Why I Don't Need A Car

and

Why I Would Like To Have a Car

I was brave, and a little impulsive, and independent to a fault, and bought a car. A fairly cheap 12-year old car that only lasted 6 weeks before it was to dangerous to drive and too expensive to fix. I sold it on for much less than I paid and felt quite stupid for a while.

I was quite sad. More sad than is reasonably-attributed to an inanimate thing, but I was nonetheless.

I bought this car, but it looked a bit worse-for-wear than in this ancient photo.

This is a blog post about how things have to be different without a car, and about how the world (at least the bits of it I move around in) seems to require a critical mass of car-ownership, and about how public transport in Scotland is somewhere between mediocre and downright sucky.

The events of which I tell happened roughly three weeks ago, maybe four. 

There was a warning light, which made me a bit scared but may have been nothing. Then there was a string smell of petrol, which was the evidence of a nice rusty fuel tank hole, and an exhaust hole. Fixable but unjustifiably pricey, given the degree of rust where structural things ought to have been.

I declared the car to have driven its last on the Friday. It my have been a 13th, but I tend not to buy in to that particular brand of BS. My late Grandmother was particularly fond of the number 13.

 At that point what I had planned for that weekend was:
Saturday - drive myself, Flatmate and two friends out to a fairly out-of-the-way part of Aberdeenshire, have dinner in the pub, and then go to a free ceilidh where I had been asked to call a few more unusual dances. Then we planned to stay with friends in the area, meaning we would need to drive to their place at the end of the ceilidh.
Sunday - drive the four of us back to Aberdeen, whereupon I take one person home and drive the remaining three of us to the hire car place, Flatmate would pick up a hire car and we would together go meet a further seven people for another trip. Then, as the plan went, with 5 people in my car, and 5 in the hire car, we would go for an adventure to the Castle Ceilidh in St Andrews, and then back again potentially very late at night.

Tell me this isn't worth travelling to. Sunshine, outsides, people, ruins, dancing. And then there's fire and heights. 

So losing my wheels made my day a little less brighter - I did not want to let these guys down. Now at this point I had it in my head that there were no hire companies in Aberdeen that I could use, due to not being old enough for most of them, and thinking that I hadn't had my license long enough for another. Out of the eleven people involved in the weekend's travel plans, only Flatmate and I had driving licenses. We tried and tried to come up with various plan Bs. One plan involved Flatmate changing her hire car for a 9-seater hire monster, the biggest they'll give out on an ordinary license, and me staying home and missing the fun. This plan added to the upset, for I'm a sensitive soul who doesn't like to miss out on the fun.

In the end we discovered that the magical event of my most recent birthday qualified me to be able to hire a car (from one company only, but they're quite reasonable). And we had 48 hours of unplanned car hire, half of which was covered by other people. In the end, the world kept turning.

Since then I have bought myself a bicycle. 

This bicycle.

This is my personal condolence. It cost me £46 off ebay, and may even make it to me by the end of the month. I already cycle to work every day, and to a lot of other things. I do it on a donated bike (thanks, Mr T!) which mostly works fine, and I quite like. But I've never bought a bike for myself.

This is an old bike, but pretty funky. It will no doubt be a "project". But bikes are things I can mend and rebuild, and they don't need petrol or MOTs or insurance or road tax or any of that necessary car nonsense. A good part of me hopes that getting an old bike back to being a thing of beauty will go some way to soothing my bruised ego, bashed about by the inability to fix mechanical car-problems.

A bike, however cannot do some things. 

I can't give lifts. This is the biggest sad. I am heavily conscious of my universal lift-debt. I was making inroads into paying it back. With interest. My time will come.

Although I nearly bought this, so that I could.

I can't travel the length of the country in a day.

It doesn't keep the rain out.

It doesn't play any of my new tape collection.

It doesn't have enough capacity for the tent, stove, sleeping bag, and candle-chandelier (next post).

And it runs on energy. Precious people-calorie-energy. Driving made me less tired.


