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Published: September 22nd 2006
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30th December 2005
Edinburgh, Scotland.
It was well into the afternoon before I awoke, and when I did it was to a world without snow. There was no sign of it and nobody I asked had seen any. Nor would it snow again within the duration of my time here, though I had assumed that the city would be covered in it by now. Strange, the twists of fate (or delayed airplanes), and the blessings sometimes hidden within misfortune.
I reunited with some old 'travel buddies', made a few new ones, organised to rendezvous later and go to the Night Afore Party together, and then wandered off alone with a list of tattoo parlors and a mission: find somewhere clean, safe and talented to brand me with a tattoo on New Year's Day.
Now, contrary to what you might be thinking, this was not a hasty decision. I had decided to do it well before I boarded that long-ago plane out of Australia. My reasons are twofold - and to some, ridiculous:
I have always viewed tattoos as somewhat tacky. This opinion has not entirely changed despite the choices that I have since made. But three months
before I began my travels, the natural disaster in the Indian Ocean region, which we all know as the Asian Tsunami, occurred. That I was scheduled to travel through Thailand, one of the heavily affected countries, turned it from an objectively awful trajedy into something more personal. Watching the proceedings with horror and pity, I was especially disturbed by the necessary but abhorrent use of mass graves for the unrecognisable.
The idea of having some mark, some identifying feature, began to formulate into a need once I crossed the ocean and left behind everything and everybody. It is not that I especially expect to be involved in a disaster or epidemic or anything - other than the natural disaster that is me, haha - but to die in a foreign country by any means and without family nearby would likely raise identity confirmation questions. Strange as it may be, the imprinting of a tattoo became a reassurance to me.
The less morbid and more exciting of the two reasons to get a tattoo is that I would have an eternal souvenir that I could point to and say, "This was New Year's Day of 2006 in Edinburgh, Scotland,
one of the best cities in the world. This is my reminder of joy, of adventure, of youth and of freedom. This was my year in Europe".
Of course, I hadn't spent half as much time considering just what image it was that I wanted branded onto me. Or which body part. So I bought a packet of temporary tatt's last week and after much experimentation have settled for a butterfly on the inside of my left ankle. Which is discreet, and fitting the occasion, as butterflies are symbolic of the soul, of transformation and of freedom.
Unfortunately, the tattoo parlor that I chose shot down all of my designs (read
'googled drawings') as being too elaborate for the size that I wanted. And what's more, nobody's open on New Year's Day as they're all planning on being dead drunk and unable to wield a pen (it comforts me to think of it as just a pen. Shh). But hey, New Year's Eve is just as special, right? So I've tonight and tomorrow morning to
google a few simpler ideas, and by this time tomorrow night I'll be a branded woman.
But never mind all of that.
I returned to the hostel, changed, and was soon off with Dana and 'the pack' to sample the promised fesitivities of the Night Afore party.
Held in George St and boasting entertainments ranging from live bands to Catalonian gymnasts to bizarre hairdressing performances, the party was off to a rollicking start and soon packed near to bursting with revellers. I quickly lost contact with my little group but was content to wander alone, drinking in the sights and the atmosphere and the warm beer. Stilt-walkers and giant papier-mache dragons and other such performers made their way through the jostling crowd, and near the middle of the long street was an area of tightly-packed lines of people dancing in what they were hoping would be the the world's longest Stip-The-Willow. Supposedly there was an official from the Guinness Records company somewhere, to validate it as such, but whether that was true or what the verdit was, I do not know.
On either end of George Street was a large projection screen displaying some live spectacle or other within the area (between, of course, advertising for the event sponsors). At intervals along the centre of the street were merchandise trailors
and stages of varying sizes. One such stage held a pair of male hairdressing queens, dressed to the nines and each pulling volunteers out of the enthralled throng to create some new and fantastical creation out of his or her - usually his - hair and face. And all to the accompaniment of crashing, terribly dramatic music.
Some of the smaller stages had various world music or Spanish dancing or so forth, but the highlight of the evening had to be when a band I believe was called the 'Scots Wha Hae!' and an apparently famous piper, Mark Saul, took to the main stage at the end of the street. They were very gregarious, and somehow managed to create wonderfully thrilling rock music with their more classically-inclined instruments (if I remember correctly, there was even a cello!) M. Saul, an Aussie (as was just about the entire audience!), was an absolute maestro with his bagpipes - and occasional other instruments - and most of the crowd was soon enthusiastically jerking and bouncing about to the beat. I danced my way toward the front, where the most ardent audience members were (as ever), to be better blasted by the loudspeakers
and manhandled and swung about in a spasmodic continuation of the Strip-the-Willow dancing near the other end of the street. It was an absolutely wonderful party, and most of us were fairly aggrieved when the band eventually packed it in, deaf to the roared demands of "mooore!" and "encore!"
I wandered for a while longer amongst the entertainments and in and out of the nightclubs along George St or nearby areas. But nothing seemed as rousing as the band had been, and I still hadn't found an appropriate tattoo for the next day's torture, so returned to the hostel - my lovely hippie hostel - around midnight.
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