Aaron Around The World - Guy Fawkes and The Da Vinci Code

Aaron Around The World    >>    Europe    >>    United Kingdom    >>    Edinburgh, Scotland

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Saturday, 20 October 2007 - Rugby World Cup Final!

A little girl was sitting in her classroom in England when her teacher walked in and started talking about how proud she is to be English and how wonderful it is to be an England supporter. The teacher then asked everyone who supported England to put up their hand. Every hand in the class went up, except one. This surprised the teacher and so she asked the little girl why her hand wasn't up.

"Well," said the little girl, "because I don't support England."

Even more surprised, the teacher asked her who she supported. "I support the Springboks", she replied. Now a bit irritated, the teacher asked the little girl why she supported the Springboks. "My mum supports the Springboks, and my dad supports the Springboks, so I support the Springboks." The teacher looked at the little girl and with a smirk asked, "Well, if your mum was an idiot and your dad was an idiot, what would you be?"

The little girl looked up at her teacher, smiled and replied, "An England supporter!"

Wednesday, 24 October 2007 - Round 2...


Question: what time of day would you assume the shots above and below were taken? 7am? 7pm maybe?


Answer: 3:30pm, soon to be 2:30pm as we lose daylight saving this weekend. Since I got back from Croatia last month the temperature, the daylight hours, and even the sun have dropped considerably. I can now see my breath, it's getting dark early, and the sun is so low in the sky that mid-afternoon looks like early morning or evening. If you suffer from that Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) this place would well and truly be the end of you hehe. Winter, round 2, here we go.

Friday, 26 October 2007 - The aftermath

For any of you whinging Poms still bitter about last weekend (and any South Africans still intent on rubbing it in ;)

Sunday, 28 October 2007 - Patience


Anyone who knows me should also know I have a fetish for the Nissan Skyline. Lisa bought me an unassembled model similar to the R33 pictured here, complete with about a million constituent parts, stickers, and some glue hehe!


After the initial confusion I whipped out the Swiss army knife, cut out a few pieces, got high from inhaling too much of the glue, stuck a few seemingly random pieces of plastic together...		And before long cut my thumb hahaha!


After a bit of encouragement from Louis on the telly, I eventually got the undercarriage sorted - yeah!


Over the next few hours I got stuck into the rest of it...		Cut another fucking finger...


And eventually got the remainder of the body stuck together without losing any more fingers. I think I prefer the pre-assembled models ;)

Wedsday, 31 October 2007 - Happy Halloween


		They eat their own...		...then puke them back up the next morning :)


Hahaha!

Saturday, 3 November 2007 - Splat!


What do you get when you take a melon...		...and throw it out a three-storey window...		...onto the road below?


Arrested hahaha!		Nah, just a big splat :)

Monday, 5 November 2007 - Guy Fawks!


This time of year is awesome if you have a fetish for loud noises like me :) The built-up residential area around where I live echoes brilliantly and makes for some bloody loud bangs! Despite the arctic temperatures we all piled up Carlton Hill to enjoy everybody else's fireworks hahaha!


From the top of the hill you get a good view north over the firth to Fife, and based on the flashes and bangs coming from all over, the Scots really get into Guy Fawkes night!		A few of these clearly came from the illegal fireworks man in the back alley ;)


I really excelled myself and whipped out the sparklers, but the big display off in the distance got more attention :(

Friday, 9 November 2007 - The Games come to the murder capital of Europe!


All year dirty old Glasgow has been trying to sugar-coat its disgraceful image to the world in a bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games. They were up against Halifax in Canada, and Abuja in Nigeria. Earlier this year Halifax pulled out due to "unacceptably high projection costs", and this afternoon for some unknown bloody reason the Commonwealth bigwigs voted in favour of Glasgow!

Sunday, 11 November 2007 - The Da Vinci Code


Who's seen The Da Vinci Code? There's a chapel featured throughout the movie that is located about 15kms outside of Edinburgh in the little town of Roslin (sometimes spelt Roslyn or Rosslyn). The town itself is pretty quiet and looks much like any other small Scottish town.


All you other Rosslyn Hotels are just imitating, so won't the real Rosslyn Hotel please stand up, please stand up (Eminem ;)


The Rosslyn Chapel is about the only thing in town that draws the crowds, and of course it had to be under bloody reconstruction when I make the effort to come out and see it! There's a slightly better shot of it below that I 'borrowed'. Construction began on this thing in 1456, but it has only come to prominence in recent years for the speculative debate over the contents of the crypt, fuelled in part by The Da Vinci Code. Nice setting for it!


