The Edinburgh Melange
This weekend in Edinburgh is the Meadows Festival. This is essentially a sort of mix between a funfare, an open air concert and a local arts/crafts/general-sort-of bric-a-brac stall thing. Its sort of like your general small town Gala only on a larger scale. It takes over an entire section of the Meadows in the centre of town.
Walking around there was interesting, and I also managed to get myself some really nice things! - A black and silver folky necklace, celtic crosswork leather and wood hairclasp, pretty multicoloured flowy skirt, yack-wool "Pride" fingerless gloves, and an embossed-and-bound buffalo hide journal that contains recycled paper. (I shall get around to taking photos of any of these things if people want to see them - Yes/No?).
It was also a great chance to experience the humour of the diverse Edinburgh culture. We are a city of students, artists, musicians, folkies, ageing hippies and punk rockers, but we're also a city of ra-ra uppity conservatives, politicians, lawyers and DINKYs. And watching that amusing mixture from the central area of the city - this mixture that usually quite happily goes about ignoring each other's presence whenever possible - being pushed into a confined space and jumbled together was...an interesting social experiment if nothing else.
At one edge of the festival there were a bunch of dreadlocked, hempfibre wearing youths dancing to drum music and singing about how they want to get high on marijuana. At the other side there was a bunch of men playing cricket in blinding white clothes. (Literally - this is not a metaphor!).
Walking around there was interesting, and I also managed to get myself some really nice things! - A black and silver folky necklace, celtic crosswork leather and wood hairclasp, pretty multicoloured flowy skirt, yack-wool "Pride" fingerless gloves, and an embossed-and-bound buffalo hide journal that contains recycled paper. (I shall get around to taking photos of any of these things if people want to see them - Yes/No?).
It was also a great chance to experience the humour of the diverse Edinburgh culture. We are a city of students, artists, musicians, folkies, ageing hippies and punk rockers, but we're also a city of ra-ra uppity conservatives, politicians, lawyers and DINKYs. And watching that amusing mixture from the central area of the city - this mixture that usually quite happily goes about ignoring each other's presence whenever possible - being pushed into a confined space and jumbled together was...an interesting social experiment if nothing else.
At one edge of the festival there were a bunch of dreadlocked, hempfibre wearing youths dancing to drum music and singing about how they want to get high on marijuana. At the other side there was a bunch of men playing cricket in blinding white clothes. (Literally - this is not a metaphor!).