Things to do in Aberdeen
Discussion
Hey guys.
Will there be anything happening in Aberdeen on the last week of May?? I have a course booked for that week and will be at a loss for things to do. Any meets I can tag along to? And not ones at the beech bouley with the corsa crew thanks lol.
Will there be anything happening in Aberdeen on the last week of May?? I have a course booked for that week and will be at a loss for things to do. Any meets I can tag along to? And not ones at the beech bouley with the corsa crew thanks lol.
Edited by Stang on Saturday 14th April 03:02
I always liked Christopher Brookmyre's diatribe about Aberdeen in
A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away...
Europe's Oil Capital. Honestly. The first time he heard the expression, he'd assumed it was a bit of self-deprecatory humour. That was before he learned that there was no such thing as self-deprecatory humour in Aberdeen, particularly when it came to the town's utterly unfounded conceit of itself. It was a provincial fishing port that had struck it astronomically lucky with the discovery of North Sea oil, and the result was comparable to a country bumpkin who had won the lottery, minus the dopey grin and colossal sense of incredulous gratitude. The prevalent local delusion wasn't that the town had merely been in the right place at the right time, but that it had somehow done something to deserve this massive good fortune, and not before time, either. Nor did the billions ploughed into the area's economy stop them whining about every penny of Scottish public money that got spent anywhere south of the Stracathro motorway service station.
He didn't imagine the locals had first asked anyone else in the European oil industry whether they concurred before conferring this status upon their home town, but working in marketing he at least understood the necessity of such misleading promotion in face of the less glamorous truth. 'Scotland's Fourth City' wasn't exactly a winning slogan, especially considering that there was a dizzyingly steep drop-off after the first two, and it still put them behind the ungodly shit-hole that was Dundee.
The also self-conferred nickname 'Silver City' was another over-reaching feat of turd-polishing euphemism. It was grey. Everything was grey. There was just no getting away from it. The buildings were all - all - made of granite and the sky was covered in a thick layer of permacloud. It. Was. Grey. If Aberdeen was silver, then shite wasn't brown, it was coppertone. It was grey, as in dull, as in dreary, as in chromatically challenged. It was grey, grey, grey. And the only thing greyer than the city itself was the
ing natives. A couple of quotes to illustrate.
'An Aberdonian would pick a shilling from a dunghill with his teeth.' Paul Theroux.
'There's nae folk sae fine as them that bide by Don and Dee.' Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
Apposite as the former might be, it was actually the latter that offered a deeper insight, though not quite in the way the author intended. To understand, you first had to take a wild stab at what part of the globe you thought Grassic Gibbon might hail from. Then having miraculously plucked that one out of the ether, you might begin to develop a picture of a people who either didn't get around much, or wilfully failed to absorb anything if and when they did. How else could they remain ignorant of the existence of even the most basic foreign customs, such as smiling?
Living in Aberdeen had taught him the difference between the parochial and the truly insular. The parochial was defined by a naïve, even innocent ignorance of the world beyond its borders. The truly insular knew fine there was a world outside, they just didnaein' like it, and had nae in' need for it!
Living in Aberdeen had also taught him that as you only got one shot at life, it was way too precious to waste living in Aberdeen. The inescapable nature of this truth had only fully dawned on him when he realised that his life here had become just that: inescapable. It was the kind of place you only went to in the first instance because you assumed you wouldn't be there for long; you'd bide your time, serve your sentence and get back to civilisation at the first opportunity. But what you hadn't foreseen was that that opportunity might never come, and in the meantime circumstances could wrap themselves around you like the coils of a snake.
So if you only got one shot, what were you meant to do when you found yourself doomed to spend it here? Surrender and join the SSCs? Aye, right. Find some form of compensatory vice, likeing your way around the neighbourhood's housequines on your flexi-time midweek days off? He'd tried. It grew tired very quickly, mainly due to the brain-deadening quality of their post-coital conversation. Five minutes after they came, some Pavlovian trigger mechanism invariably caused them to start wittering on about their progeny. That was if they weren't already kicking you out of bed because they had to go and collect the little bastards from nursery or wherever. You could kid yourself on that it was making you feel good, but to be honest you might as well take up golf. It was just your choice of recreation in the prison's exercise yard.
A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away...
Europe's Oil Capital. Honestly. The first time he heard the expression, he'd assumed it was a bit of self-deprecatory humour. That was before he learned that there was no such thing as self-deprecatory humour in Aberdeen, particularly when it came to the town's utterly unfounded conceit of itself. It was a provincial fishing port that had struck it astronomically lucky with the discovery of North Sea oil, and the result was comparable to a country bumpkin who had won the lottery, minus the dopey grin and colossal sense of incredulous gratitude. The prevalent local delusion wasn't that the town had merely been in the right place at the right time, but that it had somehow done something to deserve this massive good fortune, and not before time, either. Nor did the billions ploughed into the area's economy stop them whining about every penny of Scottish public money that got spent anywhere south of the Stracathro motorway service station.
