Saturday, August 30, 2003
Doctor's Blog
Stardate 24.08.2003
*****
The Church of Scotland, I discover, is nothing like the Church of England. The preacher, who speaks rather like Sean Connery, is old school, fire-and-brimstone, salt-and-drivel, stamping his foot ferociously to his laments about the ills and ails of today's society. An hour and a half later, I merge, dazed from the onslaught, feeling spiritually emptied, but saddened, that the man is right.
I embark on the History of the Highlands open-top bustour, which, impressively has a ticket that lasts for twenty four hours, and unlimited travel on the tour during that period, between five destinations.
Our commentator is a geriatric gentleman with a hearing aid and walking stick. His mind wanders periodically into the backyards of neigbouring dimensions; nonetheless, he is a wealth of knowledge, and apparently, conducts EVERY tour, which runs hourly between eight and six. Nonetheless, he is a fountain of knowledge, even if a somewhat incontinent one.
Culloden Battlefield
During the trip, which covers Culloden Battlefield, Cawdor Castle, and Fort George, I learn that Bonny Prince Charlie returned from hiding in France in 1746 and led four thousand men in Scotland's last battle for Independence, deep into the heart of England (Derby), before being driven back by a nine-thousand strong army, out of England, and all the way up scotland to the Culloden plains, in the highland where the Scots made their last, tired and bedraggled stand, outnumbered more than two to one. They were annihilated. Bonny Prince Charlie escaped, but only barely, with his life, to die in exile in rome many years later.
The battlefield is a treacherous pit-and-hillock-riddled field of heather, except for the occasional bare patch, where, apparently the highlanders were buried. To this day, heather will not grow on their graves. Why precisely this is so, nobody knows.
Cawdor Castle
We stagger through the halls gawking at the sheer unadulterated opulence of the place. 14th century stees, ceramic plates from China, and ornaments and paintings lie casually strewn about at strategically, and aesthetically sites positions in the castle, along with, somewhat incongruously, pictures of the present-day duchess and her squire.
Interestingly, a dodgy will has resulted in the castle being legally unoccupiable until the duchess, and her contestant legally settle their dispute for ownership of the castle. This clearly hasn't stopped her putting up portraits open-top bus of herself in the castle. Admittedly, she is an extremely handsome lady.
Somewhere within the castle lie the mummified remains of a tree, still firmly planted in a little circle of bare earth amidst the stone masonary. Apparently the castle was built around it in accordance with the duke's wishes, according to local lore, after a gold-laden donkey chose to lie down under it whilst taking a random stroll through the grounds.
I am suitably impressed, and also rather nauseated at the sombre splendour of it all. How could these puffed-up poppinjays possibly have taken themselves seriously? And then, as I pass through the last exhibits, I notice a chance in the tone of the descriptive plaques. Subtle phrases like "this surely isn't boring you" are thrown in.
The last chamber houses memorials to the gentiles pets through the ages.
Particularly of note is the story of a duke's indestructible pet goat, with a particular penchant for eating poison ivy off the castle's walls. Its like was prematurely ended after drinking a gallon of lead-based paint thinner.
I also learn that the Australian magpie is actually a type of finch, that can talk. Cor.
Fort George
Fourty-two hectares bristling with guns, cannons and mortars, enclosed in a maze of three-storied stone walls fifteen feet thick. It was apparently pre-emptively built to deter angry clansmen after the days of the last battle for Independence. It appears to have worked; it was never fired upon, once. It is still an active military installation to this very day.
It is also singularly the most boring place on earth to me, possibly as an unfortunate side-effect of national service, Sigting down one of the many, many, many cannons I am puzzled to find that it is aimed at one of the fortresses own towers. Talk about paranoia.
I narrowly miss a medieval exhibition, and catch the last of them, still in their chain mail, packing up to go home. Their children struggle to heft their broadswords and drag them over to the straw archery dummies that haven't yet been taken down. Typically, I've missed the most interesting thing to happen in the fort today.
A group of real-life soldiers file past in their combat fatigues, forcing a yawn from me.
In the taxi on my way from Inverness back to Drumnadrochit, I receive a compliment from the girl driving the cab, about how flawless! my English is. I tell her I'm from London and she's a bit nonplussed. ("Oh.") She tells me cynically about a self-professed white wizard who floated some months back out onto the loch on a home-made raft to cast a counter-spell on Nessie to render her visible again, as he'd apparently cast Invisibility on her some years ago to keep her safe from prying human eyes. I think about the poor traumatised fish, seals, and the odd small child who must have suddenly found themselves in the stomach of a twenty-foot behemoth of a sea-monster without warning. We laugh. She's sweet.
