Aaron Around The World - Hogmanay at last!

Aaron Around The World    >>    Europe    >>    United Kingdom    >>    Edinburgh, Scotland

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Saturday, 29 December 2007 - Torchlight Procession!


Edinburgh's Hogmanay officially kicked off again last night with plenty of fun stuff to do...		Ice skating in Princess Gardens...		Dodgy fortune telling from the Gypsies...


The annual torchlight procession where we all march up Carlton Hill and set fire to shit...				And the big Ferris wheel!


It's a been a long time since I've been on a Ferris wheel ;)		Just like last year, the procession winds it way through town en route to the hill.


Big traffic jam at the bottom of the hill while people inch up the only road to the summit, so everyone stands around and gets hot wax dripped on their head and clothing hehe. There was some crazy entertainment down the bottom to keep us all mildly amused though.


cough cough, splutter Not an event for asthmatics this one ;)		Last year it was a bear, and this year a huge stag got fried - pretty impressive huh!


Bang, bang, bang! Here's hoping the actual New Year's Eve street party won't get cancelled again this year due to the weather.

Monday, 31 December 2007 - Hogmanay at last!


It was cancelled last year due to severe gales (and the year prior I think), but Hogmanay was all go this year! This is looking up towards Old Town, and I couldn't resist one of the rides this year...		This big bastard!


This thing flings you round in big circles at a million miles an hour and flips you over and over and just generally makes you feel ill afterwards hahaha!


We spent the hours leading up to the new year at Ceilidh in the Gardens. A ceilidh (pronounced "kay-lee" believe it or not) is a social event or disco, typically with Celtic music and dancing.


The music was long and repetitive and the traditional dances bloody hard to master (and I no doubt looked like a complete retard but so did everyone hehe), but I made a good show of it ;)


After a while it got far too crowded in there for us retards to be banging into everyone so we took our dancing feet elsewhere.


There were several stages set up around town with a lot of random music groups I'd never heard of, including the Red Hot Chilly Pipers (note that's pipers, not peppers :) I can't stand bagpipes but these guys were pretty good!


As the minutes counted down, town got more and more packed out...		Rubbish bins were in short supply...		And everyone had a plan for getting lucky hehe!


5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and Edinburgh Castle put on a bloody great fireworks show! Nice to see where all of my council tax go. So that's that for 2007. For me it was full of overseas travel, lots of work, but not enough cycling :(

Thursday, 3 January 2008 - The white stuff!


It had been forecast for a while, but the whether forecasts in this country are about as reliable as a support bra without the wires (so I'm told ;) However they got it right today and it snowed on and off all morning. This is out near the airport where I'm working at the moment, around 15kms out of central Edinburgh.


By lunchtime it was really chucking it down. It was anybody's guess where this bus was going hehe.



This was the view from the upper-storey of the double-decker bus I caught home. I took the longer and slower route hoping to get some more shots...		...but that proved to be a complete waste of time.


The ol' castle would've seen plenty of this shit over the years.		Town was bitterly freezing, and slippery - I only just managed to make it home without slipping over and breaking my arse. The wireless support bra forecasters are predicting even 'worse' weather tomorrow (if you want to call it that - I rather like it :)

Wednesday, 9 January 2008 - Oh my god, they freed Kenny (you bastards!)


I'm not sure how much press this story may have received outside of the country, but in a nutshell Kenneth (Kenny) Richey - an Edinburgh local - was convicted in Ohio, USA just over 20 years ago for the arson attack on his ex-girlfriend's apartment which resulted in the death of a two-year-old girl, and put on death row. On death row he stayed for 20 years, three times receiving a stay of execution. On one of those three occasions, he came within just 60 minutes of meeting his maker before the stay of execution was granted. In August last year, he accepted a plea bargain which saw his sentence reduced to time already served for involuntary manslaughter to which he pleaded 'no contest', thereby freeing him. Whether or not he did indeed have anything to do with that blaze has been highly debated ever since, and the evidence is apparently dubious. Anyway, part of the plea bargain was that he was to leave the US, and word spread quickly about exactly when he was due to touch down in his home country that he had not seen in over two decades. As I work about ten minutes down the road from the airport and have been following his story of late, I thought I'd push my way in for nosey! ;) Needless to say this case has received huge media attention, and they were all out in full force (and I made it onto the evening news again hehe).