He didn't imagine the locals had first asked anyone else in the European oil industry whether they concurred before conferring this status upon their home town, but working in marketing he at least understood the necessity of such misleading promotion in face of the less glamorous truth. 'Scotland's Fourth City' wasn't exactly a winning slogan, especially considering that there was a dizzyingly steep drop-off after the first two, and it still put them behind the ungodly shit-hole that was Dundee.
The also self-conferred nickname 'Silver City' was another over-reaching feat of turd-polishing euphemism. It was grey. Everything was grey. There was just no getting away from it. The buildings were all - all - made of granite and the sky was covered in a thick layer of permacloud. It. Was. Grey. If Aberdeen was silver, then shite wasn't brown, it was coppertone. It was grey, as in dull, as in dreary, as in chromatically challenged. It was grey, grey, grey. And the only thing greyer than the city itself was the
ing natives. A couple of quotes to illustrate. 'An Aberdonian would pick a shilling from a dunghill with his teeth.' Paul Theroux.
'There's nae folk sae fine as them that bide by Don and Dee.' Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
Apposite as the former might be, it was actually the latter that offered a deeper insight, though not quite in the way the author intended. To understand, you first had to take a wild stab at what part of the globe you thought Grassic Gibbon might hail from. Then having miraculously plucked that one out of the ether, you might begin to develop a picture of a people who either didn't get around much, or wilfully failed to absorb anything if and when they did. How else could they remain ignorant of the existence of even the most basic foreign customs, such as smiling?
Living in Aberdeen had taught him the difference between the parochial and the truly insular. The parochial was defined by a naïve, even innocent ignorance of the world beyond its borders. The truly insular knew fine there was a world outside, they just didnae
in' like it, and had nae in' need for it! Living in Aberdeen had also taught him that as you only got one shot at life, it was way too precious to waste living in Aberdeen. The inescapable nature of this truth had only fully dawned on him when he realised that his life here had become just that: inescapable. It was the kind of place you only went to in the first instance because you assumed you wouldn't be there for long; you'd bide your time, serve your sentence and get back to civilisation at the first opportunity. But what you hadn't foreseen was that that opportunity might never come, and in the meantime circumstances could wrap themselves around you like the coils of a snake.
So if you only got one shot, what were you meant to do when you found yourself doomed to spend it here? Surrender and join the SSCs? Aye, right. Find some form of compensatory vice, like
ing your way around the neighbourhood's housequines on your flexi-time midweek days off? He'd tried. It grew tired very quickly, mainly due to the brain-deadening quality of their post-coital conversation. Five minutes after they came, some Pavlovian trigger mechanism invariably caused them to start wittering on about their progeny. That was if they weren't already kicking you out of bed because they had to go and collect the little bastards from nursery or wherever. You could kid yourself on that it was making you feel good, but to be honest you might as well take up golf. It was just your choice of recreation in the prison's exercise yard.ViperScot said:
Don't be driving a loud car with US plates on! I'm sure the traffic 'police' would still find some reason to pull the Pony over even with it's UK plates though...
Thanks Hamish. Guess I will be taking the porker as I hope to have a set of custom exhausts by then lol.
Looks like I will be locked in a hotel room then. Fingers crossed the have wireless connections!!
Size Nine Elm said:
I always liked Christopher Brookmyre's diatribe about Aberdeen in
A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away...
Europe's Oil Capital. Honestly. The first time he heard the expression, he'd assumed it was a bit of self-deprecatory humour. That was before he learned that there was no such thing as self-deprecatory humour in Aberdeen, particularly when it came to the town's utterly unfounded conceit of itself. It was a provincial fishing port that had struck it astronomically lucky with the discovery of North Sea oil, and the result was comparable to a country bumpkin who had won the lottery, minus the dopey grin and colossal sense of incredulous gratitude. The prevalent local delusion wasn't that the town had merely been in the right place at the right time, but that it had somehow done something to deserve this massive good fortune, and not before time, either. Nor did the billions ploughed into the area's economy stop them whining about every penny of Scottish public money that got spent anywhere south of the Stracathro motorway service station.
He didn't imagine the locals had first asked anyone else in the European oil industry whether they concurred before conferring this status upon their home town, but working in marketing he at least understood the necessity of such misleading promotion in face of the less glamorous truth. 'Scotland's Fourth City' wasn't exactly a winning slogan, especially considering that there was a dizzyingly steep drop-off after the first two, and it still put them behind the ungodly shit-hole that was Dundee.