On hearing my tragic first-world-problem news, my dear Mother phoned, and offered me a friendly loan so I could buy another car, maybe one a bit less cheap and likely to run for a while.

My Mum decided that I needed a car. So I don't. 

In a childish (yet planet and pocket-friendly) knee-jerk reaction, I have decided that I do not need a car. I will get by.

My plan is to save for yet another thing, and look at a set of wheels in September. In the meantime I shall blog about what I might be looking for.

For now it'll be transport by the following means:

-Bike. Calf muscles for me then.
-Bus. I spent 50 minutes waiting for the most recent bus I had to get (last week).
-Swallowing my pride and asking for lifts. I have some generous friends who I shall repay in some form one day. If you have ever given me a lift, and I haven't cooked you dinner recently, invite yourself round. Do It!
-24 hour hire car deals for big things. Like the camping trip we had 2 weeks ago. And the one we're planning next weekend.

I am the disproportionately-proud owner of half of this tent, and all of the magical candle chandelier that goes inside it. 

So, I don't have a car. I'm not going to have one. But only for a while to prove my Mum wrong. And then I'll write a list of why I think having one will be a good thing,, suck up to Mum and have another bash at it.

Till then, I'm thumbing a ride...

SCD at IVFDF

The blog post title least likely to get me pageviews through google searches. 

Is there still a strong enough demand for a Scottish dance at IVFDF's outside of Scotland?

I've just returned from an annual festival called the Inter-Varsity Folk Dance Festival. Goes by the abbreviated name of IVFDF. It was awesome, and I wouldn't have missed it.

Last year I organised one (with a good deal of help). It was a break from the norm, by virtue of the exceptionally northern location, and as such a break from the recent norm in terms of overall numbers and travelling numbers. It was also a good deal more Scottish than average.

I'll wax lyrical about how generally lovely it was this year and my new Morris-crush at some point but I've come over here to set down my thoughts about one particular question:

What place does Scottish Country Dancing have at an IVFDF? 

I'm writing this partly to answer the question, and also to offer a little advice to the upcoming Edinburgh 2014 IVFDF (yay woop!), should they wish it.

First off - where am I coming from?

I've been to the last 9 IVFDFs, taken groups to 5, and organised 1. That's not counting the appearance I made in Newcastle 1990, aged 11 months and on my Daddy's shoulders. I do a lot of Scottish Country dancing, based in Aberdeen, mostly within the Scottish University circuit or with a couple of independent groups. I am a member of the RSCDS (and a fully certified Idiot Teacher) but might admit to falling slightly out of love with them as an institution*.

SCD at IVFDF Aberdeen 2012

The SCD at IVFDF last year was, to a degree, my baby. It's the "thing" we do most up here, and I was damned if I wasn't going to prove to all comers that it can be and is bloody good fun. I've chilled out on that front recently it seems, having just returned from Sheffield with a burning desire for sticks and bells. We were all about making something of the Scottish Country.

I'd like to think we made a fairly good stab at it. We ran three different SCD workshops with a real musician and experienced leaders who knew which niche they were out to fill**:  SCD for Numpties, My Mum's Favourite Dances, and Extreme Scottish Country Dancing. We put them in the main central venue in a decent-sized (if ugly) room with a gym floor, and they were well attended.

Our dance was a hoot. The foot-stamping roof-raising please-thank-the-band at the end caused the Police to show up; our one noise complaint of the festival***. But we had things go our way. We were in Scotland. We were in a city with a healthy SCD scene and some genuine local excitement about little ol' Aberdeen pulling off a national festival. We booked a much-loved local musician who has a following of his own and did a good deal of free advertising for us. We asked someone with more experience than us of (1) the Scottish University SCD circuit, and (2) IVFDF to write the programme, and we asked people with much the same credentials to call the dances. It was in our main central venue. We scheduled it at the normal time for a stand alone SCD dance on a Saturday night, and charged slightly less than normal for a just-the-SCD ticket (mostly because we couldn't include the usual cake and a cuppa). In the end there were 96 people up for the last dance and the room, although not huge, was packed out.

