At Memphis Scottish Festival, a large, boisterous man hustles me into a front row seat in what he tell me is “The History Tent.” I am alarmed to find myself equipped with a sheaf of lyrics to Jacobite love songs. I manage a tuneless drone along to “Over the Sea to Skye” and then start […]
Tag Archives | scottish ambassador
Mosey on down to Kittrell, TN
At Memphis’ Scottish Festival, I get talking to a blonde woman in an olde stylee milkmaid type get up. She has the most Dukes of Hazzard accent I have yet heard in my time in Tennessee. I am delighted. I didn’t think accents like this were real. She asks me where I’m from. “Glasgow,” I […]
Eavesdropping in Memphis
Downtown Memphis is a half and half kind of place. Actually, three quarters and a quarter is more accurate. The majority of buildings is run down and ramshackle, while a select few are all slicked up for the tourists. A sign outside the Flying Fish instructs passers by to “Get Your Tails in Here” for […]
The clever one
This morning I got an email from my sister, and was once again reminded that we are very, very different. She spent her morning, voluntarily, at a museum coin club. I spent it suffering the aftereffects of enthusiastic wine consumption at a party last night in Toronto. My sister and I are a year and […]
Hark, the pies are calling
How to choose a Highland Games. Rummaging online, I stumble upon Scottish shenanigans in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and am intrigued. Obviously, Kalamazoo is appealing because it has an amusing name. I have not learned from my risky trip to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, or the tedious excursion to Boring, Oregon. The website increases my excitement […]
Morag, Official Possum of Little Scotland
In honour of the fact that The Scottish Ambassador blog had an equal number stumbling upon it when searching for “possum” as “Scottish Ambassador” this week, I’m treating you all to a photo of the world’s cutest baby orphan ‘possum/opossum. I have no recollection of ever writing about possums in these posts, but I am […]
Hielan coo picture of the week – double shot
Two bedraggled Glaswegian coos! Saw these rather decrepit looking beasties when Adrian and I were marshalling the 2010 Forget Me Not Walk for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research in Pollok Park in Glasgow a few months back. By the time we’d been hauled out of bed on a Sunday morning, manhandled into vast, tent-like luminous marshall […]
Hielan Calf picture of the week
For the second captivating installment of this thrilling series, here’s a wee Hielan’ calf with her maw, also in a field in Tennessee. It was a very damp and muddy field, full of retired US army guys who were a bit too enthusiastic about drunkenly waving round broadswords for my liking. Despite the damp and […]
Hielan Coo picture of the week
I probably won’t actually get around to posting one coo picture every week, but I don’t have a whole lot else to do with myself over here in Berlin (other than puzzling over the numbers of bear-shaped meat products on sale and finishing the Scottish Ambassador book), so maybe I will. Anyway, this is a […]
A visit to the Luftfracht
Berlin, Day 6 Excitingly, today was the day we got to trek out to the northwest of the city to Tegel airport to retrieve the boxes we’d shipped. I was sure the message had said we were to collect them from the “Luftwaffe”, but Adrian thought this was unlikely. After a friendly German in a […]