The also self-conferred nickname 'Silver City' was another over-reaching feat of turd-polishing euphemism. It was grey. Everything was grey. There was just no getting away from it. The buildings were all - all - made of granite and the sky was covered in a thick layer of permacloud. It. Was. Grey. If Aberdeen was silver, then shite wasn't brown, it was coppertone. It was grey, as in dull, as in dreary, as in chromatically challenged. It was grey, grey, grey. And the only thing greyer than the city itself was theing natives. A couple of quotes to illustrate.
'An Aberdonian would pick a shilling from a dunghill with his teeth.' Paul Theroux.
'There's nae folk sae fine as them that bide by Don and Dee.' Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
Apposite as the former might be, it was actually the latter that offered a deeper insight, though not quite in the way the author intended. To understand, you first had to take a wild stab at what part of the globe you thought Grassic Gibbon might hail from. Then having miraculously plucked that one out of the ether, you might begin to develop a picture of a people who either didn't get around much, or wilfully failed to absorb anything if and when they did. How else could they remain ignorant of the existence of even the most basic foreign customs, such as smiling?
Living in Aberdeen had taught him the difference between the parochial and the truly insular. The parochial was defined by a naïve, even innocent ignorance of the world beyond its borders. The truly insular knew fine there was a world outside, they just didnaein' like it, and had nae in' need for it!
Living in Aberdeen had also taught him that as you only got one shot at life, it was way too precious to waste living in Aberdeen. The inescapable nature of this truth had only fully dawned on him when he realised that his life here had become just that: inescapable. It was the kind of place you only went to in the first instance because you assumed you wouldn't be there for long; you'd bide your time, serve your sentence and get back to civilisation at the first opportunity. But what you hadn't foreseen was that that opportunity might never come, and in the meantime circumstances could wrap themselves around you like the coils of a snake.
So if you only got one shot, what were you meant to do when you found yourself doomed to spend it here? Surrender and join the SSCs? Aye, right. Find some form of compensatory vice, likeing your way around the neighbourhood's housequines on your flexi-time midweek days off? He'd tried. It grew tired very quickly, mainly due to the brain-deadening quality of their post-coital conversation. Five minutes after they came, some Pavlovian trigger mechanism invariably caused them to start wittering on about their progeny. That was if they weren't already kicking you out of bed because they had to go and collect the little bastards from nursery or wherever. You could kid yourself on that it was making you feel good, but to be honest you might as well take up golf. It was just your choice of recreation in the prison's exercise yard.
A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away...
Europe's Oil Capital. Honestly. The first time he heard the expression, he'd assumed it was a bit of self-deprecatory humour. That was before he learned that there was no such thing as self-deprecatory humour in Aberdeen, particularly when it came to the town's utterly unfounded conceit of itself. It was a provincial fishing port that had struck it astronomically lucky with the discovery of North Sea oil, and the result was comparable to a country bumpkin who had won the lottery, minus the dopey grin and colossal sense of incredulous gratitude. The prevalent local delusion wasn't that the town had merely been in the right place at the right time, but that it had somehow done something to deserve this massive good fortune, and not before time, either. Nor did the billions ploughed into the area's economy stop them whining about every penny of Scottish public money that got spent anywhere south of the Stracathro motorway service station.
He didn't imagine the locals had first asked anyone else in the European oil industry whether they concurred before conferring this status upon their home town, but working in marketing he at least understood the necessity of such misleading promotion in face of the less glamorous truth. 'Scotland's Fourth City' wasn't exactly a winning slogan, especially considering that there was a dizzyingly steep drop-off after the first two, and it still put them behind the ungodly shit-hole that was Dundee.
The also self-conferred nickname 'Silver City' was another over-reaching feat of turd-polishing euphemism. It was grey. Everything was grey. There was just no getting away from it. The buildings were all - all - made of granite and the sky was covered in a thick layer of permacloud. It. Was. Grey. If Aberdeen was silver, then shite wasn't brown, it was coppertone. It was grey, as in dull, as in dreary, as in chromatically challenged. It was grey, grey, grey. And the only thing greyer than the city itself was the
ing natives. A couple of quotes to illustrate. 'An Aberdonian would pick a shilling from a dunghill with his teeth.' Paul Theroux.
'There's nae folk sae fine as them that bide by Don and Dee.' Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
Apposite as the former might be, it was actually the latter that offered a deeper insight, though not quite in the way the author intended. To understand, you first had to take a wild stab at what part of the globe you thought Grassic Gibbon might hail from. Then having miraculously plucked that one out of the ether, you might begin to develop a picture of a people who either didn't get around much, or wilfully failed to absorb anything if and when they did. How else could they remain ignorant of the existence of even the most basic foreign customs, such as smiling?
