Scotland.

The Camden Debut

I have been teaching myself guitar for the past couple years and finally organized to get up and do an open mike night performance. Benny my roommate has all the required equipment and there is a great place a couple tube stops away in Camden Town. It is a great Sunday afternoon cafe for music aside the canals with some lovely organic grog. So we headed in put our names down (i was first up, followed by the experienced Ben) then went to a nearby pub to lubricate the voice boxes (and maybe some nerves).

We kicked it off at 8pm and the nerves that i hadnt really felt to much just happenned to kick in as i strummed the simple opening chords to Sir Paul Kelly's (who i has seen live only 4 nights earlier) 'To Her Door' causing me to forget the unforgettable first line. After a couple 3 chord loops i was off and strumming. According to the great support group i had there watching (thanks guys) i looked & sounded a bit like a new fish during the first tune but looked more at ease during the 2nd (Lonely Soldier - Damien Rice) and 3rd (NY - My only finished Original). From my point of view i enjoyed all of it and will be back to give it another crack in the near future once i have finished a couple more of the many 'work in progress' songs.

Scotland

Chrissy (soon to be heading back to Oz) Armstrong suggested Scotland and more specifically Ben Nevis as a final little excursion. He invited a couple people here and there figuring that they wouldn't all be available. About 6 weeks later 11 of us flew up to Glasgow on the Friday of a bank holiday weekend. During the first 45 minutes of this trip the chief organizer of the trip (Chrissy) handed me a plastic sleeve full of bookings and calmly requested the taxi to pull over as he had forgot any form of photo I.D. The remainder of the trip to Luton Airport was fare from the expected flat as we all researched madly on phones on how Armstrong could possibly get to Glasgow. In the end he missed the flight and had a lovely 7-hour sleep on the train up and met us at the Saturday breakfast table. We picked up one more traveller there and two rental cars and headed for Big Ben Nevis, about a 3-hour drive from Glasgow. The 3 hour drive was fairly hectic as I was passenger in the following convoy carrying 7 decent people and Mrs Senna decided to speed away from us at every opportunity. Lovely girl she turned out to be, just a bloody terrible driver. Once we had our iphone up and going we let her disappear into the distance and enjoying a more calm approach to the loch side drive. We had all heard mixed rumours on how serious the awaiting climb was and weren't to intimidated upon arrival at the base camp pub.

The next 5.5 hours we ascended and descended Ben Nevis. Awesome views and photo ops a plenty. The last hour of the climb is spent in the cloud and just when you think you've hit the top another 10 minutes of mountain comes into view. We were extremely lucky to have the cloud break up for most of the time we rested at the peak. 1,344 metres (4,409 ft). We took happy snaps, ate Hummus and contemplated the intimidating return to the cold frothy awaiting us at the bottom. All in all a great way to spend a day getting in amongst the Scottish highlands. The beer, curry and sleep waiting at the bottom were almost as good as the climb itself.

The next morning we had a cafe cook up and then the 2 cars went their separate ways (5 back to Glasgow and 7 of us off to Edinburgh). The next three hours drive was one of the better ones I have enjoyed in my life. Although I may have been to these areas before, my more attentive eyes were blown away by the highlands scattered with waterfalls, lochs, roadside bagpipers and it was all made better by the iPod connecter we picked up at Argos on the way out of Fort William. TUNES and SCENERY!

We arrived to a buzzing Edinburgh (even with rain falling). When Chris initially had the Scotland idea I clicked for Google and sure enough our visit was to fall on the last weekend of the world famous Fringe Festival. We dropped of our bags at our amazing hostel(Caledonian Backpackers)and headed into the box office. After a fun conversation trying to book tickets we successfully booked into 2 gigs. Both performances were great laughs with the second ('Best of the Fest') topping the trip off with 3 Irishmen (Jimeoin included), 1 Welshmen and 1 American. After some pool 3:30am welcomed the pillow.

The final day was fairly uneventful with a nice 4-hour train ride back to London. My 2 room mates Ben and Jamie had bought unreserved tickets so being an obviously busy train back to the capital we spent the majority of it at the bar enjoying the last hours of our long weekend.

  My first London bank holiday weekend was great!

Thanks Scotland. MAH. Pics on the flickr