Looking Out To Sea

So, what’s up? Em, it was my birthday two weeks ago. Went to ESI (a Leith restaurant owned by an Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman) and had a good time there with Helen. The service was quite slow but the food was good and there was no faulting the company.

I also organised a sort of test-the-waters meeting of Edinburgh Haskell users. Four of us met in the pub on a Sunday afternoon, and I received two more emails from other people who would have come if I had given more notice. The time didn’t go particularly easily — one of our number was horrendously awkward to talk to — but it was a start. No plans to do anything more with it at the moment.

But out of that (and the advertisements I sent to the Haskell Cafe mailing list) I got a message from Eric Kow, asking if I wanted to help organise a Haskell Hackathon this August to coincide with the ICFP and Haskell Symposium in Edinburgh. So I’ve been thinking about that and coming to realise just how impossible it is to get anything organised while the Festival is on…

Meanwhile I feel that things are going quite well at work, which coincides with the contracting budget being cut to almost-nothing. A good handful of my colleagues are now on redundancy notice. I managed to get the one job for which there was funding, but that only lasts six months. In January or thereabouts I will be looking for something new. I’m not sure what. Helen’s horror stories from work make me think I could at least be a force for good if I tried programming with the NHS. But another part of me thinks the problem is likely to be systemic and no amount of enthusiasm or skill can make up for some problems.

It feels weird to now be looking for jobs — paying attention to the job market, at least — and realising that I have those “two years’ experience” that employers seem so keen on. I had to revise my CV when applying for this position with the extended funding (though strictly speaking it’s exactly what I was doing before) and it’s staggering to think how little experience was expanded to fill those two pages. But now I feel more confident — not only in my own abilities but also in knowing what’s important when applying/interviewing for a new position. I actually have points which are important to me as a developer. They always say you should have something to ask a potential employer in an interview, but knowing what to ask only really comes with that experience.

All this doesn’t get around the fact that applying for jobs is a horrible thing to have to do and I’m not at all looking forward to it.

This month’s book at the Science & Society Reading Group was The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, a fairly recent publication edited by Richard Dawkins. It’s a collection of excerpts and articles from twentieth century writing about science — mostly written by working scientists themselves.

The essays were all chosen by Dawkins so it’s not surprising that there’s quite a heavy biology and evolution bias. But there are other exciting things too — Conway’s game of life, an introduction to Shannon’s information theory, and a fair amount of physics and cosmology. There are also the strange and frivolous, poems and fantastical stories, and that category of things which Douglas Hofstadter writes.

I think the only person who finished the book had read it last year and couldn’t remember much about it. The rest of us were still working on it. I think I was the only person not reading through in order, but hopping from article to article depending on what caught my interest. It meant there was a very small overlap between what I had read and what everyone else had read.

I was worried that much of the conversation would be taken up by nature/nurture conversations (which had got quite tedious the previous session when we discussed the movie XXY). It turns out I was foolish and naive — the main topic of conversation was bitching about that Richard Dawkins. Apparently he’s quite opinionated in his introduction; too much for some of my fellow readers anyway. I didn’t really notice this belligerent tone so I guess we just read different passages…

Overall there was a general unease with the book. Many others thought it wasn’t as focussed as it could be, with too many small and disparate ideas. And some people, confusingly, thought it wasn’t challenging enough. Maybe this was a natural effect of a roomful of biologists reading many of the biology-heavy essays at the beginning of the book. I don’t know. But I do feel I have a lot more to read. Every time I brought up the articles which interested me, everyone else hadn’t read them. How disappointing.

One interesting aspect about this book — and this is something I have noticed elsewhere — is the complete absence of the third science. Where is chemistry? Where are the popular writers for chemistry? Even asking chemists seems to draw a blank.

There has been no decision made about what we’ll read next. Suggestions mooted so far have been some philosophy (particularly, Russell’s History of Western Philosophy or some Daniel Dennett, who is easier to tie in with the science focus of the group). In my own reading list I have Gödel Escher Bach and The Annotated Turing, though I fear suggesting the Turing book to a mixed group of readers would not go well!

Does anyone have other “accessible science writing” suggestions I could put forward? In the past they’ve had Bad Science and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Maybe good scientist biographies exist too?

Two of us were standing at the bus stop outside the Central Library. A small group of people walked past in animated conversation. We only caught the briefest part before they were out of earshot again:

…so you can have an entirely private conversation without being overheard…

We laughed.

