danieldwilliam (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
danieldwilliam) wrote2013-10-14 11:25 am
danieldwilliam) wrote2013-10-14 11:25 am
Entry tags:
On Aberdeen
This weekend has basically involved drunken fuckwittery. Actuals in line with Budget, no variance to comment on.
Hie me to Aberdeen on Saturday morning for an informal reunion dinner with class mates and friends from law school. It is twenty years ago, nearly to the day, since I arrived at Aberdeen University to learn, inter alia, the mysteries of the law, the mysteries of women and the simplicities of beer.
My friend who was organising the dinner had booked the entirety of a restaurant about 5 minutes’ walk from the house in which I spent my first childhood in Aberdeen. Good choice, nice food, bring your own license. Some twenty souls joined us for dinner. Thence out to the night life of Aberdeen. A few drinks in the local pub then onto to some nightclub which reminded me of Fingers Piano Bar in Edinburgh.
It was, in truth, an unremarkable affair but for its warmth and good humour. No epic attempts at larceny. No arrests for impeding the constabulary in their duties. No exchange of clothing with off-duty strippers. Not even a fish supper. Nobody stole a bus or broke any hearts. Mostly, people had to get up in the morning. All of my friends seemed as well as could be expected. This is itself pleases me greatly. Most of the evening was taken up with catching up with people. People and their children.
I drank cheap lager and rum, both to excess. For those of a measuring bent that equals one lager and approximately too many rums. I am blessed with a constitution that shrugs off drink the way ducks shrug off rain. I awoke at mid-morning and took a train home.
I think that is perhaps the most profound realisation of the weekend. Edinburgh is home and not Aberdeen.
The train journey from Edinburgh to Aberdeen is very lovely. Leave the crouched Georgian enterprise of Waverley and the brooding military folly of the Castle, cross the Forth Bridge, the Tay Bridge and a bridge in Montrose over the River Esk an the Montrose Basis which I can only assume is called the Montrose Basin and South River Esk Bridge – why waste a good name when a literal description will serve? After crossing these mighty spans the railway hugs the coast, tettering along the cliffs that edge the Aberdeenshire coast until arriving in a stately fashion in the glimmering silver city. From the train one may see racing yachts, basking seals, oil tugs and weather fronts. On a day abundantly supplied with sunshine and clouds and rum mediated philosophic mindset it is quite the thing.
Back in Edinburgh – rehearsals for Julius Caesar. My character is basically a drunken fuckwit – so an opportunity to adopt method acting.
I return home, to my house and my wife and one of my children to find I had been missed. The Captain curled up in my lap and proceeded to re-acquaint himself with me.
All lovely.
Hie me to Aberdeen on Saturday morning for an informal reunion dinner with class mates and friends from law school. It is twenty years ago, nearly to the day, since I arrived at Aberdeen University to learn, inter alia, the mysteries of the law, the mysteries of women and the simplicities of beer.
My friend who was organising the dinner had booked the entirety of a restaurant about 5 minutes’ walk from the house in which I spent my first childhood in Aberdeen. Good choice, nice food, bring your own license. Some twenty souls joined us for dinner. Thence out to the night life of Aberdeen. A few drinks in the local pub then onto to some nightclub which reminded me of Fingers Piano Bar in Edinburgh.
It was, in truth, an unremarkable affair but for its warmth and good humour. No epic attempts at larceny. No arrests for impeding the constabulary in their duties. No exchange of clothing with off-duty strippers. Not even a fish supper. Nobody stole a bus or broke any hearts. Mostly, people had to get up in the morning. All of my friends seemed as well as could be expected. This is itself pleases me greatly. Most of the evening was taken up with catching up with people. People and their children.
I drank cheap lager and rum, both to excess. For those of a measuring bent that equals one lager and approximately too many rums. I am blessed with a constitution that shrugs off drink the way ducks shrug off rain. I awoke at mid-morning and took a train home.
I think that is perhaps the most profound realisation of the weekend. Edinburgh is home and not Aberdeen.
The train journey from Edinburgh to Aberdeen is very lovely. Leave the crouched Georgian enterprise of Waverley and the brooding military folly of the Castle, cross the Forth Bridge, the Tay Bridge and a bridge in Montrose over the River Esk an the Montrose Basis which I can only assume is called the Montrose Basin and South River Esk Bridge – why waste a good name when a literal description will serve? After crossing these mighty spans the railway hugs the coast, tettering along the cliffs that edge the Aberdeenshire coast until arriving in a stately fashion in the glimmering silver city. From the train one may see racing yachts, basking seals, oil tugs and weather fronts. On a day abundantly supplied with sunshine and clouds and rum mediated philosophic mindset it is quite the thing.
Back in Edinburgh – rehearsals for Julius Caesar. My character is basically a drunken fuckwit – so an opportunity to adopt method acting.
I return home, to my house and my wife and one of my children to find I had been missed. The Captain curled up in my lap and proceeded to re-acquaint himself with me.
All lovely.