Stardate 24.08.2003
*****
The Church of Scotland, I discover, is nothing like the Church of England. The preacher, who speaks rather like Sean Connery, is old school, fire-and-brimstone, salt-and-drivel, stamping his foot ferociously to his laments about the ills and ails of today's society. An hour and a half later, I merge, dazed from the onslaught, feeling spiritually emptied, but saddened, that the man is right.
I embark on the History of the Highlands open-top bustour, which, impressively has a ticket that lasts for twenty four hours, and unlimited travel on the tour during that period, between five destinations.
Our commentator is a geriatric gentleman with a hearing aid and walking stick. His mind wanders periodically into the backyards of neigbouring dimensions; nonetheless, he is a wealth of knowledge, and apparently, conducts EVERY tour, which runs hourly between eight and six. Nonetheless, he is a fountain of knowledge, even if a somewhat incontinent one.
Culloden Battlefield
During the trip, which covers Culloden Battlefield, Cawdor Castle, and Fort George, I learn that Bonny Prince Charlie returned from hiding in France in 1746 and led four thousand men in Scotland's last battle for Independence, deep into the heart of England (Derby), before being driven back by a nine-thousand strong army, out of England, and all the way up scotland to the Culloden plains, in the highland where the Scots made their last, tired and bedraggled stand, outnumbered more than two to one. They were annihilated. Bonny Prince Charlie escaped, but only barely, with his life, to die in exile in rome many years later.
The battlefield is a treacherous pit-and-hillock-riddled field of heather, except for the occasional bare patch, where, apparently the highlanders were buried. To this day, heather will not grow on their graves. Why precisely this is so, nobody knows.
Cawdor Castle
We stagger through the halls gawking at the sheer unadulterated opulence of the place. 14th century stees, ceramic plates from China, and ornaments and paintings lie casually strewn about at strategically, and aesthetically sites positions in the castle, along with, somewhat incongruously, pictures of the present-day duchess and her squire.
Interestingly, a dodgy will has resulted in the castle being legally unoccupiable until the duchess, and her contestant legally settle their dispute for ownership of the castle. This clearly hasn't stopped her putting up portraits open-top bus of herself in the castle. Admittedly, she is an extremely handsome lady.
Somewhere within the castle lie the mummified remains of a tree, still firmly planted in a little circle of bare earth amidst the stone masonary. Apparently the castle was built around it in accordance with the duke's wishes, according to local lore, after a gold-laden donkey chose to lie down under it whilst taking a random stroll through the grounds.
I am suitably impressed, and also rather nauseated at the sombre splendour of it all. How could these puffed-up poppinjays possibly have taken themselves seriously? And then, as I pass through the last exhibits, I notice a chance in the tone of the descriptive plaques. Subtle phrases like "this surely isn't boring you" are thrown in.
The last chamber houses memorials to the gentiles pets through the ages.
Particularly of note is the story of a duke's indestructible pet goat, with a particular penchant for eating poison ivy off the castle's walls. Its like was prematurely ended after drinking a gallon of lead-based paint thinner.
I also learn that the Australian magpie is actually a type of finch, that can talk. Cor.
Fort George
Fourty-two hectares bristling with guns, cannons and mortars, enclosed in a maze of three-storied stone walls fifteen feet thick. It was apparently pre-emptively built to deter angry clansmen after the days of the last battle for Independence. It appears to have worked; it was never fired upon, once. It is still an active military installation to this very day.
It is also singularly the most boring place on earth to me, possibly as an unfortunate side-effect of national service, Sigting down one of the many, many, many cannons I am puzzled to find that it is aimed at one of the fortresses own towers. Talk about paranoia.
I narrowly miss a medieval exhibition, and catch the last of them, still in their chain mail, packing up to go home. Their children struggle to heft their broadswords and drag them over to the straw archery dummies that haven't yet been taken down. Typically, I've missed the most interesting thing to happen in the fort today.
A group of real-life soldiers file past in their combat fatigues, forcing a yawn from me.
In the taxi on my way from Inverness back to Drumnadrochit, I receive a compliment from the girl driving the cab, about how flawless! my English is. I tell her I'm from London and she's a bit nonplussed. ("Oh.") She tells me cynically about a self-professed white wizard who floated some months back out onto the loch on a home-made raft to cast a counter-spell on Nessie to render her visible again, as he'd apparently cast Invisibility on her some years ago to keep her safe from prying human eyes. I think about the poor traumatised fish, seals, and the odd small child who must have suddenly found themselves in the stomach of a twenty-foot behemoth of a sea-monster without warning. We laugh. She's sweet.
