Busy Saturday
Jun. 21st, 2009 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcFor all I don't go out much, this is the second week in a row I've had an active Saturday (last week we went on an archeological walk round Inverness). This week I was at The Crossing, and the Ranald and Iain concert.
The Crossing was a big thing at the Caledonian Canal, celebrating its bicentennary, which had some sort of connection to Homecoming 2009, the big "return of the expats" event that, as far as I'm aware, nobody currently living outside Scotland knows anything about. There were yachts and barges and a Viking longship with a Welsh flag (did the Norse ever settle in Cymru?![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
silly_swordsman might know), as well as canoe-races between the Sea Cadets and the Sea Scouts, trips round the canal on a ferry (which my Mum wanted to go on, but we never got round to) and an inflatable balloon you could walk along the canal in.
There were also stalls selling local produce and a combination bungee-trampoline thing that my neice went on and my gran couldn't watch. And two men in dungarees and top hats who were supposed to be the descendants of Thomas Telford.
All in all, much more fun than the alternative of going to the Marymass Fair, which has been going downhill since they moved it from the riverbank to the Northern Meeting Park[1].
And in the evening, Ranald and Iain. There's a lot of folk music stuff going on in Inverness, from the religious indoctrination of Luis Palau's Highland Festival, to something called The Jimi Shandrix Experience. But the real folkies go to see Ranald Smith and Iain McGillvaray's midsummer concert at the Beaufort Hotel. I've no idea how well advertised these concerts are; you hear about it because you're related to someone who was in the Inverness Folk Club in the 60s[2], and they heard about it because someone else from the club is helping organise things.
This year they did some new (and some old) material including two songs about WWI I hadn't heard before, and one about 9/11. (You don't go to a Ranald and Iain concert for a cheerful and uplifting experience; their standards include And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, which they didn't play this year, and Sam Stone, which they did. Not all their songs are about war, though. Some are about people dying without there being a war...) They also had special guests: Bruce MacGregor of Blazin' Fiddles, and Marie Saunders, a former singing partner of Ranald's from the Folk Club days (although either before my Mum's time, or outwith the reach of her memory). Excellent stuff.
[1]Yes, Marymass is Scots for Feast of the Assumption of St Mary, and yes, that's the 15th of August. They moved it this year because there's so much else happening in August - to a day where something else was happening...
[2]In my case, my Mum, who was Treasurer until it broke up.
The Crossing was a big thing at the Caledonian Canal, celebrating its bicentennary, which had some sort of connection to Homecoming 2009, the big "return of the expats" event that, as far as I'm aware, nobody currently living outside Scotland knows anything about. There were yachts and barges and a Viking longship with a Welsh flag (did the Norse ever settle in Cymru?
silly_swordsman might know), as well as canoe-races between the Sea Cadets and the Sea Scouts, trips round the canal on a ferry (which my Mum wanted to go on, but we never got round to) and an inflatable balloon you could walk along the canal in.There were also stalls selling local produce and a combination bungee-trampoline thing that my neice went on and my gran couldn't watch. And two men in dungarees and top hats who were supposed to be the descendants of Thomas Telford.
All in all, much more fun than the alternative of going to the Marymass Fair, which has been going downhill since they moved it from the riverbank to the Northern Meeting Park[1].
And in the evening, Ranald and Iain. There's a lot of folk music stuff going on in Inverness, from the religious indoctrination of Luis Palau's Highland Festival, to something called The Jimi Shandrix Experience. But the real folkies go to see Ranald Smith and Iain McGillvaray's midsummer concert at the Beaufort Hotel. I've no idea how well advertised these concerts are; you hear about it because you're related to someone who was in the Inverness Folk Club in the 60s[2], and they heard about it because someone else from the club is helping organise things.
This year they did some new (and some old) material including two songs about WWI I hadn't heard before, and one about 9/11. (You don't go to a Ranald and Iain concert for a cheerful and uplifting experience; their standards include And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, which they didn't play this year, and Sam Stone, which they did. Not all their songs are about war, though. Some are about people dying without there being a war...) They also had special guests: Bruce MacGregor of Blazin' Fiddles, and Marie Saunders, a former singing partner of Ranald's from the Folk Club days (although either before my Mum's time, or outwith the reach of her memory). Excellent stuff.
[1]Yes, Marymass is Scots for Feast of the Assumption of St Mary, and yes, that's the 15th of August. They moved it this year because there's so much else happening in August - to a day where something else was happening...
[2]In my case, my Mum, who was Treasurer until it broke up.
