December in whalley and NYE in Edinburgh
Trip Start
Jan 20, 2008
1
24
28
Trip End
Ongoing
Edinburgh,
Scotland,
United Kingdom
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
If I remember rightly (and there's every possibility that I don't) the last instalment in this rambling, infrequently updated chronicle of our travels and misadventures was posted from Rome, the gist of which was that Doug was back in whalley and I was soon to join him..
pic's from inside the Walkabout, NYE day
. ring any bells, or am I completely off track? Well, I made it back to Whalley without too much difficulty where I caught up with Doug and resumed my old post, (mis)managing the Whalley Arms. At this stage, Doug was working on some construction sites for Guy and we both got stuck into the campaign to top up our savings before scarpering off to some snow for the winter season. Our initial plan had been to keep backpacking until we found work in a winter resort somewhere, hopefully in northern Italy. unfortunately, we didn't have enough money to make it through till then, hence the return to Whalley. Settling back into life at the pub after a fantastic lark and bit of a jaunt around Europe wasn't all that easy and I have to admit that the weather seemed especially shite after sunny southern Italy, but hey, you get that on the big jobs... ;)Life at the Whalley Arms, though seldom dull, was often repetitive, but this time around, we were at the business end of the year and the place was a lot busier than usual with all four of the biggest days of the year arriving in December; pickwick night, mad Friday, Christmas eve and new years eve. Pickwick night is peculiar to the village of Whalley and involves all of the businesses in town staying open late, dressing up in Victorian era clothing, closing off the main street through town and walking about saying things like, "gee, isn't this nice?"
inside walkabout again
. Oh, yes... and an absolute shite load of people descend on the village from all the surrounding areas as well to add their own "gee's" and "golly gosh's" and it's an epic night for all of the pubs. We made the decision not to have our staff dress up in the Whalley Arms as our boss, Guy, was the major sponsor for Pickwick Night a year or two back, gave them a considerable amount of money and got absolutely sod all in return despite assurances of publicity etc. We also had the car park closed off and a mini carnival in there, with rides and Dagwood dogs and fairy floss and other carnie type stuff... imagine the Ipswich show kind of condensed down to about one football field's worth and you've probably got a bit of an idea. This apparently upset the Pickwick Committee. They arrived in short order with the Fun Police (council types and local coppers) in tow, to try and shut it down. Sadly (for them!) the paperwork and safety certificates of the fairground operator were all in order and they had to bugger off and try and spoil someone else's night J. Also sadly (for me this time) I was horribly, horribly, bloody ill at this time, had been for a number of days and couldn't have given a stuff about any of it if someone had put a gun to my head... Good night for the pub though."Mad Friday" is apparently the last Friday of December before Christmas. We had heard loads about this being one of the all time busiest days of the year and planned the staff roster accordingly
dougie n sum chic from fanatics tour.
. By about 7pm, it was looking like being a complete fizzer, not even as busy as a normal Friday, let alone a "mad" one. We were cracking jokes about renaming it, "slightly miffed, but not really mad" Friday. We let Hayley and Becci go home with promises that they'd be back later on and available to help, just in case Friday really did get the shits and decide to become properly mad. Inevitably, it was about thirty minutes after they had gone (during which time John F. had phoned in to say that he would be late in to work) that Friday got cranky and the screaming masses descended on the bar, at this stage manned only by me and Dougie. This was perhaps the first time that I think I could appropriately use one of my favourite expressions and say that we really were, "as busy as a pair of one armed hookers in a hand job parlour at half price hour". Not very tasteful, but certainly descriptive. Anyways, another good night for the pub.Upon reconsideration, I don't really remember anything spectacularly interesting happening on Christmas Eve. I think it was just another busy night for the pub, how boring is that? Christmas Day, however, was reasonably fun (aside from the 2 hours of cleaning up the detritus of a busy night... y'know, the usual. Broken glass, puddles of spew, spilt drinks (why can't any one who drinks Sambucca keep it in the fucken shot glass in between buying the drink and drinking it?!) empty bottles, lipstick, torn up beer coasters, semi destroyed Christmas decorations..
