April 19-21 2013, Edinburgh Awaited

If you read Mark’s post on his blog you will know already that we were all in Edinburgh a weekend ago to see Leigh collect her graduation award. A mere formality with a lot of pomp and circumstance to cement a fact already existent, Lei has her degree.

We stayed in a Premier Inn on the Leith Waterfront, an area if Edinburgh still undergoing a massive amount of transformation. I can highly recommend the hotel. The staff were pleasant, the location is excellent and if you can get. View facing the sea it is very worthwhile.

In close reach are supermarkets and a mall so there is enough quick fix entertainment as the mall has a cinema, and Leith has the botanical gardens nearby.

The Day

This was Leigh’s weekend and as such Markie took the brunt share of children’s duties wherever he could ably supplemented by very attentive grandparents and great-grandparents who also gathered for the event.

Leigh looked wonderful in her gown and had a brace of images taken which are available on Flickr in Markie’s account or as a one minute video on YouTube.

The ceremony in itself was quite long and young children easily get bored. Elliott was quiet as he was fascinated by the lighting but Ben needed a lot of attention and a bit of time out. Even thou we tried to keep him quiet he talks loudly and doesn’t understand the need to whisper.

Most of the people about us seemed to understand that, but the woman in front who had a big old stick wedged between her wrinkly cracks was quite annoyed and gave us a lot of Paddington Bear Hard Stares and shushed us.

(Markie-rant)I have a bit of a gripe about this. The event is advertised as being for families and yet they still ask you to keep the kids quiet so they can do the ceremonial bollocks.

Why?

Surely if you want to have a few of the ceremonies for families make them friendly to families. Allow an area for children to sit with soft toys or just an area where it is accepted there will be kids and some glee.

Also, it is a bit much asking everyone to stand for the ruling OU personnel, again, why?

These people are paid to do their job, they are paid very well to do their job, and they are paid from the fees we pay for the courses. I am fine with that, but why should I stand for them? That is just cowing to a tradition and not even a relevant one. I don’t want to stand for a bunch of, primarily middle class bored white men, when they enter.

We are paying to be there, we have to pay for the gown hire, we have to pay to stay nearby, etc. They are being paid to be there and have accommodation and likely food as well and they want our respect just because a tradition says they are more important than us plebs in the audience.

I remained seated, I would expect them to stand for the graduates, not the other way around. I am happy to stand for the guest speaker receiving an award, but for people doing their job…

(End rant).

That all aside it was a great day.

Family Time

On the Sunday we stopped at Nick and Laura’s house to see Fraser, Matthew, Susannah, Alex, Nick, Keith, Laura, Anne, Andrew and Morag.

Once again the kids all seemed to love playing games together and it is far too infrequent we get to see them as they are growing so fast.