Living in Aberdeen had taught him the difference between the parochial and the truly insular. The parochial was defined by a naïve, even innocent ignorance of the world beyond its borders. The truly insular knew fine there was a world outside, they just didnae
in' like it, and had nae in' need for it! Living in Aberdeen had also taught him that as you only got one shot at life, it was way too precious to waste living in Aberdeen. The inescapable nature of this truth had only fully dawned on him when he realised that his life here had become just that: inescapable. It was the kind of place you only went to in the first instance because you assumed you wouldn't be there for long; you'd bide your time, serve your sentence and get back to civilisation at the first opportunity. But what you hadn't foreseen was that that opportunity might never come, and in the meantime circumstances could wrap themselves around you like the coils of a snake.
So if you only got one shot, what were you meant to do when you found yourself doomed to spend it here? Surrender and join the SSCs? Aye, right. Find some form of compensatory vice, like
ing your way around the neighbourhood's housequines on your flexi-time midweek days off? He'd tried. It grew tired very quickly, mainly due to the brain-deadening quality of their post-coital conversation. Five minutes after they came, some Pavlovian trigger mechanism invariably caused them to start wittering on about their progeny. That was if they weren't already kicking you out of bed because they had to go and collect the little bastards from nursery or wherever. You could kid yourself on that it was making you feel good, but to be honest you might as well take up golf. It was just your choice of recreation in the prison's exercise yard.
Brilliant! ETA: Incidently Avril, if you're that bored, drop me a line if you fancy a pint.
Edited by ASBO on Thursday 19th April 12:41
ASBO said:
Size Nine Elm said:
I always liked Christopher Brookmyre's diatribe about Aberdeen in
A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away...
Europe's Oil Capital. Honestly. The first time he heard the expression, he'd assumed it was a bit of self-deprecatory humour. That was before he learned that there was no such thing as self-deprecatory humour in Aberdeen, particularly when it came to the town's utterly unfounded conceit of itself. It was a provincial fishing port that had struck it astronomically lucky with the discovery of North Sea oil, and the result was comparable to a country bumpkin who had won the lottery, minus the dopey grin and colossal sense of incredulous gratitude. The prevalent local delusion wasn't that the town had merely been in the right place at the right time, but that it had somehow done something to deserve this massive good fortune, and not before time, either. Nor did the billions ploughed into the area's economy stop them whining about every penny of Scottish public money that got spent anywhere south of the Stracathro motorway service station.
He didn't imagine the locals had first asked anyone else in the European oil industry whether they concurred before conferring this status upon their home town, but working in marketing he at least understood the necessity of such misleading promotion in face of the less glamorous truth. 'Scotland's Fourth City' wasn't exactly a winning slogan, especially considering that there was a dizzyingly steep drop-off after the first two, and it still put them behind the ungodly shit-hole that was Dundee.
The also self-conferred nickname 'Silver City' was another over-reaching feat of turd-polishing euphemism. It was grey. Everything was grey. There was just no getting away from it. The buildings were all - all - made of granite and the sky was covered in a thick layer of permacloud. It. Was. Grey. If Aberdeen was silver, then shite wasn't brown, it was coppertone. It was grey, as in dull, as in dreary, as in chromatically challenged. It was grey, grey, grey. And the only thing greyer than the city itself was theing natives. A couple of quotes to illustrate.
'An Aberdonian would pick a shilling from a dunghill with his teeth.' Paul Theroux.
'There's nae folk sae fine as them that bide by Don and Dee.' Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
Apposite as the former might be, it was actually the latter that offered a deeper insight, though not quite in the way the author intended. To understand, you first had to take a wild stab at what part of the globe you thought Grassic Gibbon might hail from. Then having miraculously plucked that one out of the ether, you might begin to develop a picture of a people who either didn't get around much, or wilfully failed to absorb anything if and when they did. How else could they remain ignorant of the existence of even the most basic foreign customs, such as smiling?
Living in Aberdeen had taught him the difference between the parochial and the truly insular. The parochial was defined by a naïve, even innocent ignorance of the world beyond its borders. The truly insular knew fine there was a world outside, they just didnaein' like it, and had nae in' need for it!
Living in Aberdeen had also taught him that as you only got one shot at life, it was way too precious to waste living in Aberdeen. The inescapable nature of this truth had only fully dawned on him when he realised that his life here had become just that: inescapable. It was the kind of place you only went to in the first instance because you assumed you wouldn't be there for long; you'd bide your time, serve your sentence and get back to civilisation at the first opportunity. But what you hadn't foreseen was that that opportunity might never come, and in the meantime circumstances could wrap themselves around you like the coils of a snake.
So if you only got one shot, what were you meant to do when you found yourself doomed to spend it here? Surrender and join the SSCs? Aye, right. Find some form of compensatory vice, likeing your way around the neighbourhood's housequines on your flexi-time midweek days off? He'd tried. It grew tired very quickly, mainly due to the brain-deadening quality of their post-coital conversation. Five minutes after they came, some Pavlovian trigger mechanism invariably caused them to start wittering on about their progeny. That was if they weren't already kicking you out of bed because they had to go and collect the little bastards from nursery or wherever. You could kid yourself on that it was making you feel good, but to be honest you might as well take up golf. It was just your choice of recreation in the prison's exercise yard.
