So. Our holiday. First of all, let me say that western Scotland is absolutely mind-bogglingly gorgeous. GORGEOUS. I lost track of how many times I said “Wow!” and “Oh my GOD!”. They’ve sure got them some scenery, the Scots.
As for the holiday itself…well, let’s just say that things Did Not Quite Go As Planned. Our first night in Troon was great – we’d booked a room in a flatshare for fifty quid, and it as it turned out we were the only guests, so we had a whole two-bedroom flat to ourselves. For fifty quid! We had a lovely seafood dinner at a restaurant overlooking the harbour, and very much enjoyed the floor show consisting of a) the couple at the table next to us having a hushed but very vitriolic domestic dispute, which got progressively more heated with each round of drinks; and b) the grey-haired businessman who arrived with a girl half his age wearing a micro-micro-miniskirt, ultra-high spike heels and about eight pounds of makeup spackled onto her face. High-rent prossie? Trophy wife? Speculation about possible scenarios continued throughout the evening.
When we got our bill, Simon actually asked the waitress what bar she’d recommend in “doontoon Troon”. OH HILARIOUS. Because you know what Scottish people LOVE? Having their accents made fun of by English people. I amended his question to “Where do you think he’s least likely to get beat up?” She recommended one bar on the high street, but when we got there it was populated with women with fake nails and men with Product in their hair. “Ugh, this place is full of estate agents,” I said. So we went to an Old Man Pub instead. I like Old Man Pubs. They are reassuringly dingy. (Bonus points if they have shitty Christmas decorations up all year.) Somone will always strike up a conversation with you in an Old Man Pub. (If you’re unlucky it will start with “What the fuck d’you think you’re looking at?” but I like to play the odds.) And soon enough someone did – a nice fellow who gave us tips about places to visit on Arran. And no punching involved! Bonus.
The next day we took the ferry to Arran, drove around the island for a bit going “Fucking WOW” a lot, found our campsite, and erected our brand-new tent (not a euphemism) after a mere hour or so of arguing about what pole went in which hole (NOT A EUPHEMISM) and the best way to secure guy ropes in the very muddy ground (ew – REALLY not a euphemism). It was a bit of a shambolic process, but in the end the tent looked fairly tentlike and appeared to be the right way up.
BUT. We had not anticipated the onslaught of Hurricane MacFergus. After a very peaceful day sitting around doing nothing and making uncontrollable squealing noises whenever a baby deer wandered through the campsite (mostly me, that last one), we zipped ourselves into the tent for the night. The wind was picking up pretty violently, and Simon was starting to get worried. “Come on,” I said. “What’s the worse that can happen? I don’t think the whole tent will blow away.”
And then the whole tent blew away. Yes. Yes it did. Well, the outer casing sort of turned inside out, caught the wind like a sail, and flung itself despondently over some gorse bushes about ten feet away. The inner bit then collapsed on top of us, and we had to scrabble round inside to find the doorway before popping our heads out of the wreckage like a very sad and pathetic pair of meerkats. The next half hour was spent in pitch darkness, being buffeted by gale-force winds and buckets of rain, wrestling with a billowing inside-out tent and trying to gather scattered tins of food. We stuffed all our belongings inside the car, eventually managed to prise the tent off the gorse bushes and flatten it, stuck a big fuck off rock on top to secure it, and slept in the car. To give you an idea of the force of the winds, the car itself was actually rocking back and forth in the stronger gusts. Everything you’ve heard about Scottish weather? IS TRUE.
Ah, the great outdoors, eh?
The next morning we ditched what was left of the tent in a skip and fled the campsite in shame at the crack of dawn – noticing as we left that everyone else’s tent seemed to be smugly undamaged. FUCKERS.
So, we booked into a B&B. I’ve never been more grateful for the mere fact of walls and a roof. We spent a nice couple of days looking round Arran and boggling at the gorgeousness – but I think the highlight of our experience was our dinner at the Trafalgar Restaurant in Whiting Bay, where we were served by a delightful madman with – get this – a very strong Scottish AND GERMAN accent. My brain nearly exploded at the combination. He was beyond awesome. “Here’s your urine sample,” he said as he plonked down our jug of water. When a customer at the next table asked him to recommend a bottle of white wine “…that you would drink yourself”, he said, “I don’t drink white wine. I’ll just bring you something expensive.” There was a rubber chicken hanging off the specials board, which he said was “for the vegetarians”. Awesome, awesome, awesome. We nicknamed him Basil Von MacFawlty. (You can see a picture of him here. It is seriously worth making the trip to the Isle of Arran just to be served by this guy.)
The next day we headed back to the mainland and to Oban, which is (according to signage in the town itself) “the seafood capital of Scotland”. It’s a bit hard-bitten-looking around the edges, like a stale oatmeal biscuit*, but the centre, round the harbour, is very picturesque and has lots of boats. I like looking at boats, though I can’t tell a spinnaker from a hole in the head. I’d booked a suspiciously cheap B&B, which had looked nice enough on the website and claimed to be “within walking distance” of the town centre. Which it was, but only if you were prepared to walk three quarters of a mile at a 90-degree incline. Bit hilly, Oban. Also, the B&B was REALLY not as nice as it had looked on the website and was in fact a bit creepy and smelly. We were shown to our room by a very spotty, effeminate French lad with a strange high voice and a way of continuously smiling at you that made you want to kick him and then run away. Weird. BUT CHEAP.
*The town of Oban bears no resemblance whatever to a biscuit, stale or otherwise. I apologise for the poor simile. I don’t know what came over me.
Our seafood dinner, including fresh oysters, which we had so looked forward to, was delicious, but the service was pretty poor. The place was heaving, and having spent LONG YEARS carrying a tray and smiling at assholes myself I was pretty forgiving of the inattentiveness of the servers, but Simon got annoyed and it sort of ruined his night. Ho hum. Thank goodness for gin, which stormed in with its pants on the outside and saved the evening. Gin – is there anything it can’t do?
The next day we bought another tent – a better quality one, having taken some advice from the shop staff (after they’d stopped laughing at us). The fact that we’d planned a camping holiday in order to save money was seeming more and more ironic at that point. BUT we soldiered on to the next campsite, where we were booked in for three days. We set up the tent in the rain, then sat around in the rain for a while, then arsed off to the pub for a bit to get out of the rain (there is no location in the entire British Isles where you are more than a mile from a pub. I find this infinitely comforting, especially since it is always SO RAINY), and then came back to the tent and sat in it and listened to the rain. It rained all night, and all the next morning, but at least the tent was STILL THERE, hurrah! However, the forecast for the following days was…you guessed it! Rain. And more rain. The hiking routes I’d planned did not seem inviting in the circumstances. So, in the end, after buying a new tent and bravely getting back in the camping saddle as it were, we went home two days early.
BUT OH WELL. Live and learn. I’ve got some annual leave accumulated that I have to take, so I’ve booked off all this week to loaf around and do absolutely nothing at all, which is all I’ve really been wanting to do anyway. Up With Nothing!
Here are a couple more collage sheets. The Halloween and autumn themed ones seem to be a hit on Etsy these days. I love autumn and Halloween anyway, so I’m having SO MUCH FUN designing these little collages.
Bats and Black Cats
Grunge Pumpkins
Autumn Leaves on Grunge Backgrounds