It turns out that pre-ordering stuff online is great. Not because it arrives at your door as soon as it’s released, but because you forget it’s on order at all. When it finally comes it’s like a surprise gift from yourself.

Battlestar Galactica: The Final Season was posted to us when we were on holiday.

I wonder if there’s a way to set up “surprise” orders using an online wishlist? Every month, approximately, the system would order something for you. Obviously you’d need to give it some money. Maybe add a certain amount into an account on a weekly basis, and the system would choose it’s next product and — assuming it didn’t have enough cash on hand — wait until the account was flush enough.

Obviously if you add five pounds to the account every week you’re not going to get anything very expensive and it would spoil the excitement if the system waited 8 months without making a single purchase. So there would have to be some cut-off. I suppose the sensible thing is just not to add stupidly expensive items to the automated wish list.

Anyway, all that’s just prelude because I haven’t much to say about BSG yet. We’ve watched the first disc, episodes 1–4. Spoilers from here on, so bail now if you haven’t watched this far!

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We’re back from our little holiday in the north of Scotland. Five days touring around from town to town, staying in B&Bs and seeing the sights. The weather was great, and I feel like I’ve been away from real life for a hundred years.

We started on Monday morning taking the train to Inverness. We checked into the most beautiful Bed and Breakfast in the Universe. If you need to stay in Inverness you should give Teri a call first before you do anything else. The first thing she said when we arrived was, “will you be going up to your rooms now or are you heading straight out again? Only I’ve done some home baking and they’ve got fresh cream on, so I won’t bring them up if you’re not going to eat them now…”. Oh it was fabulous. It was the nicest place we stayed by a long way, and also the cheapest all week.

On Monday evening we went to Rocpool, which was quite nice but not amazing. I think I was just nervous about being a first night on holiday. Would it work out or would we be wet and miserable for a week? And so on.

In the morning Helen acquired Fergus the Failmobile from Arnold Clark car rentals. Fergus was a weedy Corsa who didn’t like any of his gears and whined in almost all situations. Going at about 30mph in 5th gear on a flat was about all he could manage. Poor Fergus, we put him through a lot that week. :-(

Before heading off for the great unknown we bought a map from Waterstones, some picnic materials from a supermarket and had a walk around Leakeys Second Hand Bookshop. This is a converted church with every nook piled high with books. They also do home made soup which smelled amazing. We never had enough time to check it out further on the way back, which is a great shame. Look it up if you’re ever there. (Unlike most places we visited, this bookshop doesn’t have a website. But nearly everything else does.)

We were touring on whim, guided by a slightly-out-of-date copy of Peter Irvine’s magnificent Scotland The Best guide, the book The Scotsman describes as the only guide worth a damn. Is there anything of this style that covers other parts of the UK? It would be a magnificent find.

We departed Inverness heading west to Beauly, which was a one horse town. That horse was lame and smelled of horse, so we ate some lunch and left. Heading north-west for a short while we ended up in Ullapool, home of more arts festivals than you can shake a panpipe at. There was nothing on when we were there.

We tried our trick of asking Tourist Information for accommodation and ended up in Spindrift, which was okay but a come-down after the heady heights of An Grianan back in Inverness. The water went off for a large part of the evening all across town, but didn’t affect us too badly. It was working again in time for a shower the next day. The breakfast made up for the slightly disappointing rooms.

We had a pint on the shore wall overlooking Loch Broom and then went into the Frigate Cafe for some pizza and pasta. A little bit lacking in sophistication but still very tasty. Got some local beers in the form of An Teallach ales.

The next morning, after our nifty breakfast from the proprietor of Spindrift, we wandered to Highland Stoneware — which was a bit grim really, and had very little I could convince myself to like even in isolation; en masse it was terrifying — and then wandered aimlessly back and forth until we found Ullapool Bakery on an industrial estate at the edge of town. The fellow there was very friendly and chatted for a few minutes about what they did. Clearly the sign on shore front about them happy to receive visitors was more canny marketing than actual invitation! We beat a hasty retreat when the one-armed flour delivery man came and was told that everything had to be carried in… uh… by hand.

Back in town we had tea and cake in the basic but lovely Tea Store. I had a strawberry tart while we watched people enter the fantasy figurines shop across the road. Seriously, if there’s one thing that I have been overloaded with, it’s the tourist tat. We hired a car and had no CDs or mp3 player with us. There are lots of glens where you can’t receive radio. We were sorely in need of musical accompinemt for our epic journey. But we couldn’t find any decent music in shops we visited, unless what we really, truly wanted to hear was Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham.