A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away...
Europe's Oil Capital. Honestly. The first time he heard the expression, he'd assumed it was a bit of self-deprecatory humour. That was before he learned that there was no such thing as self-deprecatory humour in Aberdeen, particularly when it came to the town's utterly unfounded conceit of itself. It was a provincial fishing port that had struck it astronomically lucky with the discovery of North Sea oil, and the result was comparable to a country bumpkin who had won the lottery, minus the dopey grin and colossal sense of incredulous gratitude. The prevalent local delusion wasn't that the town had merely been in the right place at the right time, but that it had somehow done something to deserve this massive good fortune, and not before time, either. Nor did the billions ploughed into the area's economy stop them whining about every penny of Scottish public money that got spent anywhere south of the Stracathro motorway service station.
He didn't imagine the locals had first asked anyone else in the European oil industry whether they concurred before conferring this status upon their home town, but working in marketing he at least understood the necessity of such misleading promotion in face of the less glamorous truth. 'Scotland's Fourth City' wasn't exactly a winning slogan, especially considering that there was a dizzyingly steep drop-off after the first two, and it still put them behind the ungodly shit-hole that was Dundee.
The also self-conferred nickname 'Silver City' was another over-reaching feat of turd-polishing euphemism. It was grey. Everything was grey. There was just no getting away from it. The buildings were all - all - made of granite and the sky was covered in a thick layer of permacloud. It. Was. Grey. If Aberdeen was silver, then shite wasn't brown, it was coppertone. It was grey, as in dull, as in dreary, as in chromatically challenged. It was grey, grey, grey. And the only thing greyer than the city itself was the
ing natives. A couple of quotes to illustrate. 'An Aberdonian would pick a shilling from a dunghill with his teeth.' Paul Theroux.
'There's nae folk sae fine as them that bide by Don and Dee.' Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
Apposite as the former might be, it was actually the latter that offered a deeper insight, though not quite in the way the author intended. To understand, you first had to take a wild stab at what part of the globe you thought Grassic Gibbon might hail from. Then having miraculously plucked that one out of the ether, you might begin to develop a picture of a people who either didn't get around much, or wilfully failed to absorb anything if and when they did. How else could they remain ignorant of the existence of even the most basic foreign customs, such as smiling?
Living in Aberdeen had taught him the difference between the parochial and the truly insular. The parochial was defined by a naïve, even innocent ignorance of the world beyond its borders. The truly insular knew fine there was a world outside, they just didnae
in' like it, and had nae in' need for it! Living in Aberdeen had also taught him that as you only got one shot at life, it was way too precious to waste living in Aberdeen. The inescapable nature of this truth had only fully dawned on him when he realised that his life here had become just that: inescapable. It was the kind of place you only went to in the first instance because you assumed you wouldn't be there for long; you'd bide your time, serve your sentence and get back to civilisation at the first opportunity. But what you hadn't foreseen was that that opportunity might never come, and in the meantime circumstances could wrap themselves around you like the coils of a snake.
So if you only got one shot, what were you meant to do when you found yourself doomed to spend it here? Surrender and join the SSCs? Aye, right. Find some form of compensatory vice, like
ing your way around the neighbourhood's housequines on your flexi-time midweek days off? He'd tried. It grew tired very quickly, mainly due to the brain-deadening quality of their post-coital conversation. Five minutes after they came, some Pavlovian trigger mechanism invariably caused them to start wittering on about their progeny. That was if they weren't already kicking you out of bed because they had to go and collect the little bastards from nursery or wherever. You could kid yourself on that it was making you feel good, but to be honest you might as well take up golf. It was just your choice of recreation in the prison's exercise yard. Brilliant! ETA: Incidently Avril, if you're that bored, drop me a line if you fancy a pint.
Edited by ASBO on Thursday 19th April 12:41
Oh dear, such insecurity
Hemibum said:
ASBO said:
Size Nine Elm said:
I always liked Christopher Brookmyre's diatribe about Aberdeen in
A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away...
Europe's Oil Capital. Honestly. The first time he heard the expression, he'd assumed it was a bit of self-deprecatory humour. That was before he learned that there was no such thing as self-deprecatory humour in Aberdeen, particularly when it came to the town's utterly unfounded conceit of itself. It was a provincial fishing port that had struck it astronomically lucky with the discovery of North Sea oil, and the result was comparable to a country bumpkin who had won the lottery, minus the dopey grin and colossal sense of incredulous gratitude. The prevalent local delusion wasn't that the town had merely been in the right place at the right time, but that it had somehow done something to deserve this massive good fortune, and not before time, either. Nor did the billions ploughed into the area's economy stop them whining about every penny of Scottish public money that got spent anywhere south of the Stracathro motorway service station.