The carving and decoration work is absolutely exquisite and was carried out over forty long years. The whole thing was completed just prior to the end of the century. The original plans for Rosslyn have never been found or recorded, so it is open to speculation whether or not the chapel was intended to be built in its current layout. Either way, it's very pretty inside!


There is a small area downstairs at the rear of the chapel also known as the crypt, but this is not the crypt at the source of the great debate. That crypt has for many years been sealed shut, which may explain the legends that it is merely a front to a more extensive subterranean vault containing (variously) the body of Jesus Christ, the Holy Grail, the treasure of the Templars, or the original crown jewels of Scotland . In 1837 when the 2nd Earl of Rosslyn died, his wish was to be buried in the original vault. Exhaustive searches over the period of a week were made, but no entrance to the original vault was ever found. The entrance to the crypt is well-known, but to this point excavations have not been allowed. There is no real evidence that the crypt contains documents or any other kind of treasure, and the owners fear that the church - which has been neglected over many centuries - would suffer irreversible damage were it to be undermined. So, we can all just carry on wondering :)

Tuesday, 13 November 2007 - That's Life

My mum married my rapist, my baby was in a sandwich bag, and I found my son's head on the wardrobe after he'd constructed a homemade bomb out of a large firework, stuck it in his gob, lit the fuse, and deliberately blew himself to smithereens. But hey, that's life, what can ya do?! I won a holiday though ;)

Thursday, 15 November 2007 - I want to 'ride' my bicycle!


So, what's the big deal? ;) More info here. What's this world coming to when a man can't express his feelings for his bicycle?! It's not like he was doing it out on the front yard or outside a school or something, hahaha! He's even been put on the sex offenders register for three years over this - classic! I guess it didn't consent ;)

Friday, 16 November 2007 - May I borrow your shoe?

This just keeps getting better! Yesterday's revelation of a guy being charged with breach of the peace and placed on the sex offenders register for merely showing his bicycle how much he appreciates it (in the privacy of a locked room) has sparked an outcry - all in his favour! There's a another good BBC article about it all here, in which someone made a great point about the course of action taken had it been a a woman going hard with a vibrator or whatever. "Apart from the fact that the sex toy was manufactured for the purpose, and a bicycle wasn't, I really don't see that the two acts are all that different." True that! This has all brought back memories of similar past cases involving people and rather extreme displays of affection for inanimate objects, including one guy who got fined £100 for having sex with a shoe in an Edinburgh street, and then arrested some years later for doing the same thing with a traffic cone in front of a crowd of people hehe. Earlier this month a local teenager got arrested for "simulating sex on a pavement while drunk" hahaha!

Sunday, 18 November 2007 - Forbidden inanimate love


While walking home from town last night I decided to see what the big appeal was for all these people in the paper lately. The cone didn't do it for me...		Nor did the post box...		And I decided against giving the spiked fence outside the random Russian shop a go.

Thursday, 22 November 2007 - Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to any Yanks reading this ;)

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Page Comments

Hate to point it out to you mate but you seem to be getting Glasgow-ified. Note the three pictures at the top of this page for Glaswegian behaviours...

Also - I arrive in Auld Smokey on Tuesday night... And keep Sat free if possible for some hiking!
- Davydd

Hehehe shut your face Charlot - it was!! ;)
- Aaron

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hahahaha you've been here too long already if you've started reading That's Life! hahahaha what trash ;)
- Jen

"The carving and decoration work is absolutely exquisite" bah hahaha ur funny.
- charlot

Oh u gotta get photos of ur drunken weekend - same weekend me & Lisa are down in London hehehehe
Enjoy the fun boys :D
- Jen

Hey mofo I'll be up in Edinburgh on November 28 - Decenmber 2 - we'll have to catch up!
- Davydd

that looked like fun. jealous
- charlot

It's wax these days ;)
- Aaron

good to see the lack of gel in ur hair:) keep up the good werk
- charlot

My favourite picture from your car building. Talk about Confused.
- Lisa

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Well done on building something for once :D Only took you 3 months to open the box ;) Amazed u only sliced 2 fingers too hahahaha
- Jen

Hahaha... Very funny Aaron, have you finshed rubbing the rugby result in? Or should I just remind you what happened to you losers :D
- Lisa

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Yes I don't think I'm gonna like this winter ;)
It's only just getting light when I get to work @ 7.45am and is already starting to get dark by the time I get home @ 6.45pm :(
- Jen