We left the happy shores of Loch Broom and made our way down the coast, heading in the general direction of Gairloch. We got distracted by the beautiful sunshine and stopped at Inverewe Gardens, a managed garden over a few acres run by the National Trust for Scotland. There was a very persuasive gentleman at the front desk who convinced us to join. This allows us free access to NTS properties and free parking too!

The gardens are quite lovely, and we sat against the trunk of a eucalyptus tree eating chocolate in the sunshine. We both wrote postcards and then moved on down the road. We arrived in Gairloch too late for the tourist information. We consulted Scotland the Best and found a few recommandations — but had no phone signal. We did some driving and came across The Old Inn. Bistro, bar, rooms, all available. We hitched Fergus to a post and settled down for the night.

We shared a langoustine and squat lobster platter, which is probably the most energy intensive way to eat a meal, short of having your hands tied and snapping at your meal while it is dangled from a fishing line above your head. Tastes good though.

The next morning we got up and out early to get a ride on one of the many sea-life boats that leave from Gairloch harbour. Unfortunately there was only one leaving before midday, which was loaded with some kind of school trip. Being trapped on a boat with two dozen 14-year olds and their teacher wasn’t what we came on holiday for, so we left them to it and moved on down the road.

The next place down that road, besides the various Viewing Points, was Eilean Donan castle, the most iconic looking wee castle you could ever hope to visit. You’ll probably recognise from such historical documents as Highlander. It wasn’t so exciting to wander round inside, though the recreated kitchen was interesting. It was, however, a recreation of a 1930s kitchen rather than a medieval one, dating to the period when the castle was restored and occupied.

On the way back over the footbridge from the castle there were two Scottie dogs playing in the shallow waters of the loch shore. It was hilariously twee. We drove inland next and stopped for lunch at The Cluanie Inn on the shores of Loch Cluanie. The fish and chips was nice but there was really no need for the accordion and bagpipe music. No need.

At this point we had to decide between the two tourist towns in the Great Glen — Fort William or Fort Augustus? We chose the latter because it’s smaller so it might be less nauseating for those not interested in buying baseball caps emblazoned with I ♥ Nessie. It probably worked out that way, but it was still pretty dull. The tourist information centre was closed so we just wandered until we found a likely B&B, Lorien House. We managed to resist the urge to ask “is your mum in?” when the owner answered the door.

Every single eatery in town was doing the same tedious Highland dishes, with haggis-stuffed chicken, salmon, langoustines, blah blah, and we were sick of it. Couldn’t get a table in the first place we tried and ended up in The Lock Inn, which wasn’t very exciting at all but we both ate something plain to make up for everything else. We had serious Highland Fare fatigue.

The heavens opened while we were eating and I’d hoped this would send the midges scurrying for the hills, but they were still around when the rain abated and we got back outside. Damn them. We hid in The Lovat Arms, a hotel which actually turned out to be quite funky inside. Had a dram at the deserted bar and read tedious consumer wankmag, GQ Watch. I mean, who wants to read an entire magazine devoted to over-priced men’s watches?

It didn’t take us long to drive up to Inverness the next morning, even taking the single-track road up the wrong side of Loch Ness. So we did a detour and ended up at Culloden, site of the famous battle and now an extensive visitor centre run by the NTS. So with our new memberships we got in for free!

Inside the centre there’s a long walk-through display telling you all about the Jacobite uprising and the political and social ramifications for the Highlands, Scotland and further afield. After that you can get a GPS-enabled PDA device and head “into the field”. As you walk around the empty fields where the battle took place your headphones tell you the story of what happened where you’re standing. It’s really clever and if it hadn’t been a bitter and miserable day I would have got a lot more out of it. Well worth a visit if you like that sort of thing.

Inside the centre we had a nice meal. On the ceiling above the canteen were the names of all the people whose money had gone towards the creation of the centre. Halfway through our lunch Helen looked up and spotted her own parents’ names, directly above our table. Brilliant.