He didn't imagine the locals had first asked anyone else in the European oil industry whether they concurred before conferring this status upon their home town, but working in marketing he at least understood the necessity of such misleading promotion in face of the less glamorous truth. 'Scotland's Fourth City' wasn't exactly a winning slogan, especially considering that there was a dizzyingly steep drop-off after the first two, and it still put them behind the ungodly shit-hole that was Dundee.
The also self-conferred nickname 'Silver City' was another over-reaching feat of turd-polishing euphemism. It was grey. Everything was grey. There was just no getting away from it. The buildings were all - all - made of granite and the sky was covered in a thick layer of permacloud. It. Was. Grey. If Aberdeen was silver, then shite wasn't brown, it was coppertone. It was grey, as in dull, as in dreary, as in chromatically challenged. It was grey, grey, grey. And the only thing greyer than the city itself was theing natives. A couple of quotes to illustrate.
'An Aberdonian would pick a shilling from a dunghill with his teeth.' Paul Theroux.
'There's nae folk sae fine as them that bide by Don and Dee.' Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
Apposite as the former might be, it was actually the latter that offered a deeper insight, though not quite in the way the author intended. To understand, you first had to take a wild stab at what part of the globe you thought Grassic Gibbon might hail from. Then having miraculously plucked that one out of the ether, you might begin to develop a picture of a people who either didn't get around much, or wilfully failed to absorb anything if and when they did. How else could they remain ignorant of the existence of even the most basic foreign customs, such as smiling?
Living in Aberdeen had taught him the difference between the parochial and the truly insular. The parochial was defined by a naïve, even innocent ignorance of the world beyond its borders. The truly insular knew fine there was a world outside, they just didnaein' like it, and had nae in' need for it!
Living in Aberdeen had also taught him that as you only got one shot at life, it was way too precious to waste living in Aberdeen. The inescapable nature of this truth had only fully dawned on him when he realised that his life here had become just that: inescapable. It was the kind of place you only went to in the first instance because you assumed you wouldn't be there for long; you'd bide your time, serve your sentence and get back to civilisation at the first opportunity. But what you hadn't foreseen was that that opportunity might never come, and in the meantime circumstances could wrap themselves around you like the coils of a snake.
So if you only got one shot, what were you meant to do when you found yourself doomed to spend it here? Surrender and join the SSCs? Aye, right. Find some form of compensatory vice, likeing your way around the neighbourhood's housequines on your flexi-time midweek days off? He'd tried. It grew tired very quickly, mainly due to the brain-deadening quality of their post-coital conversation. Five minutes after they came, some Pavlovian trigger mechanism invariably caused them to start wittering on about their progeny. That was if they weren't already kicking you out of bed because they had to go and collect the little bastards from nursery or wherever. You could kid yourself on that it was making you feel good, but to be honest you might as well take up golf. It was just your choice of recreation in the prison's exercise yard.
A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away...
Europe's Oil Capital. Honestly. The first time he heard the expression, he'd assumed it was a bit of self-deprecatory humour. That was before he learned that there was no such thing as self-deprecatory humour in Aberdeen, particularly when it came to the town's utterly unfounded conceit of itself. It was a provincial fishing port that had struck it astronomically lucky with the discovery of North Sea oil, and the result was comparable to a country bumpkin who had won the lottery, minus the dopey grin and colossal sense of incredulous gratitude. The prevalent local delusion wasn't that the town had merely been in the right place at the right time, but that it had somehow done something to deserve this massive good fortune, and not before time, either. Nor did the billions ploughed into the area's economy stop them whining about every penny of Scottish public money that got spent anywhere south of the Stracathro motorway service station.
He didn't imagine the locals had first asked anyone else in the European oil industry whether they concurred before conferring this status upon their home town, but working in marketing he at least understood the necessity of such misleading promotion in face of the less glamorous truth. 'Scotland's Fourth City' wasn't exactly a winning slogan, especially considering that there was a dizzyingly steep drop-off after the first two, and it still put them behind the ungodly shit-hole that was Dundee.
The also self-conferred nickname 'Silver City' was another over-reaching feat of turd-polishing euphemism. It was grey. Everything was grey. There was just no getting away from it. The buildings were all - all - made of granite and the sky was covered in a thick layer of permacloud. It. Was. Grey. If Aberdeen was silver, then shite wasn't brown, it was coppertone. It was grey, as in dull, as in dreary, as in chromatically challenged. It was grey, grey, grey. And the only thing greyer than the city itself was the
ing natives. A couple of quotes to illustrate. 'An Aberdonian would pick a shilling from a dunghill with his teeth.' Paul Theroux.