introducing Herman! and a couple of kiwi's
. Oh yeah, and THEN there's the girls toilets. I don't think I'll ever tolerate being told that girls are cleaner and tidier than boys again. Not after ten or eleven months of cleaning the Whalley Arms. I mean, we've cleaned out shit filled boxers, pint glasses filled with spew, and pee all over the floor from the gents on occasion... but the girls toilets, even on quieter nights, are consistently more filthy and treated with less respect than the lads, no argument. Feel free to put that in your pipe and smoke it, ladies ;)Excuse the rant, where was I? Oh yes, Christmas Day. Once we had the cleaning out of the way, Doug and I settled down to a deliberately lazy day in the front room of the pub (which wasn't going to open until 7pm) and in full view of any passers by. We got a nice fire going in the wood burner, exchanged our lumps of coal (mine and Doug's xmas presents to each other) and settled back to watch crappy xmas television and drink our scotch (£6 from ASDA!) and dry ginger ale. The DeLacy Arms was open from 12-3pm and was packed to the rafters with people, a goodly proportion of whom passed by our window, saw Doug and I taking our ease and wanted in. Unfortunately for them (and much to our amusement) public houses in the UK aren't allow to open between 3pm and 7pm on Christmas Day. I could kiss whoever passed that law. As we sat there, watching their disappointed, disgruntled or sometimes just plain irate faces amble away after realising that we weren't going to let them in, I couldn't help but to keep thinking of that line from the kid's movie, Madagascar. "Just smile and wave boys.... Smile and wave...".
(At 7pm, we did open the pub and had a pretty good time, wishing the locals and regulars a merry Christmas and having a few more scotches.)
With Xmas out of the way, that pretty much just leaves New Year's, and while I'm sure it was a big night for the pub, it can't have been as big as the 3 day bender that Doug and I had up in Edinburgh for Hogmanay (the Scottish new year festival)
hotel madness
. We booked in with the fanatics tour mob again, yep, the same ones we did the epic, liver destroying, Budapest to Salzburg to Munich (Oktoberfest!) to Prague tour with and once again, they didn't disappoint. We stayed at the Edinburgh Central Travelodge (which lived up to its name, by being Central, a Travelodge and in Edinburgh) and the madness began. First order of business was to sort out a feed, (after a mammoth 10hr bus ride, with two changes of coach) and contrary to popular belief, not all take away / fish and chip shops in Scotland actually sell deep fried mars bars, which we had heard of but wouldn't really believe in until we had seen one. Fortunately for our waistlines, which have already suffered enough, the place we found didn't do them, but they did do quite a respectable burger and chips which put a decent lining in our stomachs for the abuse they were about to cop. Basically, most of the fanatics mob, about two hundred or so of us went to the pub and had a great time singing dancing drinking talking foosballing and making friends. We even met a few locals, one of whom kind of scared us with his dogged and earnest insistence (almost supplication?) that we should move to Edinburgh. At once. Visions of life with only one kidney kept coming to me unbidden while we spoke with him. Er, anyways...
The next morning, I was horribly hungover and to my way of thinking, incapable of movement from my sofa bed, unless it was to stagger to the toilet
paul havin a Herman
. Food? Hell no, I wanted sleep. Dougie though, being the trooper that he is and the veteran of many a bender felt able to carry the torch and head off down to the day's chosen venue, which was the central Edinburgh Walkabout. For anyone who doesn't know, Walkabouts are a franchise chain of Australian themed pubs that can be found in most cities in the UK. I don't quite understand the logic of going travelling to the other side of the world and then going to an Australian themed pub, but sometimes ya just gotta go with the flow. Anyway, Doug made it to the pub in time for the countdowns to NYE in NZ and back home, apparently there were about 7 countdowns to different places as NYE marched around the world, while I continued a semi-comatose existence on planet Fahkt. Some hours later, just as I was beginning to feel considerably better, Doug was booking his own ticket to planet Fahkt, though he may not have known it at the time. Eventually, I caught up with him, still down at the Walkabout, where we had a few more snakebites, and then decided that a bit of grub would do us both some serious good. A double angus burger (each) later, we had come to the conclusion that if dougie was to be around to welcome the new year in in our current neck of the woods, a bit of kip time was in order, so back to the hotel we went.
