Scotland part 97

I don't intend to write too much about the trip to australia. It was wonderful. Nigel and Lucy's wedding was wonderful, seeing my family and friends was fantastic, the warm weather was and is missed. But for the purposes of a blog which is essentially full of anecdotes, it wasn't really the best. With one exception.

As noted, the wedding itself was great. Nigel and Lucy are an exceptionally good match for each other, it was an absolute pleasure to be there with them. Generally speaking, no one has a bad time at weddings, people are generally very happy for their friend or family, this was no exception. Thankfully, the wine provided was of excellent quality and easy to drink. A little too easy in fact.

The morning after the wedding was a little less enjoyable than the night itself. I threw up three times, once for the wine at 7am and once for the main course at about 10am. I had a 12pm coach to catch to get to byron bay. So I bravely asked my father whether he'd be willing to take me to the coach station via Lucy's parent's house so I could drop the hired tux off. He agreed.

Again, thankfully, Mr and Mrs Morgan didn't live too far away. It was clear what had to happen when we pulled up. And so my father was subjected to the sight of his first born throwing up the entree against an unfortunate tree outside the house of the bride's parent's. To his credit, dad stood by my side, tissue in hand, waiting patiently for me to finish.

Once the tux was dropped off, we resumed our journey to the coach station. In a moment of utter generosity, dad handed me one of his old jumpers and said 'here, if you're going to throw up again, don't do it in the fecking car, do it in that would you?'. I feel like we bonded there and then.

Anyways, I again write from a train on its way back from Edinburgh, having spent a couple of days working there. A collegue overheard me talking about deep-fried pizzas. She let out a little squeal and mentioned that she was a big, big fan, and that I had been misled. You can get the damn things anywhere. Just go to a fish and chip shop and choose 'pizza' off the menu. Yes folks, that's right. If you order a pizza in Edinburgh, they will deep-fry it. Order a pizza supper and it will come with chips. And they're everywhere, sometimes battered, sometimes not. To get a pizza as we know it, you would need to order an 'oven pizza'.

Extrodinary right? Well not really. The same girl who expressed a love for this 'food' went on to tell me about some of the other things she's deep fried. I won't go through the list, but the best one was a cheeseburger. She described in great detail how the chippy cut the hamburger pattie in half, stuck a piece of processed cheese in between, battered it (I'm not joking), deep fried it and served it with chips. The issue of deep fried mars bars did arise, however for some reason this was described as something that people on the west coast do and attracted little support in sophisticated eastern coast Edinburgh. For some reason the thought of battering a mars bar was disgusting, but eating a cheesburger cooked in a pool of oil was fine. I silently opened and shut my mouth a number of times during this exchange.

I couldn't beleive what I was being told. She sensed this, so she went out at lunchtime and purchased a half pizza and brought it back to the office for everyone to share. She exclaimed to one and all that she got the meal for the bargain price of a pound, and encouraged everyone to break pizza with her.

I couldn't resist. What an opportunity. The paper bag it came in was soaked in grease, the sadly unbattered pizza itself looked like it had just come out of the bath. But it had to be tried. I had 2 bites. Truly, it was awful, but that was probably my brain's reaction to my arteries instantly hardening. It tasted like salt, and turning it over I noticed a great amount of salt. I pointed this out to my new friend, to which she said 'yes, I asked for salt and vinegar'. I gave up then and there.

Everyone tucked into this pizza, which featured cheese and tomato paste as its toppings. Even Paul, whose standard lunch is a creamy pasta salad with a small mountain of salad cream squirted on top and 3 packets of crisps.

Edinburgh is a remarkably beautiful city. It's small, less than half a million remarkably friendly people, the whiskey is cheap, the entire city looks to have been built out of sandstone, it has a huge castle on top of a hill at its centre and there are bagpipes everywhere. Just be prepared to starve once you get there.