Foolishly, back in Inverness we decided to try another bed & breakfast rather than trying the one we knew. There’s a lesson for you — don’t do this, or you’ll end up in somewhere like Fenton House, the name of our final accommodation. It was run by a pint-sized Basil Fawlty character and the decor existed in some 1980s twilight. Naturally, they do not have a website. We should have known what a miserable place it would be when we heard the magic words “11.30 curfew”…

The breakfast next day was particularly bad. I think the proprietor had heard of crispy bacon but didn’t really know any more; so instead we got leathery bacon. There was another couple staying there (the fools!) and when the left the breakfast room first we skilfully offloaded some of our uneaten food onto their plates.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. On Friday night we booked a last-minute table at The Kitchen, a restaurant with a name eerily close to The Kitchin in Leith. The rain had started in earnest by this point. The booking was quite late so we hurried through the rain to Corner Grill for a drink and a rather nifty meze platter. Try some grilled fennel!

It was the last night of our holiday and that at least was worth celebrating. The Kitchen are quite keen on their fizz, so we went for a bottle of prosecco. I came back at one point and had to convince Helen we should stop at the one bottle… that 11.30 curfew would have been rather difficult otherwise! The meal was really nice, and Helen had a ham-hock-on-toasted-brioche starter that looked great. Service was good, if rather idiosyncratic, and we had a great time. If only we could have stayed longer. Still, we were quite merry on the way back through the town to our room.

We said goodbye to Fergus the Failmobile in the rain. Maybe we’ll be back, though, and go further north from Inverness, to the Black Isle and so on. And maybe next time we’ll try camping too? Here’s hoping.

Philip Pullman’s trilogy Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass adapted for the stage. Quite an undertaking. The story is huge, and covers many fantastical worlds. The adaptation for stage does some necessary cutting but still takes two performances, each about 3 hours in length, to tell the story.

We were due to watch it on Sunday (both shows in one day!) with other friends but ended up double-booked. So we passed our tickets on and got new tickets for the Thursday and Friday evening performances. These are my thoughts after each performance. Despite what you may think from reading them, I did enjoy it a lot!

Part 1, Thursday night

I’m quite enjoying it so far. It’s a long production but I haven’t ever felt bored. The story has quite a pace. I’m not convinced it translates very well to the stage though. You have to know the story to work out what’s going on, I think. And obviously there are so many elements that can’t be reasonably represented on stage — the armoured bear fight between Iorek and Iofur is an obvious example — and are better left to the imagination.

There’s quite a big cast of players but sadly the actor playing Lee Scoresby has the worst Texan accent ever concocted. It isn’t even an accent. It’s just a silly, shifting, intangible “voice”. The actor’s ham-fisted attempt at being Texan was getting a lot of laughs, and not in a good way. It was embarrassing, like a bad amateur production.

I’m also not sure about the daemon puppets. Some of them are good — Roger’s collie was particularly good, I thought, and Pantalaimon is generally excellent — but they still fall short of the descriptions. The children’s daemons never change shape, which is odd considering that’s a large part of the story.

Maybe I’m just spoiled by special effects, of course.

Part 2, Friday night

Yesterday was the first performance of part one in Edinburgh. There was another performance earlier today. So why is the first performance of part two so empty? There are two sets of audiences who you’d expect to be here. Maybe it’s just because it’s a Friday night, and people are more likely to have other plans. There are a couple more days after this to see it.

The atmosphere of the performance shifts quite a bit in this half. There is more slapstick, more laughs. The Gallivespians, for example, were extremely silly. I guess there is no way to depict 4-inch tall people with the necessary level of gravitas, so why bother.

The ending of The Amber Spyglass is one of those intensely emotional experiences that leaves a person listless and disconnected for an extraordinary length of time. I know it has that effect on me, which is why I haven’t re-read the book as much as I have the first two. It’s just not worth the emotional anguish. The ending of the play was similarly harrowing. I could hear restrained sniffing coming from all around me, as people just welled up uncontrollably.

I’m glad it’s over, but I’m still rather shocked at the power that ending has over me.

Within the last week we’ve seen Star Trek and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, two science fiction movies with a great deal of difference in the craftsmanship put into them.

Star Trek could also be called The Young James Kirk Chronicles, but in a good way. I’m not mocking Indiana Jones here, after all. This story creates an alternate history for James Kirk and the original crew of the Enterprise, and follows their story from Starfleet Academy. But don’t worry, it’s not the Hogwarts School of Exploration and Astrophysics. They quickly head out to war rather than staring into their own navels.

All the characters from the original set appear, with subtly altered stories to suit the new timeline and to make things a bit more interesting. Kirk’s a tearaway, Spock’s been suffering some playground abuse for being half-human, and Bones… we’ll he’s still a cantankerous pessimist so that’s okay.

