An All Too Brief Highland Fling

Reflecting this morning on how fleeting some moments in life can be. Jenny and Josh's wedding ceilidh was this weekend, they are over in Europe for a few weeks from Sydney and had a celebration for everyone who didn't make it to their big day last year. It was to be the highlight of my social calendar for the last 6 weeks, I love ceilidhs, I never get to go to them, and I knew I'd see a few people I'd not seen for years and years. We got stovies with oatcakes and cranachan for pudding. I even made a movie for Spencer's benefit, he tested me on all things Scottish every morning at the front desk and I feel the need to show him that sometimes I do live up to my heritage.

And now it's all over and it'll no doubt be another 5 years before I see most of these people again. I mean, it's not as if our lives are connected anymore. But still, there's something very poignant about such brief encounters with people who were such a large part of your distant past. Perhaps even more so as it was in the Hillside Village Hall. It's at least 10 years since I've been in there, it was the scene of all the 21sts if you were a Hillsider. (I was always on the fringe of the Hillside gang, living in Montrose, and therefore I went for the obligatory 18th in the back room of the Black Abbot instead.)

They had a wedding blessing the next day in the Hillside Church. I'm not sure the last time I sat through a whole Church of Scotland service. It was thought-provoking. I think I'm largely in agreement with many of the Bible's teachings but I have an issue with the language used and as a natural sceptic, with the need to have faith in an almighty God. But that's another discussion entirely. All of these beliefs and traditions and places are at my very core. Of course I've spent my whole life running away from them but they catch up with you in the end. Ultimately, you need to make some peace with what it means to have grown-up in a small town on the north-east coast of Scotland.