When our grant money was taken in to account, the SCD dance was very, very good for us.

But we were in Scotland. 

SCD at more southerly IVFDFs

For various reasons, I've always at least dipped in to the SCD dance at IVFDF. I'm also as guilty as the next Scottish IVFDF attendee for shunning a potentially mediocre token SCD dance to get my annual Contra-fix. For someone whose diary is not quite as SCD saturated throughout the rest of the year, the SCD might seem more exotic.

I think there is a place for SCD - it's another style that folk south of the border might not get much of a shot at.

My own personal thoughts about what might make an IVFDF SCD more successful 

In handy bullet-point form.

• Being a mainstream event. Or the converse - Not feeling like a poor relation or a token sideline. Although it felt controversial at the time, the Durham Friday night slot gave the SCD a nice big room at a sensible time and length of time. A small venue or a short or random slot makes you feel a little like you're being squeezed in. 
• Accessibility. Now this one's more about venues and thus beyond the control of the organisers at times, so I'm really not out to criticise any particular festival. I've been there. When I can dip in and out of multiple events, for argument's sake, an English ceilidh, Contra and SCD, then I will, and I'll love it. If there's a bit of a walk between venues I'd feel like I was missing valuable dancing time, and probably stick with one. In that scenario, the SCD would probably lose out a little. This year, I switched at half time, and showed up for the end of the SCD. 
• Calling. SCDs at IVFDFs are called, but if you don't know that and see a printed programme, you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise. I'd venture so far as a to say that the words Beginner Friendly. All Dances Will Be Called printed in nice friendly type in the programme would help turnout. Someone who knows IVFDF and knows the RSCDS and knows Ceilidh calling and knows the Uni Circuit. There are plenty of those people out there. I'd happily do it, as would many others who'd be better than me. 
• Absolutely the same goes for SCD workshops at IVFDF. Has to be a good alternative to whatever else is happening concurrently. 
• Demonstrations. A half time spot - be it SCD like at Bristol 2011 or rapper or otherwise. Again, it makes the SCD event more of a "thing".
• Getting the locals in. Here I have little experience at latitudes south of Durham, and wouldn't like to comment on the ease of such a feat elsewhere. A known band would pull the locals in at a Scottish IVFDF, but elsewhere it might be more worthwhile pitching for a cheaper younger alternative and hoping the programme will pull 'em in.  

Is it good business sense?

For us, a resounding YES. But that's not the question being asked.
The SCD is one event that might pull in the local SCDers for one event only, and if successful would maybe worth it. With an RSCDS grant that covers most of your band, if you can manage most else fairly thinly, it may still be good business if you only attract 60. If it comes down to the money my opinion would be that a cheap IVFDF SCD with a less established band in a small venue is still a better bet than cutting the whole thing.

Would it be missed?

In Scotland, yes. Probably anywhere north of Sheffield, yes. On the South coast, it would still be missed, but maybe not by a huge majority, given the bigger numbers a more geographically-forgiving IVFDF can pull. Less missed, for sure.



That'll do for now, folks.


*One for another day, when there's absolutely nothing more interesting happening in the world.
**Even if one of them was my Mum.
***Something I'm really rather proud of.

How to make Haggis Lasagne

How to make a Haggis Lasagne: 

An Illustrated Guide. 

This blog post contains my first ever stab at a recipe of sorts, but you'll have to ready the story first!

I've had a good weekend. It was really busy, but did me some good, I think. I'd been feeling a bit crap for about a week, maybe two, but I now seem to be out the other end and feeling a bit stronger. 

Which is all a good thing because this weekend I... (now please keep up)

Left work and walked to the car hire place and picked up a shiny hire car. Drove home and picked up a friend and lots of things. Went to the University to teach a dance workshop but no-one showed up. Drove out of town, including a big loop back home again because we forgot the neeps* the first time round. I went to a Burns Supper, ate lots of Haggis, Neeps and Tatties, listened to a particularly bizarre Toast to the Lasses about how we can all pee in the sink if we really want to, and played in a ceilidh band.