'There's nae folk sae fine as them that bide by Don and Dee.' Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
Apposite as the former might be, it was actually the latter that offered a deeper insight, though not quite in the way the author intended. To understand, you first had to take a wild stab at what part of the globe you thought Grassic Gibbon might hail from. Then having miraculously plucked that one out of the ether, you might begin to develop a picture of a people who either didn't get around much, or wilfully failed to absorb anything if and when they did. How else could they remain ignorant of the existence of even the most basic foreign customs, such as smiling?
Living in Aberdeen had taught him the difference between the parochial and the truly insular. The parochial was defined by a naïve, even innocent ignorance of the world beyond its borders. The truly insular knew fine there was a world outside, they just didnae
in' like it, and had nae in' need for it! Living in Aberdeen had also taught him that as you only got one shot at life, it was way too precious to waste living in Aberdeen. The inescapable nature of this truth had only fully dawned on him when he realised that his life here had become just that: inescapable. It was the kind of place you only went to in the first instance because you assumed you wouldn't be there for long; you'd bide your time, serve your sentence and get back to civilisation at the first opportunity. But what you hadn't foreseen was that that opportunity might never come, and in the meantime circumstances could wrap themselves around you like the coils of a snake.
So if you only got one shot, what were you meant to do when you found yourself doomed to spend it here? Surrender and join the SSCs? Aye, right. Find some form of compensatory vice, like
ing your way around the neighbourhood's housequines on your flexi-time midweek days off? He'd tried. It grew tired very quickly, mainly due to the brain-deadening quality of their post-coital conversation. Five minutes after they came, some Pavlovian trigger mechanism invariably caused them to start wittering on about their progeny. That was if they weren't already kicking you out of bed because they had to go and collect the little bastards from nursery or wherever. You could kid yourself on that it was making you feel good, but to be honest you might as well take up golf. It was just your choice of recreation in the prison's exercise yard. Brilliant! ETA: Incidently Avril, if you're that bored, drop me a line if you fancy a pint.
Edited by ASBO on Thursday 19th April 12:41
Oh dear, such insecurity
Size Nine Elm said:
I always liked Christopher Brookmyre's diatribe about Aberdeen in
A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away...
Europe's Oil Capital. Honestly. The first time he heard the expression, he'd assumed it was a bit of self-deprecatory humour. That was before he learned that there was no such thing as self-deprecatory humour in Aberdeen, particularly when it came to the town's utterly unfounded conceit of itself. It was a provincial fishing port that had struck it astronomically lucky with the discovery of North Sea oil, and the result was comparable to a country bumpkin who had won the lottery, minus the dopey grin and colossal sense of incredulous gratitude. The prevalent local delusion wasn't that the town had merely been in the right place at the right time, but that it had somehow done something to deserve this massive good fortune, and not before time, either. Nor did the billions ploughed into the area's economy stop them whining about every penny of Scottish public money that got spent anywhere south of the Stracathro motorway service station.
He didn't imagine the locals had first asked anyone else in the European oil industry whether they concurred before conferring this status upon their home town, but working in marketing he at least understood the necessity of such misleading promotion in face of the less glamorous truth. 'Scotland's Fourth City' wasn't exactly a winning slogan, especially considering that there was a dizzyingly steep drop-off after the first two, and it still put them behind the ungodly shit-hole that was Dundee.
The also self-conferred nickname 'Silver City' was another over-reaching feat of turd-polishing euphemism. It was grey. Everything was grey. There was just no getting away from it. The buildings were all - all - made of granite and the sky was covered in a thick layer of permacloud. It. Was. Grey. If Aberdeen was silver, then shite wasn't brown, it was coppertone. It was grey, as in dull, as in dreary, as in chromatically challenged. It was grey, grey, grey. And the only thing greyer than the city itself was theing natives. A couple of quotes to illustrate.
'An Aberdonian would pick a shilling from a dunghill with his teeth.' Paul Theroux.
'There's nae folk sae fine as them that bide by Don and Dee.' Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
Apposite as the former might be, it was actually the latter that offered a deeper insight, though not quite in the way the author intended. To understand, you first had to take a wild stab at what part of the globe you thought Grassic Gibbon might hail from. Then having miraculously plucked that one out of the ether, you might begin to develop a picture of a people who either didn't get around much, or wilfully failed to absorb anything if and when they did. How else could they remain ignorant of the existence of even the most basic foreign customs, such as smiling?
Living in Aberdeen had taught him the difference between the parochial and the truly insular. The parochial was defined by a naïve, even innocent ignorance of the world beyond its borders. The truly insular knew fine there was a world outside, they just didnaein' like it, and had nae in' need for it!
