Scotland: whakapapa and Hurricanes rugby

The Scottish National Party this week won the Scottish parliamentary elections, promising a referendum on independence and Tony Blair finally said the first of his goodbyes to make way for Gordon Brown. Maybe things are starting to look up for Britain.
So we took the Flying Scotsman train to Edinburgh for a short tour of the Western Highlands, looking for some ancestry stuff for Ewen. It was good to get out of England, but in an unsurprising turn of events, the rail company threatened to put us on buses between Darlington and Newcastle because a goods train had derailed. Luckily the tracks had been cleared when we approached and we could continue to Edinburgh with some slight delay.
Scotland will need a bit more than chocolate box scenery for tourists to make it as an independent country in the world. Surely the oil and gas will be a great help in the next 100 years if the Sassenach companies can be persuaded to pay a decent return to the Scottish treasury, like they do in neighbouring Norway.
So up to the Morvern peninsula, off Oban, where we stayed at a tiny harbour village called Lochaline. Marvellous barren scenery, pine forest plantations and fjords you just can imagine Viking longships sail through. In the 19th century all the inhabitants were cleared off the land by landlords keen to get a higher economic return by running sheep than having crofter tenants. All very nasty stuff ensued: burning of houses, assisted emigration and so New Zealand got its entrepreneurial agricultural class in return, now giving the Brit farmers a large run for their money by selling better quality lamb to British customers.

Lochaline has a pub and a social club where we got talking to a very cute redhead who happened to be a Hurricanes rugby fan. He spurred us to come over to the Isle of Mull for a local rugby 7s tournament. Unfortunately we weren't able to due to the history tour we were on.
Again, as in Belgium, the locals were far less interested in the historical details than the occasional overseas visitor looking for his roots.
What we can recommend is the local restaurant called The White House, gourmet food at incredible prices but just simply sublime for a one-off indulgence.
A highlight of the peninsula is an abandoned early 19th century village that has only been unearthed early last century, called Inniemore.

The house that I would love to live in

If you have ever been to Scotland, you really cannot have missed Charles Rennie Mackintosh's architecture, tea rooms and other art nouveau design in Glasgow and other places. It's really my favourite sort of design environment I would happily live in for all time because it looks timeless and modern at the same time. (Of course it is quite period and date related, but who cares, I love Roman villas too). Now you can soon visit his sites aided by PDAs to explain his art and architecture. And when in Glasgow, never miss having tea at the Willow Tea Rooms, or you haven't lived.

Voting in Scotland

Ah, they took note of my suggestion of having regional options in the UK election quiz. So here is my updated result:

Who should I vote for in Scotland?

	Labour 13
Conservative -54
	Liberal Democrat 41
UKIP -49
	Green 8
	Scottish National Party 57
	Scottish Socialist Party 34

You should vote: Scottish National Party

The SNP is broadly left of centre. It supports the Euro as being the national currency rather than sterling, but does not support the European Constitution in its current form. The party supports progressive taxation, student grants and the abolition of tuition fees. The SNP approach on soft drugs is more relaxed with a focus on treatment rather than punishment of hard drug users. It supports debt relief and CO2 emission reductions.

This result is a far better reflection of my own expectation of whom I would vote for if I lived in Britain. I'm more supportive of the EU constitution than the SNP or SSP, but you can't expect everything from a party.

Some men, and their products, just smell good naturally

From the endless pursuit of happiness, also called capitalist consumerism, comes the new fragrance named Cumming.
If you thought spraying their product (called Cum?) all over yourself was not enough, there are future products in the pipeline (Cumming Soon, as it were), such as Cumming Clean, Cumming All Over and Cumming Off Buff, but I dread to think what Cumming Of Age is. (Oh, I know: it's a.k.a. Old Spice!)
Surely this is a spoof or a cock up in the PR department, because wearing Cum - on the body part of your choice - is best reserved for parties of the wilder variety, in my opinion.
Thank you, Sideswipe for usefully alerting us to its existence. How did we ever manage to get a life without cum?
More from the ad department:

"A scent that is all about Sex, Scotch, Cigars and Scotland."

Good grief. Have these people ever sniffed a real Scotsman's cum? (I have, and I know that's too much information for a lot of you already, sorry 'bout that)

Edinburgh

A Scots accent gets you everywhere with me, so our gracious hosts, Jean-Luc and Angus, took us around the delights of Edinburgh. Although it has only half the population of Auckland, there are more pubs to drink in and better clubs to dance - although Auckland wins on the steamie front.
After a few quiet bevvies at The Regent, a very pleasant local gay pub, we all decamped to a monthly club night called Mingin', which had us all gyrating on a word-less five hour hard dance track, smoke machines and all. OK, I confess. It's the only time in my life I have taken my shirt off on a dance floor. Of course, nobody noticed cos they were all off their faces, so I gathered it would be safe to make a fool of myself without having to suffer the consequences over breakfast. And no pictures to show off on the net either!
JL and Angus's friends we were introduced to were all way up on the spunk-o-meter and they didn't even wear a kilt. Being such a small scene everybody gets acquainted really fast - and the vast internet popularity of gaydar and worldskins to exchange profiles helps too. JL knew most of the Edinburgh entries!
After such a long Saturday night out it's customary here to visit the local sauna for some detox on Sunday afternoon. It wasn't hugely impressive by Auckland standards (insert your own definition of those here): smelly steam room, cold cruise areas, hard seating in the video room. Only the professional (German) masseur was up to scratch, according to Ewen, but he required an additional £25 on top of the £13 entry!
Of course, Edinburgh does do real culture well too, it wasn't all fun and sleaze. There was a special exhibition at the Castle on the Union of the Crowns: it's 400 years ago since Scottish King James VI became King James I of England too after Elizabeth I died. Plenty of stuff about his life was on display in the Royal Apartments of the Castle where he was born (his mother was Mary, Queen of Scots). As we all know, he was not averse to boys and made several of his favourites noblemen, but that was almost impossible to glean from the exhibition. Only an adolescent infatuation with his cousin Esme Stuart was referred to. Pity, cos he was the most successful homo monarch we have had so far. His own written letter complaining about his wife turning bitchy was quite funny to read (he blamed her pregnant condition). He was obsessed with witchcraft in his kingdom, which sounds like hysteria to me.
Over at the Museum of Scotland (which has a section on the history of emigration to New Zealand, very nice) there was an interesting display of the various torture instruments used on the unfortunate wenches accused of being witches. Safely locked away behind glass, so we couldn't try them out for real!