After a bit of waiting around Kenny finally emerged to a shower of camera flashes, including my own but my tired fucking camera blurred the damn shot which completely pissed me off because he was looking right at me (for whatever reason)!		His flight from Chicago to Heathrow was cancelled due to the shitty weather throughout the UK at the moment, and so he was diverted to Frankfurt, Germany, and from there to Edinburgh. He looked pretty bloody tired as a result and gave only brief answers to questions from reporters before being escorted out to a waiting car.


Not before he was completely mobbed by the media though! It was unreal, and I stayed the hell out of it.


Death row protestors were on hand to voice their message - all three of them ;)		Upon his release, Kenny stated that his only wish was to feel the Scottish wind on his face, and he was well and truly granted that wish today! For the last 24 hours Scotland has been severely battered by wind gusts of around 120km/h. When I eventually leave, the Scottish wind will be the last thing I'll ever wish to feel again!

Sunday, 13 January 2008 - Craptions!
It's been ages since I've stuck a page of these up, so enjoy :) And if you haven't seen the first two pages worth, see here and here, and heaps more bullshit to keep yourself occupied with here!

Thursday, 17 January 2008 - Three years and counting...

Exactly three years ago today I left behind my beautiful home sweet home to see and experience the world outside of my own, and try to put the previous few years of university to good use by establishing a career for myself. Three years on, I can't complain (too much :) My 19 months in Brisbane set me up in a big way and meant I walked straight into a great job here in the UK. Its hard to believe I've been here for almost as long as Brisbane already, but in that time I've seen a lot of western Europe (which has been amazing), and am beginning to really work my way up the ladder job-wise and money-wise (hooray for the pound!). The UK climate is absolute shit and frankly it's easy to see its affect on the general populous. Edinburgh is a beautiful city but if it wasn't for the pound and the proximity to the rest of Europe, I might well have moved on by now. I've become increasingly homesick since coming here because the climate, some of the people, and just the general atmosphere about the place is so far removed from the other side of the globe, and not in a good way (just watch a bit of Coronation Street or EastEnders to see what I mean). It's hard to get out and do the sort of stuff I was able to in Brisbane, and this website has 'suffered' as a result with a lot less of the shenanigans. Be that as it may, I still plan on doing the London thing for a while before leaving. Thereafter the plan is still to spend a couple of years working in Canada and travelling as much of the Americas as I can during that time. And then, who knows; maybe home after some tripping through Asia, whenever that may be. In the meantime I've got a small road trip in the US coming up in a month, hopefully Amsterdam for my 26th birthday in June, more road trips come summer, and a relocation to London to think about. Keep watching this space :)

Friday, 18 January 2008 - Xmas
I forgot to ask, did anyone get anything really good for Christmas, like this for example? ;)

Friday, 18 January 2008 - I love flying!


This was the scene at London's Heathrow Airport at lunchtime today after a British Airways Boeing 777 inexplicably lost all engine power during its final approach and crash landed about 200 metres short of the runway. The plane had just been in the air for 12 hours after departing Beijing, China (a flight similar to the one I made myself from Hong Kong on my way here). The pilots later reported that when they were just seconds from touching down, both engines spontaneously died with absolutely no warning and (so far) no explanation. The crew didn't even have time to warn the passengers, who knew nothing of what was happening. People on the ground realised something was wrong when the plane banked sharply to the left and approached at an excessively sharp angle with its nose unusually high. As it turns out, that was the pilots trying to glide the bastard in. With no engines, the plane lost speed and hence began to drop sharply. The pilots managed to keep it in the air for as long as possible by sticking its nose up allowing it to glide.


The plane cleared traffic on the boundary road and the perimeter fence by just metres, and touched down a good 200 metres short of the runway. Both of the main landing gears snapped clean off on impact. One was thrown clear, and the other pierced the left wing and was dragged (shot on the right - that would've been a great view from that person's window ;) The front landing gear was also ripped clear (shot on the left). The plane skidded and came to a sudden halt on the edge of the runway. At this point, most of the passengers still had no idea anything was wrong - many were reported later as saying they just thought it was a fucking rough landing hahaha!