This one. Here's us playing at a lovely little wedding in a cow shed.

I had a Saturday lie in, and then an exam for which I may well be awarded a certificate to teach Scottish Country Dancing. I filled a hire car with house plants and drove some more. I ate some tasty shepherds pie, unloaded some plants, built a wardrobe and drove some more. I went to church, went to the beach**, drove out in to the snow and nearly got the hire car stuck, went for a walk in the boggy snow and got lost, but rescued by some friendly locals***. We had a swift cuppa with a friend en route home, spun around really fast and went out to do a demonstration of some more dancing for an other Burns supper. Tesco, then home. 

There is a point to this. Robert Burns. This is the weekend when we celebrate the man, his poetry and love of whisky and women, and eat a lot of haggis. We were sent home with leftover haggis. 

Which has now become a Haggis Lasagne. It's really tasty, I've had sneaky seconds out of the oven dish, and I'm fairly good at stopping once I've had enough. It's good, so you should try it if you find yourself with a surfeit of haggis, and this is how. 

Meat Sauce

The haggis is replacing the minced beef, so fry off some onions, add some mushrooms chopped up quite little, add a good heap of haggis and whole carton of chopped tomatoes. Job's a good un. 

Bechamel Sauce

I once went to a restaurant where my friend asked if the Lasagne had Bechamel sauce in, because the menu wasn't committing to anything, the waitress said yes, so she ordered it, and then there was none. Just plain mean; it's the best bit!

I've always made fairly successful sauces by putting butter, flour and a little milk in a pan, on really low and then stirring like crazy for a long time, adding milk when it looks like it'll help. 

Stir like never before!

The internet may be a better place for quantities and proper instructions, I've always been one for some, and a decent dollop and that looks about right.

See, looks saucy.

And, even if it's not in the rules, now is the time to add cheese, Edam in this instance, but cheese always makes things better.

Construct your Lasagne

First off, some haggis sauce in the bottom of the dish. Just a wee bit to get going with.

Add a layer of pasta, filling in most of the gaps. No need for absolute neatness yet.

Add about half of the meat you have left. Splodge.

If you didn't know it was haggis...

Then pasta, half the bechamel, pasta, all the meat, pasta, all the bechamel, and extra cheese for luck.

Om nom

In the oven it goes, somewhere around 180, for about 40 minutes, or until you can wait no longer. 

Not about to win any photograpy competitions, but it was tasty.

Ta-Daa! Food. Serve with multi-coloured vegetables in a nice big bowl. Tasted surprisingly like slightly spicier normal beef lasagne. Mixing haggis with tomatoes makes the haggis less instantly identifiable and the end taste is meaty and spicy and pretty darn good. Enjoy!

We have enough left for another 4 decent portions, I reckon. 

Thanks for the free haggis!

*Neeps = Turnips = Swede, mashed with too much butter and actually quite tasty, unless you're my mother.

**Where we ate some tasty food at Chiquitos where they read the menu for you and will probably cut your food up and show you how to eat it if you give them half a chance. 

***Sorry, too busy being the annoying city-kid-using-phone-map-app-when-lost-in-countryside to  remember to take photos of the really pretty stuff around us. 

Why You Should Make February Resolutions

I didn't make any New Year's Resolutions, for many reasons.

I think trying to give up stuff just once a year is a bit silly, but then I'm a cynic. I think they just add an extra layer of stress and self-expectation. New Year is a holiday - it's for eating tasty things and having the time to watch a whole movie at once, and going for little walks just so you don't wind up too fat as a result of the eating and movies. It's for seeing people you like. I'm concentrating enough on not swearing too much in front of my mother to try and remember to do or not do a new thing I've just come up with. Besides, I live in Scotland, where we are expected to see in the new year with such frivolity and excess that we get nationally get two days off to recover.

In this instance another of my reasons was that I was in the middle of something that wouldn't have made it had I been putting new rules in to force.

So I'm having February Resolutions, but don't worry, I won't be taking them very seriously. I drew you a picture of them though.

Here it is.