It was a really great movie, neatly treading the line between the high camp silliness of the original Star Trek series and a modern action movie. At one or two points they veered into Galaxy Quest territory but they also balanced this with some heavy emotional stuff. Well worth seeing at the cinema.

The contrasting X-Men Origins: Wolverine was terrible on almost every level. The script was leakier than Rab C Nesbitt’s semmit, and you have to use a lot of brainpower not to think about all the ways these people with superhuman powers could have solved their problems earlier.

The story was long and lumpy, which only frenetic action scenes can disguise. The editing was woeful. If you care about spoilers, jump to the end of this paragraph. But there is no good reason why Victor is seen climbing up the outside of the building in Africa because he does nothing up there. There is no good reason why Gambit being elbowed in the face should leave him running across the rooftops. But those scenes still happened, completely without context or explanation.

Even the individual scenes were so terribly cliched it’s hard to remember them without cringing. Surely Hugh Jackman’s got bored of cradling people in his arms and screaming at the sky?

The big secret about this movie is the two separate teaser endings. We didn’t know about them and left the cinema early (very unusual for us, and doubly irritating because of it). The two different prints are distributed randomly between cinemas and the idea is that you see the film twice to catch both endings. Either that or it’s an attempt to create interest in the pirated films, which will probably be available with both endings. Cos really, who’s going to see this dreck twice for the thirty seconds of extra footage?

I am still attempting to catch up with everything that’s been happening lately. Last week we met a bunch of Helen’s relatives from the US (and her parents) for a meal and then went to the theatre.

We ate at Blue, the restaurant attached to the Traverse. I met Helen’s cousin, cousin’s husband and baby girl. Also Helen’s aunt, who I dimly recall meeting before, but that would be about eight years ago.

We saw Hoors at the Traverse Theatre, written by the same guy who did Black Watch. It’s a bit more low-key than the military play but still wickedly funny. The ending seemed a bit abrupt though. I’m still not sure what it was supposed to be. Helen thought that was a break for the interval because it was such a non-ending.

Last weekend I fulfilled my ambition (it was a brand new ambition only two months before) to learn some basket-making skills. So I booked a session at the Four Winds Inspiration Centre in Inverleith Park, to learn simple basket weaving.

The day started at 10.30 and officially finished at 5pm, though there were still people finishing up when I left at about 5.30. The centre does various classes of wood and stone craft. I really recommend the class I did, and I’m considering booking another session to try out the “random weave” course too, to learn a different technique and see what other things are possible.

The first half hour or so was an introduction to willow and to the style of basket we’d be making. Our tutor, Anthea, lead us through the different types of willow and how it was prepared for weaving. Then we got down to business! Things were a bit shaky at first but once you get into a rhythm you just lose yourself. It took me the full day to make a short basket about 35cm in diameter. Apparently a professional would expect to make at least 5 a day…

The class had 8 other people, only two of which had done any weaving before, and that was just in another class a year ago. No one was an expert, and no one was really bad either. It was also remarkable how everyone’s basket looked very different even though we were all basically using the same template.

My basket is a single buff colour with no frilly bits. I wanted to keep things simple for the first attempt. There are one or two things I would have done differently in hindsight, where there are obvious gaps which should have been tighter. But I’m very pleased and have been investigating where I can get some willow of my own to do things with. I wonder if I should use something else to practise with, so that I don’t forget everything?

If you’re at all interested in this kind of thing I recommend you look them up, or find someone close to you. It’s great fun and very satisfying to take home your own basket afterwards.

This post has been some time coming. But now it’s here — the tale of Aisha and Lanny’s wedding in Glasgow!

Wedding Day One: Registrar Ceremony

On Friday morning we took a train to Glasgow in the glorious sunshine. Helen constructed a fascinator on the train from wire and paper. By the time we arrived it was raining, of course. We’d intended to walk from Byres Road to the apartment we were staying in but the rain and the heavy luggage dissuaded us. Kilts are really heavy. Taxi!

The apartment was really nice, and in a beautiful area of town. It was also incredibly cheap compared to hotels, B&Bs etc. I don’t really understand why it was so cheap when the only difference is you have to organise your own breakfast. Is breakfast worth that much to people? Personally I thought it was much nicer to head into town and have our pick of places to breakfast on Byres Road.