All passengers and crew were evacuated via the emergency slides and led away while fire crews doused the plane from top and toe with foam to avoid any fires breaking out. Too bad if anyone had brought back some nice china with them - there won't be much left of it now hehe. Experts from around the globe are being flown in to examine the plane to work out what went so suddenly wrong. Bird strike, lack of fuel, electrical fault, pilot error - who knows. The pilots are being praised for being able to keep the bird in the air as long as they did; they came within a pubic hair of landing on neighbouring properties and/or the boundary road which would've been pretty tense! One of Heathrow's two main runways are now out of service, and a lot of flights have either been cancelled or diverted to other London airports. As a result, many of the foreigners interviewed on the news had no idea where the hell they were hahaha!

Saturday, 19 January 2008 - Musselburgh


It was one of those rare winter days today - mild, bit of sun, little wind, all good for biking I so picked a road and followed it. I ended up out on the coast in Portobello. I didn't bother to try the water because I was last out here about this time last year and that water is fucking freezing hehe (and notice nobody else is dumb enough to try it out either).


Further on I ended up in Musselburgh - the honest town (or toun). That means when they stab someone (as the Scots like to do) they own up to it ;)		I found this just round the corner though - they apparently don't own up to serious accidents hehe.


Musselburgh's quite a nice little spot, but I decided to carry on along the coast to see what else was out there. I needn't have bothered - there's not much of interest!

Sunday, 20 January 2008 - That's Life

I was banned from the wedding because I'm a big fatty and would've eaten all the food, I woke up during brain surgery, my husband's lover was secretly visiting him in hospital as I nursed the bastard, and he fell in love with my colostomy bag! But hey, that's life, what can ya do?! I proved who your daddy is and won another holiday though ;)

Monday, 21 January 2008


You can pick up your shit in the driveway!

Thursday, 24 January 2008 - Burns Night


Yup, it's me in a kilt - finally!		But I still had the All Blacks boxers on underneath ;)


This was all for Burns night - a big annual Scottish celebration of the life and poetry of Robert Burns, author of many Scots poems including Auld Lang Syne which is generally sung at New Year celebrations around the world. Burns night is officially tomorrow night on the 25th (the date of his birth) but hey who cares. Burns, a poet and a lyricist, was born in 1759 and kicked the bucket in 1796, and over 200 years on the Scots still celebrate the man! The shot on the left is a piece of haggis being brought in while the piper in the shot on the right punishes our ears and leads the way to the host's table where the haggis is laid down (just one part of the traditional events of the night).


The classic Scottish dish of haggis, neaps, and tatties (haggis, turnips, and potatoes) is the order of the night, along with fair bit of whiskey. Everybody recites a bit of Burns poetry, gets drunk, and that's that for another year.

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Page Comments

Jesus - I don't have legs like that thank you very much!!
- Aaron

U scrub up rather well in a kilt - bit sad u didn't go the full length though ;)
- Jen

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How come you can read that but not this: "...but if it wasn't for the Pound and the proximity to the rest of Europe, I might well have moved on by now..."??
- Aaron

if you have that big a thing against us scots why stay... you're always moaning but as jen says you're still in one piece and usually happy!!
- sam

Don't speak too soon...
- Aaron

Must say you have survived well enough in Ed these past 19 months - ur still in one piece with no wounds from the dodgy locals (even when u were working through in Glasgow!) :P
- Jen

train doesn't count - gotta walk through it etc ;)
Sucks that it doesn't settle in town, ah well can play in plenty of snow/ice next month when we're at Niagra Falls :D
Oh & everyone I know has the link to ur budget :P
- Jen

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Ummm I think it's my first proper snow in Edinburgh but I remember heaps last year between Ed and Glasgow while on the train to work...
- Aaron

Since boxing day 2000!! poor thing!! i miss the four foot drifts we used to get... those were fun to hide in!!
- Sam

Is this your first snow fall since you got here?
My first since Boxing Day 2000!!!
- Jen

Hey bro don't dis the gel (or wax in my case)
- Aaron

bro look how long ur hair is! niiiice, just dont gel it :) bah hahahaha 0 8 is great!
- charlot

hehehe I watched the fireworks and the fire from the comfort of my room - fingers crossed tonight aint cancelled coz I don't have a plan B!
- Jen