roll and could pen a lyric and a tune which is probably why he is held in such high regard by the greatest singer-songwriters of the latter half of the 20th century.
With Bob Dylan, no less, crediting the Scot as his greatest inspiration.
The Milanese Verdi had the support of Gaetano Donizetti from nearby Bergamo whom he visited in Vienna which, of course, was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
And that included Bohemia, or the current-day Czech Republic where the thing to do when you’re in Prague is take in a production at the opera house.
Every nation sacrificed its most promising generation in No Man’s Land but for those from the furthest outposts of Empire… well, it just seems to be all the more pointless to modern sensibilities.
Eric Bogle, a Scots-born Australian, explores the pyschological cost to one survivor ‘young Willie McBride’. And it was all the more poignant after I’d seen the statue of the Scots soldier in northern France.
The story goes that the Stax house band were waiting around for the Sun artist and rockabilly singer Billy Lee Riley to turn up and developed the song.
And why Green Onions? Well Booker T. Jones self-deprecatingly said it was because green onions were the nastiest thing he could think of and something you could throw away. We never would.
Either way it’s flag-waving, Americana. And even if you don’t know the song you’ll recognise the tune.
Particularly if you’re a fan of Celtic FC who famously play in green and white hoops and who have adapted the song and lyrics into a favourite fans’ song With a Four-leaf Clover on My Breast.
The evergreen Cliff belts this one out from the Seventies.
The Peter Pan of Pop who was born in India, grew up in England, and has had homes in Portugal and Barbados, though he is selling up in Bim (and yes I’m interested).
As Scotland strikes out again to try seize its freedom following the vote for independence parties in the Scottish election, your global traveller is flagging up one Scots-infused country of Empire which did… Jimmyaica.
No, Jimmyaica isn’t my lame efforts at Jamaican patois.
It’s more a recognition of the Scottish imprint on Jamaica (Scots are playfully known as Jimmys) and particularly its flag.
Jamaican flags will be flying even more proudly next year as the Caribbean Island celebrates 60 years of independence and some of you might wonder why it has that St Andrew’s Cross at its centre.
Flags are us
If some of you are tentatively wondering that it might have something to do with Scotland then go to the top of the class.
You may very well be a vexillologist, or somebody who loves flags and have found a link too between the Scottish flag and the Tenerife flag too.
I did when I went out to the Canary Island with CanariaWays and found that they have the exact same flag.
No, that one is in Tenerife
The initial suggestion for the flag was a Tricolour of green (agriculture and hope), black (the struggles of its people) and gold (sunlight).
But that was thought too similar to Tanganyika’s (now Tanzania).
But then you knew that already.
Scotland the Wave
Besides, a missionary from Glasgow, Rev. William McGhie (he’d obviously considered his ain Glaswegians well past saving!) had the ear of the Prime Minister Alexander Bustamante.
The Man of the Cloth persuaded him to embed Christian imagery into the flag.
And so the X of the St Andrew’s Cross found its way onto the flag to mark how the Apostle had lost his life.
Glasgow belongs to I and I
Glasgow Bar with owner Karl in Tobago
The Jamaican Glasgow on the west of the island is, of course, just one of a number of place names we both share.
Among the others are Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Inverness, Dundee, Greenock and ouch… Culloden!
So we’re off… with our official countdown to the 60th anniversary of Jamaica’s independence.
And I’m bringing you this in association with Flag Up Scotland Jamaica which helpfully also seems to want to promote Caledonian preserves – flagupscotjam.
Well, how about at Scotland’s lowest point, no not the aforementioned Culloden but Scotland’s failed attempt at an empire of its own, the Darien Expedition in Panama.
Darien’s loss
It could have been Scottish: The Darien
The Darien Expedition was the breaking point for the old independent Scotland.
The whole nation from king to pauper had put money into the project only to lose more than just their shirt.
Cap in hand a section of the Scottish Parliament approached England to bail them out in 1703…
And the price was union, all of which you can read the whole story of in historian Douglas Watt’s excellent The Price of Scotland.
So where does this take us in the Jimmyaica story?
The Campbells are coming
Rev it up: Rev. William McGhie
Well to Colonel John Campbell who refused to allow Darien to put him off making his fortune and who decamped to Jamaica in 1700 and set up a sugar plantation at Black River.
He was by no means the first Scot on the island though.
Oliver Cromwell banished 1,2000 Scots prisoners of war out here in the previous century where they worked as indentured servants.
Others to be exiled included those failed colonialists from Darien, Jacobite rebels, criminals and Covenanters.
There’s an advert on Irish television where the winner of the EuroMillions lottery buys a tropical island for his friends and family… oh Ireland in the sun!
Didn’t he know there was a Caribbean island there already which is more Irish than Ireland?
Montserrat is the tiny 39 and a half sqm Emerald Island of the Caribbean because of its Irish links which run deep.
The Irish have been around the Leeward Island since 1632, sent there from neighbouring St Kitts and later Virginia.
Fly the flag
Sounds of Ireland: The oul’ harp
Montserrat was to build a thriving economy around tobacco and indigo (that’s blue dye) and later tobacco and sugar.
Fast forward to today by way of Cromwell’s transportations, and if it wasn’t for the sun, palm trees, volcano and rain forest you’d swear you were in Ireland.
It’s there in the island flag with its figure of a cailín standing by a cross and holding a harp. We’ll gloss over the Union flag in the corner.
