Saturday was a Sib Outing. We went to the Brit Fest they had for the first time around here. That was fun. They had all kinds of British-esque things there. When you walked in (after paying in American money) they had a bunch of English cars bunched up. Mostly so you could say “Heh! Lookit them thar funny English cars!” but also to oil down the field there, so the weeds could be controlled. (Why don’t the English make personal Computers? Because they can’t figure out how to make them leak oil! Ha!)
Then you get to the Fest proper. The first thing you see that’s all festive was a roped off area in the field (The whole thing was in this real big field. What’s the best way to beat the Cincinnati heat? Stand in an open field. Yeah, it worked a treat.) where they were having Highland Heavy Athletics. Big guys, who you could only describe as “burly” were chucking various and sundry real heavy things about. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say these games were invented real close to a pub. (“Hey (authentic Scottish name), how far you think you can chuck that really heavy thing?” “Dunno (another authentic Scottish name), let’s give 'er a try!”)
Our (the general spectating populous) safety was taken care of. They had a plastic net thing on posts between us and the large men chucking about heavy stuff. One of the games was chucking about this heavy weight thing attached to a ring by a chain. It went sailing towards the safety fence and then bounced under it. No one was hurt, but they guy who got it gave it back. I thought he should have been able to keep it, but the rule seems to be you have to catch it on the fly. Like a foul ball at the baseball game.
Later in the day, they were chucking about a telephone pole. The deal was you pick up this telephone pole and (because just picking up a telephone pole isn’t enough) chuck it down the field. You get extra points if you flip it over. Well, this one guy chucked it out and it came reeeeeaaaaal close to the safety fence. The spectating populous kept it from flipping over with pure psychic energy. Good thing too. If it did flip over, it would have squashed a whole section of spectators. So much for getting the good seats right up front.
One of the burly guys chucking the telephone pole was named Bob. Bob managed to flip his telephone pole over all three of his chances. Bob won.
When we were watching we got to sit right behind where the burly guys were chucking stuff from. These were Highland games. That would be from Scotland. That’s where they were kilts. Kilts are, for you who don’t know, essentially skirts. Now when you spin around in a skirt, it flies up and everyone can see your underpants. A lot of this chucking of heavy things was preceded by a lot of spinning around. Since this was a family-friendly event, the burly guys were cheating and wearing actual shorts under their kilts, rather than the traditional unfinished Scottish basement, as it were. For this, I thank them.
Other than the Heavy Athletics, the rest of the Fest was mostly stuff you could buy and stuff you could eat. There wasn’t much stuff I wanted to buy. I was looking at some of the Scottish Sock Knives, but they were poorly made. So I passed on that. I concentrated on stuff I could eat.
They had haggis there. This is a traditional Scottish food. I use the word “food” loosely here because haggis is Scottish for “grey paste made of sheep bits”. But you got a big whack of it for only a couple of bucks, and you only live once, and you can get Guinness to wash it down, and really, are you going to turn your nose up at it just because it’s “sheep bits”? They Little Woman said “Yes! I will turn my nose up at it! Thank you so much!” But I tried some. It wasn’t so bad. A guy who, judging by his accent that easily could have been faked, should really know his haggis (but he said “HAY-g’s” and I thought it was “HAG-is” like it’s spelled) said it was good, but could have used more clove. Clove! That was what it was missing! What good is sheep bits without enough clove? But it was OK.
I also have a meat pie. That was it: meat in a crust. I should have gone with the banger onna stick. And I probably should have gotten the Beamish rather than the Guinness. But this was just the first year, we were all learning so much, mistakes were bound to happen.
Oh, and that whole “walking with Deth” thing, that was my little joke. The Little Woman brought along one of her friends from work. Meredith. Only I thought it was Merideth. So I called her “Deth”. Like “Death”, because eating grey paste made from sheep bits could kill you. Only it really won’t. As long as it has enough clove.
-Rue.
On Preview-ing this I remebered I forgot to mention my Farmer’s Tan and Frank.
I have a pretty good Farmer’s tan going because I always keep my t-shirt on when I go out. Only for the Brit Fest, I wore a snazzy button-up shirt. So now I have a triangle of tan dropping below my neck. Farner’s Tan plus Geometry!
And Frank was this butterfly. Butterflies aren’t really Nature’s Thinking Machines. On my snazzy shirt, I had flowers. It’s essentially a Hawai’ian shirt, only subdued (like me, and more importantly, the Little Woman wouldn’t let me get a real good one so I have to make do with this), green shirt with white flowers.
So Frank the Butterfly lands on my shirt and start licking my white flowers. You can see his little butterfly tongue flicking out and licking the flowers. He kept this up for like a half hour, hopping from one flower to another. My sister said he was sucking the sweat out of my shirt. I don’t know one way or the other, but I was part of the Great Circle of Life this weekend. Me and Frank.
I’m not going to “Preview” again, so if I forget something (like how I dodn’t see tevya there at all even though I looked) I’ll just have to post it later.
Again,
-Rue.
