Squirrel's Big Weekend

A weekend in the life of me and my little, ginger, squirrelly friend.

And what a weekend it was. Squiggle the squirrel stayed home chillaxin' all day yesterday and tells me he has the same planned for today. Lazy sciurus.

I myself have had a lovely time carrying around a very small stuffed toy and taking photos of it. This is going to be a mainly pictorial recounting of events, because everyone likes looking at other people's pictures, right? Human nature is to be inherently more interested in others' business than our own. Our weekend went some thing like this.

Friday T=1700

Leave the workplace. Me, that is. Squiggle was hanging back at home with our other small squishy ginger children. Cycle my way home where our lovely Finnish friends were to be found napping on the sofa, as is the Finnish way. I made pizza for us as the rest of the troops assembled in our somewhat chaotic flat.

T=1830

Aforementioned assembled troops divide in to two nearly identical cars and drive. Destination Deeside.

T=2000 - free dancing!

Ballater has two halls next door to each other - The Victoria Hall and the Albert Hall. So she could have a big party with all of her friends, and he could have a substantially smaller party next door with a few of his.

Here we have me dancing with the Edinburgh Uni OTC, who turned out to be a good laugh, if rather pished.

The other things I know about Ballater are:

• That there used to be a railway line that finished there because Queen Vic wanted to get to Balmoral in steam-powered comfort, but didn't want the plebs to be able to get within a few miles of the place. If it wasn't for silly Mr Beeching, we might still be able to get there on the train.
• It has a campsite.
• It has a coffee shop/outdoorsy shop that serves very large bowls of soup, a very good chipper, and a fairly questionable chinese. This I know from personal experience. 
• Oh, and very handy public loos where they have taped up the fancy 20p-unlocks-the-door mechanism in favour of an honesty box. 

Squirrel was there too.

T=0000 

Home time, more driving. So, so enjoying having a licence and wheels to be able to take people to stuff like this. 

Saturday, in which squirrel gets some culture and finds his nuts.

L and Squirrel sleep all morning (having got up to make the breakfast and gone back to bed, I do admit). I actually quite enjoy making the kitchen shiny again. I am getting so old!

What follows is a first for the little guy. We got to go to the theatre!

This isn't his ticket. It's mine. He didn't have one but we hope nobody noticed. Ours were comps anyway.

The Ballet was Rapunzel, a tale of broken families and disastrous pregnancy cravings. I think the moral of the story was that if you're going to steal magical made-up vegetables from an evil Witch's garden, best not get caught in the act, or else you'll end up selling your unborn child. But maybe I wasn't paying attention properly*. The Queen got to wear frilly red knickers, the Price rode around the forest on a mini-scooter, and the evil Witch had rollerskates and a special skirt to wear them with.

Sqiggle pictured here warming his butt before the show, whereupon we turned off the camera, because my inner Usher would not have had it any other way.

During the interval L and I get ice cream. S gets a chilly butt.

We cycled home, had some noms, some more boring stuff, and went to Tesco. Which is less boring when you are a tiny cute squirrel, or have one with you.

Squiggle takes charge of the scanner.

And finds his nuts.

That's enough of Saturday.

Sunday, in which Squirrel skips church but gets ice cream.

L and I do some running around to fetch a hire car, and go to church, where we learn about football and betrayal.

T=1400

We drive to a locked building with a car park and conveniently central location, and meet 8 more people. All ten of us split between two quite small cars and set off in convoy in a southwards direction. On route we talk about politics and Scottish History, subjects on which I have no wisdom or authority whatsoever. But I tried anyway. I enthuse to my passengers about an ice cream sundae called a Scoopy Snack which features no less than three chocolate cookies.

Upon arrival in St Andrews, we lead our little gang to the famous Janetta's Ice Cream shop and squeeze in to the cafe. A terrible thing has happened, and there is no longer a menu of ice cream sundaes. I ask for my Scoopy Snack nonetheless, and it is arranged. Independently from me, on another table at the far side of the shop, my passengers were trying to recount my description of my favourite ice cream to the waiter. All in all we manage to order 4 different variants of an ice cream sundae that isn't actually on the menu any longer.

The rest of the ice cream is coming, honest. I was a bit quick off the mark in getting the camera out, but after that I was distracted somehow, so this is what we've got.

All ice cream/cookie creations should be bigger than squirrels.

Suitable fuelled**, we made our way to the main event, the St Andrews Castle Ceilidh. For the uninitiated, it's a Ceilidh, in a Castle.

T=1730

A couple of hours of enthusiastic ceilidhing, outside, on sloping grass, in hiking boots. Everyone gets to feel like a superhero at this gig. Castle Ceilidh is something that makes me very happy and also very sad. I've been to this thing since I came to University, which I think makes this my sixth. It's always pretty epic, but every year it gets chipped away at. I'm going to go every year I can, because one day soon it will get so squeezed it will be unviable. Historic Scotland keep upping the hire, and upping the conditions. We cannot lay a finger on any of the stonework lest it blows away. We cannot sell torches at the gate of the castle, or even in the street outside it. Every year 'Elf and Safety takes away a little bit too. This year instead of a torchlight procession along the coast and out along the pier, up on to the skinny scary bit and back again, we walked down to the harbour sans-flame, the lucky first 20 people (about half) got fire, and were allowed to walk a few hundred yards along the pier. Those attempting the high bit got stewarded off. It is still epic, and I guess for those we brought along, it was epic still for not having a better past version for comparison. I went away resenting things like Public Liability Insurance, and really feeling for the guys who manage to still put on this amazing night each year, in spite of it all. Thanks, guys!

I also went away pondering where else you could ceilidh outside in something dramatic-looking, then run around with fire and heights. If you have a ruined Scottish Castle, please get in touch. Anyone? No, no-one?

Anyway, it was still good. There was some fire.

And good weather, and a gorgeous skyline.

And a man with a cello that made for a more interesting skyline.

And in the end, the Aberdeen contingent gathered around it's single flame, sharing heat and light in the face of over-enthusiastic legislation.

Next week I shall endeavour to write some more. It will have been Easter between now and then. I know this because L might buy me a chocolate chicken and Raindeerpants has been writing about eggs and maxi-carrots. Who knows what I will come up with.

I leave you with one last picture of this cute little guy, now that he is back in our lives.

Eek!

*I should never be a theatre critic. 
**Ok, there were chips as well, but followed by calorie-burning.