Anyway, it had stopped raining by this point. We got changed and headed to the Glasgow registrar buildings in another very nice area of town. Helen finished constructing her earrings in the taxi. Never leave home without your wire cutters and needle-nosed pliers, ladies! We arrived as the tail end of another wedding party was milling around. I couldn’t tell if we were supposed to know these people or not…

Inside I was introduced to some of the friends that Helen had met on the hen weekend. The building was really impressive inside. (I somehow imagined a registrar wedding would be quite dowdy, but I don’t know why.) There was a lot of whispering about whether Aisha’s conservative father was likely to turn up, though in hindsight this was foolish, as 2pm on a Friday is also an important Muslim prayer time. He was never going to turn up.

I think everyone gave a little gasp as the bride came in. She looked significantly different from her usual self. Lanny and Aisha said some vows and we all cringed as the official consistently got both of their names wrong. Surely it’s the one thing you’d check, that you know what names the couple use, and how to say them?

After all the photographs at the registrar office and a nearby park we went for a meal at a restaurant, and at a large amount of fine Moroccan food. We went back to the apartments to sleep off the food and met everyone on Ashton Lane later on. I don’t think our bride and groom were the only couple still in their wedding clothes in the pub that evening!

Wedding Day Two: Day off

The newlyweds were staying in the same apartment complex as us. Helen got up early on Saturday morning and delivered them breakfast of yoghurt, figs and a drizzle of honey.

We tried to have breakfast ourselves at Kember and Jones (the place where I bought Dough in the distant past!) but were stalled and didn’t get out in time. It gets very busy very quickly. We found somewhere else — Café Cinnamon, I think? — and spent a few hours there. A number of the other guests joined us over that time.

After the protracted breakfast/lunch Helen and I went for a walk in the Botanic Gardens and along the Kelvin. It was a beautiful sunny day. The Botanic Gardens also had a hothouse with a carnivorous plant exhibition. I never knew Venus Fly Traps were so incredibly small. But hothouses really sap the strength, so we didn’t explore further rooms.

In the evening we picked up some pizza to eat while making our way to see the Òran Mór to see Duke Special. See my previous entry for more on that. After the gig we went back to Aisha and Lanny’s apartment, where they had a projector set up and a handful of the other guests were mutilating contemporary music playing Sing Star. I did not get involved because I didn’t hate anyone enough to submit them to my singing.

Wedding Day Three: Cake or Death?

On Sunday there was a more traditional wedding reception affair — a rented hall with guests distributed among the tables. The food was mostly of Pakistani origin, though Lanny’s family had their own pork-based starters and chopsticks. I wouldn’t have minded some of that myself, but honestly there was more than enough food anyway.

We finished off the meal with Kashmiri tea, which is quite pink in colour. Apparently it’s green tea boiled with milk and various flavourings, which turns pink in the process. It smells of rice pudding and tastes a bit like evaporated milk. A lot of people loaded the sugar into it but I didn’t think it needed sweetening: it was quite creamy enough to do without sugar too.

The wedding cake came from the Sicilian Pastry Shop just up the hill from our flat. They’d made two, one of which was to have no chocolate because one of the best men is allergic to chocolate. Unfortunately it turned out that this requirement meant they forgot about the other request not to put alcohol in the cakes. So, one cake was flavoured with chocolate and the other with alcohol, but from the outside they both looked the same so there was a bit of “excitement” at the cake-cutting point as to whether they were symbolically cutting into a boozy cake. I will let you draw your own conclusions from the photographs.

Also, Aisha pushed the cake in Lanny’s face, which was good for a laugh.

After the meal we all had to pretend to leave to get rid of the family. We went for a walk round the block, stood around in the cold at a playpark for a while to intimidate the locals, and then went back in for the best men’s speech, a ceilidh and more food. Part of the speech involved an invitation to the couple to do the first dance. But rather than do some ordinary couples dancing, two local hip-hop dance instructors did a demo and showed them through a few steps.

Also there was more food mid way through the ceilidh. I can’t imagine how much food I ate that day. Later on they also had a monkey-shaped piñata, because that’s what you can do if you’re getting married — anything you want!

We got home about 1am though I understand that other people went on from the wedding party to other places. I don’t know how they had the energy. I was drifting off to sleep on the way back to the apartment.

Wedding Day Four: Returning home

We were both a bit done on Monday morning, but luckily it was a public holiday and we didn’t have to hurry home. We got back to the flat and slept for a while. Then we went out to La Favorita and had a great evening with pasta and prosecco, toasting the happy union of Aisha and Lanny.