Living in Aberdeen had also taught him that as you only got one shot at life, it was way too precious to waste living in Aberdeen. The inescapable nature of this truth had only fully dawned on him when he realised that his life here had become just that: inescapable. It was the kind of place you only went to in the first instance because you assumed you wouldn't be there for long; you'd bide your time, serve your sentence and get back to civilisation at the first opportunity. But what you hadn't foreseen was that that opportunity might never come, and in the meantime circumstances could wrap themselves around you like the coils of a snake.
So if you only got one shot, what were you meant to do when you found yourself doomed to spend it here? Surrender and join the SSCs? Aye, right. Find some form of compensatory vice, likeing your way around the neighbourhood's housequines on your flexi-time midweek days off? He'd tried. It grew tired very quickly, mainly due to the brain-deadening quality of their post-coital conversation. Five minutes after they came, some Pavlovian trigger mechanism invariably caused them to start wittering on about their progeny. That was if they weren't already kicking you out of bed because they had to go and collect the little bastards from nursery or wherever. You could kid yourself on that it was making you feel good, but to be honest you might as well take up golf. It was just your choice of recreation in the prison's exercise yard.
A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away...
Europe's Oil Capital. Honestly. The first time he heard the expression, he'd assumed it was a bit of self-deprecatory humour. That was before he learned that there was no such thing as self-deprecatory humour in Aberdeen, particularly when it came to the town's utterly unfounded conceit of itself. It was a provincial fishing port that had struck it astronomically lucky with the discovery of North Sea oil, and the result was comparable to a country bumpkin who had won the lottery, minus the dopey grin and colossal sense of incredulous gratitude. The prevalent local delusion wasn't that the town had merely been in the right place at the right time, but that it had somehow done something to deserve this massive good fortune, and not before time, either. Nor did the billions ploughed into the area's economy stop them whining about every penny of Scottish public money that got spent anywhere south of the Stracathro motorway service station.
He didn't imagine the locals had first asked anyone else in the European oil industry whether they concurred before conferring this status upon their home town, but working in marketing he at least understood the necessity of such misleading promotion in face of the less glamorous truth. 'Scotland's Fourth City' wasn't exactly a winning slogan, especially considering that there was a dizzyingly steep drop-off after the first two, and it still put them behind the ungodly shit-hole that was Dundee.
The also self-conferred nickname 'Silver City' was another over-reaching feat of turd-polishing euphemism. It was grey. Everything was grey. There was just no getting away from it. The buildings were all - all - made of granite and the sky was covered in a thick layer of permacloud. It. Was. Grey. If Aberdeen was silver, then shite wasn't brown, it was coppertone. It was grey, as in dull, as in dreary, as in chromatically challenged. It was grey, grey, grey. And the only thing greyer than the city itself was the
ing natives. A couple of quotes to illustrate. 'An Aberdonian would pick a shilling from a dunghill with his teeth.' Paul Theroux.
'There's nae folk sae fine as them that bide by Don and Dee.' Lewis Grassic Gibbon.
Apposite as the former might be, it was actually the latter that offered a deeper insight, though not quite in the way the author intended. To understand, you first had to take a wild stab at what part of the globe you thought Grassic Gibbon might hail from. Then having miraculously plucked that one out of the ether, you might begin to develop a picture of a people who either didn't get around much, or wilfully failed to absorb anything if and when they did. How else could they remain ignorant of the existence of even the most basic foreign customs, such as smiling?
Living in Aberdeen had taught him the difference between the parochial and the truly insular. The parochial was defined by a naïve, even innocent ignorance of the world beyond its borders. The truly insular knew fine there was a world outside, they just didnae
in' like it, and had nae in' need for it! Living in Aberdeen had also taught him that as you only got one shot at life, it was way too precious to waste living in Aberdeen. The inescapable nature of this truth had only fully dawned on him when he realised that his life here had become just that: inescapable. It was the kind of place you only went to in the first instance because you assumed you wouldn't be there for long; you'd bide your time, serve your sentence and get back to civilisation at the first opportunity. But what you hadn't foreseen was that that opportunity might never come, and in the meantime circumstances could wrap themselves around you like the coils of a snake.
So if you only got one shot, what were you meant to do when you found yourself doomed to spend it here? Surrender and join the SSCs? Aye, right. Find some form of compensatory vice, like
ing your way around the neighbourhood's housequines on your flexi-time midweek days off? He'd tried. It grew tired very quickly, mainly due to the brain-deadening quality of their post-coital conversation. Five minutes after they came, some Pavlovian trigger mechanism invariably caused them to start wittering on about their progeny. That was if they weren't already kicking you out of bed because they had to go and collect the little bastards from nursery or wherever. You could kid yourself on that it was making you feel good, but to be honest you might as well take up golf. It was just your choice of recreation in the prison's exercise yard.Christopher Brookmyre is my cousin's ex flatmate's cousin.
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