6. Plan ahead. Scan stuff at work. Less of this take a photo of a picture nonsense. 

And I will explain them all in trusty bullet-pointy fashion. Skip the first one if you're tight on time.

• Number One: Stop getting talked in to doing stuff that I don't want to. A few years ago I took some tests and became partially qualified to teach Scottish Country Dancing for the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.

Really Quite Stuffy, Since 1923.

Now I quite like Scottish Country Dancing, and I grew up in the world of the RSCDS - I understand it's secret language and unwritten rules. To the uninitiated, it's the most intimidating seemingly judgemental beast of an organisation. I was lucky in that I was aware of the existence of the world outside, and indeed of the world of those who danced out-with the safety of the society, and thus I escaped with a handful of social skills in tact.

I left home, and discovered that students can form there own clubs, and play fast and loose with a traditional dance form. They succeed where mass organisation fails, and manage to inject some life in to  a folk art. For years now I've been teaching SCD to students, using only small snippets of the stuff that got me a certificate. 

In about September I was asked if I wanted to do the second stage of this certificate. I should have said no. I tried to resist but eventually said ok under the unrelenting pressure of a single quite scary individual with good intentions firmly at heart. This was my mistake and I won't repeat it. The whole process has taken more of my time, energy and spirit than I would ever have wanted to allow it. In such a way I feel a little like I've been taken for a ride. One of the problems is that we're out to pass a test, and the rules and structures that will get one a pass are absolutely no good in the real world. A World where out to teach people how to dance, and that it is a fun and worthwhile hobby. I wouldn't teach the way I'm having to pretend to, and I don't agree I should have to. However my efforts at standing up for this are tempered by my desire for an easy life, and so we never really get anywhere. 

In the fullness of healing time I may find that I care enough to put together some decent critical feedback on the whole qualification process and it's strengths and flaws. Chiefly, you've got good interests, yes there needs to be a standard ... but ... the process us unnecessarily complex, awkward, time-intensive and hopelessly outdated. It is not founded on any modern research of good sports or dance teaching method outside of the organisation, it is not accredited by a a bigger reputable outside body, and it is wholly inaccessible for those not familiar with the RSCDS. 

I'll be finished by about teatime on Saturday 26th January. Hence the need for these resolutions to be a February thing. Rant over... Number one - be less of a pushover.

• Number Two: Dance Any Old Way I Like. One of favourite tame ceilidh bands like to occasionally just play a set of tunes, and the floor's still there, go do your funky thing. Now once upon a time, I would have disapproved of such a waste of good dance time, no doubt through a fear of not-knowing-what-everyone-ought-to-do-next. Now, I join in, and dance like the awkward uncoordinated thing that I am, with a big cheesy grin. On Hogmanay I even did this with my parents in the room. This is a big achievement. 

Not me here, but by way of something to aim for...

• Number Three: Go Swimming. This I have started. I am averaging one swim a week in the pool I have free access to (perks of the job!) so far, although this is mostly due to a spurt of enthusiasm last week having bought a pair of goggles. I need to keep it up - I like having arm muscles. 

• Number Four: Give the Tent a Workout. I bought half a tent back in October, and feel like I ought to have blogged about it only to find that I haven't. Terribly remiss of me. Here it is in action.

Isn't it pretty.

Having spent a reasonable but fairly large sum of money on it, I now need to gain value for that money. I also (and this'll be the tricky bit for me) want to manage some of this planned camping without resorting to hire cars. Here's hoping.

• Number Five: Do More Chillin'. This new job, although desk-based and sedentary, is still knackering me. Then I fill my weekends with FUN as though I need to fit in as much of the things I'd choose to do if I could to get me through another five days of needing to earn a living. I'd like a bit more balance. Frankly I just need more energy and stamina, but failing that, remembering that it's sometimes ok to have a quiet day will do me well. 

Off-topic. 

Finally a note to those who pay attention. I promised a post about my Christmas Jumper. It performed well, as you can sort of see here. I will tell you how I made it at some point. Honest, guv.

Tiny Little Pompom. 

No footnotes for you. Toodles