Drookit foto essay

Sometimes, I do things I never wanted to do. Sometimes they work out well, sometimes they don't. Or it can all be put down to experience, but not to be repeated.

My desire to say yes to anything coming my way overrode my common sense. G called saying she had a spare ticket to the Edinburgh Tattoo. I did pause for some thought, but decided to hope that the persistent rain yesterday would slacken off enough to make it worth while sitting on the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle.

Wrong! Bloody, bloody wrong.

Some positives: the queuing system is efficient, if shouty. But what do you expect from a military organisation. No umbrellas allowed in the que, fair enough, with something like 8000 ticket holders to shuffle up Castle Terrace, round into Castle Hill and funnelled into the esplanade. I salute their spokes in the aye avoidance protocol.

£16 million has been spent on new stands for the Tattoo. I've noticed them being built for the past several months, without taking any interest. After all, I wasn't going to go to the Tattoo, was I?

After I agreed to go, but before I set off, I checked on the Tattoo website. I wanted to know about the facilities. I've been to the odd rock concert and know all too well that large crowds and few loos are not much fun. Mention was made of the new plumbed in toilets. I was reassured. They turned out to be adequate.

According to the Culture Minister, the tattoo does well for the area:
"The net income from the tattoo last year was £7.96 million; it generated £34.37 million for the Scottish economy and supports over 780 jobs."

 

So I suppose it is worth it.

I took my camera, but the photos are not much better than useless and although I've fiddled about with them, they are not good. I put them up just to remind myself that I'd need a better camera if I wanted to photograph in the dark in a monsoon.

Stuff was projected onto the castle behind the display. It's too wet and hazy to make it out in the pic.

Squads of Scots and Irish traditional dancers bravely splashed about in the wet. They were smiling. I'd have gone home. I can't understand why their mother's let them do it. But maybe they were not as young as they looked.

This is the massed bands doing that marching thing where they march up to the end of the esplanade, then turn and march back through the ranks of the oncoming bands. It's usually impressive, but not when it's nearly impossible to see through the mirk.

I liked this. Mythical monster on the castle.

There were good things to see. The Dutch bicycling band, the Ledderhosen clad Germans chopping a tree trunk. The lone piper at the end was downright hair-raising - in a good way.

But I suppose the title gives it away. The Edinburgh Military Tattoo. I scoff not (for a change) because for many people, the military means something to them. At the end during a hymn to the fallen, the woman sitting in front of me was sobbing. For all my urban, sophisticated (cynical?) views on the armed forces, she has a different experience and I respect that.  But I was still stunned, to hear people actually singing the national anthem. In my immediate circle, it would be seen as so naff. I'm not fully republican, as I don't mind her maj, but I see no need to stand or sing to her.

I didn't buy a programme. it wouldn't survive the rain for a start. But the sequence of rain was as follows:

• Arrive into the stands - rain decreasing leading to false hope that it might go off
• Get seated, arrange plastic bag over my legs (huh!) - rain begins to increase
• Programme starts - average rate of downpour
• Programme continues - torrential rain
• Later, as people begin to wriggle about, a flash flood down onto my chair wets me from the waist down
• Later still, my waterproof coat gives up and leaks
• Eventually, the rain was so heavy it was bouncing off my jacket and into my eyes
• It receded to a mere persistent chucking it down as we exited and shuffled down the Mound.

I walked home, stood in a puddle of my own making outside my front door trying to think how not to soak my new hall carpet. I found that my legs were dyed black from my jeans and parts of me which had never been wet before were soaked.  At 2 am I made myself get out of a warm bath sprinkled with soothing aromatherapy oils trying to prevent aches, pains, coughs and colds today. Not sure this was entirely successful.

Morale of this story? Don't go out.

But I still like massed pipes and drums, can't deculturise this girl.