One World in Fancy Dress.
(Was writing this in the cafe of Scottish Parliament but Virgin Wifi not good and lost it on way home) I almost made it but on the way out an Aussie lady with a bottle of sambuca suggested, quite strongly I may say, that we should partake in a valedictory shot. Which led to another one and another one and all the goodbyes and tears of the previous half hour were to no avail as we made our way back into the core of the party. Had a bit of a catch up since and the vaguer parts of the night are being filled in by some of the other more experienced drinking compadres.
The event was the end of season Applecross Inn staff party, although no one believes it is even close to end of season. It being a fancy dress party and this being the Applecross Inn, meant there were impressive attires on view. Every one from Wally to Thelma were on display including the witches, cats and clowns and various others just as impressive. Great food, lots of drink and after the Coast Road Truckers warmed us up Glittery Johnny got the karaoke going. So a night of food, drink and terrible singing just flew by. Astronaut Aron’s Relax was well impressive, the Boss’s and my Brown Eyed Girl was pretty awful and there was no shortage of volunteers. I went as a Moroccan wearing a borrowed kaftan
before changing into an Indian kurta
before ending up at home in the kilt.
So many photos were taken that the progress was followed by the camera and karaoke. Many photos on Facebook and Elaine kindly, if that is the right word, supplied my three. Because of the sambuca I ended up with the crowd singing Hotel California, why I ended with one of the mics is usually because they find the worst singer in the crowd. Seems that is “good” karaoke. It was a fancy dress party so, although not talked, about the fuzzy idea behind costume changes was saying it is one world with all our different cultures, ideas and heritage. One is no better than the other and all are to be respected as long as they come within a general view of human decency. Seeing the young folk of today who travel and work round the world I have hope that they can deal with the many problems,especially environmental, that they are going to have to face in their lifetimes. For me I have always regarded it as a privilege to know them as they pass through Applecross. The night ended with a rousing Hey Jude for the boss before a very apt fire alarm cleared the building. Of course by this time I was well beyond redemption and the party carried on at 6/7. The theme of the night was a hug, a feeling of camaraderie with lots of good people. Seems the goodbyes were repeated three times during the evening so there were lots of tears as I say the right things to reduce travellers to break down…in a nice sort of way. Was told that there were another two at the staff house but things were extremely vague by then. There was a little run of bad luck with the chefs with a couple of cracked ribs with one and another’s car had some very severe broken ribs, discovered air bags where he never knew they were kept, but no personal damage. A fine night with conversations ranging from economics to illusions, there being many silly forgotten ones. Needless to say the problems in Applecross, Scotland and the World were sorted very quickly and easily with nothing more than a tipple to lubricate the negotiations. Huge thanks to everyone at the Inn who set up, cooked and generally organised a great night for lovely people to have a ball.
Monday was payback day and it cost a lot. There was a six-mile walk broken up by a substantial bacon, sausage and egg roll, think I was hugging chefs on Sunday, a look up to see Dan who was in doing some work on the hydraulic ram at the Turbine House, good to see all is well as it is 90kWhs weather,
a fry up, sleep and finished off the recovery with a Macaroni and Cheese tea. This coupled with the desire not to partake in any alcohol beverages for quite some time. As there was a planned trip to Edinburgh to see Fergus Ewing about fishing on Tuesday a short night’s sleep on the couch before a half three rise to catch the early train in Inverness.