Thursday -- Castle and Car Trouble

So my parents had mentioned that Dalkeith is supposedly haunted, and that the students often will hear footsteps above them, even though the attic area is locked and sealed up. This type of thing normally wouldn't bother me, but given the alcohol we drank, it weakened my defense mechanisms enough to be completely freaked out about ghosts all night, enough to the point that I had a dream (maybe) about feeling a hand on my back, and waking up to find Nate rolled with his back to me. Spooky, or just drunk paranoia. That coupled with the uncomfortable mattress meant a rough night's sleep.

After wrestling with the awkward dorm style showers, we had breakfast and then headed out for a day of touring. First stop was Jedburgh Abbey, one of four Abbeys located near the Scottish/English Border that were sacked and left in ruins after the border wars. Kind of strange to think that Christians would pillage other Christians with no sense of remorse, because “We're the RIGHT Christians.” The ruins hint at the amazing structure it must have been. It was started in Roman times and still had some Roman characters on a corner stone. I guess parts of the church were built in that Romanesque style, but it takes so long to build a structure like that, the times they were a changing, and so the rest of the church was built in the Gothic style. A little museum talked about how they were able to build these kinds of grand structures in medieval times. Nate and I wandered in the cemetery, with tombstones so old you could no longer read anything on them. The oldest ones you could actually make out were late 1700s.

We wrapped up our tour there and hopped in the car for a short trek across the border into England, and made our way to Alnwick, to see a castle that has been a consistent family home for 700 years, and is in such good shape, it's often used in movies (most recently in the Harry Potter movies.) But as we pulled into the small town of Alnwick, suddenly that burning smell in the car got really bad, and dad started having troubles with the clutch. Then right in the middle of a busy two lane road, the car would no longer shift, and we were stuck, blocking traffic. There was literally no where to go... and as we're trying to figure out where to push the car to, people are driving by calling us idiots and making gestures. Just a thought... if a car is stopped in the middle of the road where it shouldn't be... maybe it's because it CAN'T move. Eventually, some (illegal) parking opened up where we could push the car (and some friendly locals helped us out.) Mom called the car rental place and they called a tow. The locals told us there's a traffic warden who makes the rounds, but just “explain it all to him so he won't give you a ticket.” I asked if there was a car rental place in town and the lady laughed and said “we're small but we do have that.” So dad stayed with the car while mom took us to a place called the Treehouse for lunch. Someone didn't show for their reservation, so we were able to sneak into a prime spot right near the fireplace. The tall chairs carved out of very tall hunks of wood gave the restaurant the feeling of eating in a wooded area.

We walked back towards the castle and dad met us there, saying they had to go out to the airport to get us a new car. So it kind of worked out okay, since mom and dad had already seen Alnwick castle, so Nate and I went inside to explore while they took care of the car situation. As Nate and I walked up to the castle, we noticed a man and woman teaching archery, and thought that seemed like fun. So we paid two pounds each to get a mini lesson and then give it a shot to see if we could be master archers. Then we went inside the State Rooms, the rooms open and available to the public, since it is still a family home. It was very interesting to see all the old family portraits, and then some picture of the current family sitting in a simple frame on a book shelf. You could tell this wasn't like a palace where the idea is to preserve everything as it once was... this is a home, and like any home, you remodel and change things out. Tired of the red silk wall coverings in the dinging room? Well then let's put up some green silk covering. They were also doing a 200,000 pound restoration project in one of the rooms and we actually got to see them working on the cleaning and repair work. We wandered around outside checking out the towers and the wall walk. Pretty soon it was after 4pm and time to meet up with mom and dad at the entrance, where they pulled up with a bit bigger car with a working clutch!!

We rushed back to Dalkeith and then went to the Stables Bistro for dinner, so named because it was the old Dalkeith Palace horse stables. That's new since I was here visiting mom and dad six years ago (the last time my parents were here, and dad was teaching the program then, this time he's directing it.) Mom ordered wood pigeon with blood pudding (also known as bread pudding.. developed during times of poverty, when all people had to eat were oats, and they would pour animals blood on it for added flavor and nutrition... Nate and I realized that the black sausage looking thing we had eaten at Hotel Russell was actually blood pudding, and we both were a little uneasy about that.) But mom's blood pudding came out with cranberry sauce all over it, so that really added to the gross factor for me, but as we said, if you didn't know how blood pudding was made, you would actually think it tasted just fine.

So after dinner we headed into Newton Grange to go to Dean's Tavern, where a music club called Nittenfolk meets every Thursday. Dad enjoys this very much, but he's tired of bringing visitors who don't sing, so he insisted I bring a couple of songs. It was a really fun evening, with people singing American and Scottish folks songs and even some rock songs and then traditional Scottish songs as well. Dad sang a Bob Dylan song called “Boots of Spanish Leather” and then I attempted to sing my old audition song from Oklahoma, Ado Annie's “I can't say no” but about half way through I lost the melody and went up to a higher key, so I really struggled my way through it. But of course they're a polite and kind group so they applauded my efforts. Several people sang Carol King songs but then one woman sang an original folk song that was beautiful. Many of the women's songs dealt with women frustrated with men or disenchanted with love, so there were many jokes about that all night. Another woman sang a traditional English folk song about April which was very pretty. There was another song about singing blues on a red guitar, and she actually borrowed another man's red guitar to play it, which was a big hit with the group. The man whose red guitar she borrowed also sang a fun sing-a-long kind of song about life in the city and running a laundromat, which had it's dark humor, customary in many of the Scottish folk songs we had been hearing. Then dad sang again and sang a song he had written called “The First Time” and it was really a lovely song, many people complimented him on it when he finished. And then I sang Mercedes Benz, Janis Joplin, and that redeemed my earlier performance... lots of people sang along and it was a good time. The evening ended with a “toe tapper” from one of the fiddler players and everyone joined in with their guitars and drums and it was a fun way to end the evening.