Once we got there, Dougie had well and truly arrived on the afore mentioned planet Fahkt and straight to bed he went
more hotel madness
. The torch had been passed. Feeling more human than I had for at least a couple of hours, I decided to explore the hotel bar, where I ran into and started drinking with some Kiwi and Aussie lads who were a barrel of laughs, and good blokes all. After an hour or so, during which time I had been nicknamed, "the Colonel" (everyone had nicknames), it was decided by these lads that I needed to meet Herman. As it turns out, Herman was what I'd all ways thought of as a terry-turbo. The old funnel connected to some large diameter rubber pipe that you fill up with beer and then drink in about a second and a half. Ah, gravity assisted beer sculling... Herman was quite sophisticated though, and had had a valve fixed at the bottom. (yes, I think there's a photo of me and Herman on face book). Several Hermans and a few hours later, everyone was getting pretty happy and we were nearly ready to get the night started. I went and fetched Dougie from his slumber and we took off for the Princes St, street party. The scale of this party is truly difficult to comprehend. Think music festival, but bigger. It's not so much a "street" as "several city blocks" party. Four or five big music stages, drinks points, security and police bloody everywhere, and absolutely choc-a-bloc with people. Somewhere along the way (who needs specifics anyways?) we had run into a random group of aussies with whom we decided to hang about and drink
more hotel madness
. Before actually arriving at the street party, we thought, "Queuing up for hours to get a drink? Be buggered!". So we bought two one litre cartons of fruit juice and a one litre bottle of vodka from an of licence and by the time we got there all we had were two cartons of liquid that we were prepared to allege were "fruit juice". No prizes for guessing what happened to the vodka ;)Once inside the street party it was pretty much impossible to find anyone else, so we continued to hang around with our new found friends and got down to some serious partying. This may have included lots of "fruit juice", conga lining, and general hilarity that was so much fun it came as something of a surprise when everyone around us started counting. The countdown had managed to catch us completely by surprise. I think we joined in somewhere around "four" but after having missed the first 6 numbers we more than made up for it with the gusto with which we chanted the last three. The new year had arrived, welcomed in glorious style by thousands and thousands of cheering, hugging, kissing, and drinking Scots, Kiwi's, Aussies and many more besides. At one stage, this big bloke who was hugging everyone in sight wrapped me up in a bear hug that went on somewhat longer than I thought was strictly necessary. So much longer, in fact, that I felt it necessary to disengage from his grasp and tell him, "You know I'm a boy, right? Yeah, yeah, long hair and all that, but I've got a fucken beard, mate." And that was about as close to getting (un)lucky as I came in Scotland
more hotel madness
. We partied and conga lined on for a few more hours after that and then when it became obvious that the incredible cold was sapping the strength and determination of even the most determined party-animals (I.e. "us") we decided to head back to the Travelodge and continue the party there, where it would at least be warm. Sadly though, the party didn't survive the journey back and by the time we arrived, all we had left in us was a few hours of talking shite before everyone crashed out.
The next day, first of the New Year managed to begin in a depressingly similar manner to the last day of the last year, with me being horribly hungover. You'd think some things would change, wouldn't you? Doug managed to head out to the pub once again and I joined him a bit later on, but the effort was beginning to tell and party spirit was not strong with me, as Yoda might have said (had he been present and not a fictional character). Basically we just got pissed again with lots of other Aussies and Kiwis. Where the hell all the Scots were, I really don't know. We only met a few, maybe they avoid us like the plague around that time of year. Who knows?
At any rate, that pretty much wraps it up for this blog. I've got another instalment to write now, to cover the return to the Arms, the Arms Staff Party and our impromptu farewell do, once again, at the Arms. With any luck, it shouldn't take too long to write it and get it on the net, but don't hold your collective breath guys (if anyone's actually reading this)... this is Bulgaria and the internet is frequently dodgy, so it might be a coupla days, mebbe a bit more, before it materializes. And also... A BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY NANNY!!! MISS YA NAN, XOXOXOXOX!!!!!!
Hope everyone else back home is well and hasn't been too bored. Merry New Year and Happy Xmas and all that bollocks to the lot of you ;)
Cheers from Paul and Doug!!!
Comments
re. blogs
G'day Paul, great stories mate, I hope at the end of all this tripping around (does it ever end)that you'll put all these blog stories into a saleable 'book' it makes a great read, very descriptive rate it 'R' or 'arrrrrgh' and it will sell well. Best wishes to you and Dougie. Noel (dad)