Gory Scottish send off

Our send off from the frozen northern wastelands near Lout with an h was a very impressive but macabre display of some kind, which I was not able fully to understand but have been trying to come to terms with.  I have been in Africa, and have also seen heathen and wild jungle ceremonies take place on TV which are as incomprehensible as they are fascinating.  They can be horrible, but much in the way one slows down to look at the site of a recent traffic accident, they are often compelling and appalling in equal measure. Such was the one man “ceremony” yesterday, a picture of which I show below. 

No apologies for this photo. It is as it was. The man with the silly hat appears to be abusing either a sheep or a chicken

I have no idea what the animal is that is suffering such pain, and have no idea how that obvious pain is obviously being suffered, as evidenced by the excruciating sounds that were being emitted,  unless the chap wearing the silly hat is firing blow darts into the carcass of whatever poor beast is the object of his attention. 

The noise was almost indescribable, a wailing cacophony of mind bending proportions. I can only think of one previous occasion when I have been subjected to an intensity of sound that was so disturbing and brain addling, and that was in 1969 at Hyde Park when Grand Funk Railroad were playing, but at least they did not seem to be visiting pain onto some poor animal, unless I was that animal. 

I believe it is some kind of Scottish ritual which is played out time and time again in those savage wilds further north than the north of England, and believe it involves a part of a sheep, so Steve Weston, my sheep fancying golfing pal will immediately become interested at this point.  However, even he seems to revere sheep (in his own peculiar and over familiar way) so even he might be unsettled by what this poor sheep appears to be undergoing.  If it is indeed a sheep, then it has clearly been starved for most of its life, as you can see from the picture, its legs, which I presume are those spindly things sticking up in the air, are skeletally thin, but perhaps that is normal up north. 

It seems that even the good people of Lincolnshire are ashamed of the antics of the wild Pict nation to its north, and whilst not confronting them (that can be a very dangerous action which finished with something known as a Glasgow kiss) they do seem to have some modicum of decency when it comes to laying the poor sheep to rest after being ravaged by a mad Scotsman, as my second picture today shows. 

This gravestone is touching in that it seems that someone's favourite sheep has been laid to rest with its owner. Either this is an acknowledgement of the wickedness visited upon the sheep as shown by the earlier picture, or there is more than one Steve Weston in the world

And so, with spirits rising with the increasing certainty that we were escaping the tundra and midges as we trekked south, to sunny Stanstead (I know that concept is a difficult one to hold, but stay with me here) and then that joyous moment when we took off from squalor and cold to land in the Nice, home of the euro – yes, this is where the plug comes – and arrived back in sunny Valbonne in late afternoon. 

Now you might think that after 3 days of pre wedding and post wedding celebrations, that I might be allowed a quiet evening to get over the gory celebrations of earlier, but no, we are whisked off to neighbours for yet more drinks and a take away pizza, but, after the food of the last 3 days, I guess one needs something a little rough to make the transition from the equivalent of tripe to nectar.

Chris France      

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