While a shamrock adorns Government House.
The oul’ Shamrock and the oul’ Jock
So why then is Montserrat not a throng of Irish visitors from the Old Country?
Possibly because they prefer the Canaries and there is a lot to like about them but say that it’s Tenerife you love then you’ll love Montserrat too.
Hot-Hot-Hot
The volcano and Arrow’s hot-hot-hot too
There’s the volcano which gives you the distinctive black beaches shared by both islands, though there is one white beach that we all love too on Montserrat.
While there’s evidence of the volcano’s activity in the form of a buried city, and now St Vincent’s has awoken and is erupting the focus switches south to the ghost town of Plymouth.
The best place to view it is from the Garibaldi Hill viewpoint or the viewpoint from Jack Boy Hill on the east of the island following a short hike.
Combined, of course, with a trip to the Montserrat Volcano Observatory.
Your own beach?
While Montserrat’s Irishness is all around you in its symbols (the shamrock stamp in your passport), names of villages and they say too in an Irish brogue it goes into overdrive around St Patrick’s Day.
When the Montserratians tie in their own commemoration of their slavery past with the saint’s day.
For the craic, yes, but also because it is steeped in their history.
St Paddy’s Day, mon
Irish pubs everywhere: Martin Healy and his band in Montserrat
On St. Patrick’s Day in 1768, the African slaves on the island rose up and it is alleged nine slaves were hanged.
And they have never been forgotten with St. Patrick’s Day now heradling a ten-day festival to honour their Afro-Irish heritage.
Again there are too few of the Irish who go out to Montserrat, and we mean to do something about it.
And trawling through the records we’ve seen that Martin is a regular visitor out to the Emerald Island
Caribbean craic
Stay there… the Caribbean
Where he was a special guest at Governor’s wife Sujue Davis’s popular latest Coffee Morning on Tuesday, March 11 before that same evening performing at the Uncle’s bar/restaurant a popular night spot in Flemings.
And the Montserrat Reporter (are you employing?) chronicled that ‘the three-man Irish band performed throughout the week at probably every ‘rum shop and bar’ and is a major performer in the popular “Pub Crawl’.
So Montserrat, all 4,900 of them, celebrates their Irish roots with good trad music then, and also its Caribbean heritage with our favourite Soca Music.
Arrow hits the mark
Golden Arrow
Hot-hot-hot? Yeah, you now it, mon. It’s this classic from one of Montserrat’s favourite sons, the legendary late Soca star Arrow
So to get there… you’ll fly out of the UK to Antigua where it’s only a 15-minute flight out to your Ireland in the Sun.
And here’s where you’ll stay with a wide range of hotel rooms, guest houses, villas and apartments all flagged up on the Montserrat site.
Tropical Mansion Suites on Montserrat
And with less than 5,000 people on the island, everyone practically knows each other, and if you say you’re Irish you’ll get a warm welcome from Warren and Cherise!
Slainte!
And no, you don’t get away that easily… here’s why we love the Caribbean so, from Trinidad and Tobago to Barbados.
And next up is Jamaica where we’ll bring you all the news of how they’re jammin’.
Our new television guilty pleasure comes to us from the ubiquitous man mountain Richard Osman, a parlour games show called House of Games.
In which he gets celebrities to change individual letters to form words (so for me it would be House of James) and smash names of images together to come up with a lame pun in Answer Smash.
I’ll give you an example… if you want to promote the new Ireland to Barbados route through Manchester you might want to go with RihAnnarndale Centre. Gerrit?
Yes, our friends at Aer Lingus are only making it even easier to get to gthe Land of Rum with a new route via Manchester.
Fares will start from €249 from Dublin or Cork.
And in keeping with the House of Games Answer Smash game and knowing that Robyn Rihanna Fenty is of Irish stock… I give you Irieland!
Let it rip
Slip slidin’ away
And memories of the dude who had a tattoo on his front saying ‘I am only afraid of God’ but got all edgy when we approached the plunge water slide at Aquatica.
Of course that feeling of fear always comes just before the adrenaline thrill.
Aquatica Orlando is introducing its All-New Riptide Race, the world’s tallest duelling racer on April 3.
You’ll start atop a 68-foot slide with low walls so you can keep an eye on your opponents. And race side by side on your raft run through high-speed tunnels, twists and turns.
Just like watching the detectives don’t get cute, just like watching the detectives, I get so angry when the teardrops start, But he can’t be wounded ’cause he got no heart. – Elvis Costello, Watching the Detectives
And with apologies to the Poet Laureate of New Wave.
But it’s not the bespectacled one but the new run of Line of Duty, shot in Belfast, which has got me thinking.
About my favourite detectives in the cities they are associated with.
So here are seven deadly detective shows, their music and their cities.
Now I’ve never been on Coconut Airways and I wasn’t off to see ma girlfriend Mary Jane… at least that’s what I told the Scary One and I’m sticking to that story.
And my go-to song when I’m out on the road is Willie Nelson’s standard… it’s my mission statement when I hit a pilgrimage, and my friend Aileeen Eglington’s Destination Anywhere radio show on Dublin South FM.
You’ll get plenty of time on your own when you’re on your Camino on your way to Santiago or your Via Francigena into Rome.
Can I be trusted on a bike? In Amsterdam
Nylon Pool, Tobago
