On the Fringes of Scotland

 

Alright; now about Scotland, the next item I crossed off my bucket list a couple of weeks ago. I had a lovely time visiting Edinburgh and the highlands, even though it was a fairly short trip at less than three full days. I'll break up the visit into three parts: the food, the highlands, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Edinburgh Castle

The Food 

Let's start at a very good place to start: breakfast. The pic above shows a typical Scottish breakfast, comprising the usual eggs and bacon, sausages, tomato, potatoes, a nice and crispy slice of mushroom, and toast, all of which I was well acquainted with. The new entrants were haggis (the brown circular cutlet-like piece), and black pudding, which despite its name turned out to be a black circular cutlet-like piece. Now here is where you vegetarians (all two of you, yes) stop reading and skip to the highlands. Black pudding is made from pork or beef blood, fat, and oatmeal, and is as sinful as you imagine. It's also quite tasty, despite being a bit dry.

Haggis is a mixture of sheep heart, liver, and lungs coupled with oatmeal, onions, and spices. You can eat it like a cutlet in the above picture, or with 'neeps and tatties' as in the pic on the right. Now these are actually cunningly disguised turnips and potatoes, which you discover later, much to your chagrin. The Scots call haggis a pudding too, but don't believe them. This isn't the pudding your mom fed you in India when you were all cold and feverish. What's more, you should be in the highlands by now. 

 Scotland offers other kinds of food as well, like this plate of fish and chips for the wife's dinner, and this nice bit of steak for the ever-hungry teenage boy. Said wife was also very happy with the devilishly well-made eggs she had for breakfast, and wound up skipping both lunch and dinner that day.

Fish, chips, and strangely enough, peas

 

 

 

 

Deviled eggs with the inevitable haggis below

 I would be remiss if I did not include the wonderful pulled pork roll we consumed at this appropriately titled restaurant, Oink. You decide your size, you pick your bread, choose your stuffing - which includes the omnipresent haggis, of course - and pick your sauce. You then plonk down if a seat's available, and dissolve into a state of bliss until you lick the sauces from your fingers and your stomach congratulates you on a job well done.

 

You know what would be remiss too, don't you? Oh, you do. Much to my surprise, you can't ask for Scotch in Scottish restaurants. Nor can you insist on single malt with a splash of ice, like you do in every Indian Bar and Restaurant ever. You have to go with whiskey, making sure you pronounce the 'e'. If you are a connoisseur like me, you can ask for a flight of whiskeys, sip all of them, and promptly forget the names of each one of them. They were all very good though, ranging from the less smokey to the very peatey. I slept quite peacefulley that night after the whiskeys.

The Highlands

Scotland is divided into two, as per our tour guide and bus driver, Neil. The highlands, which ye'll take, and the lowlands which I'll take to make sure I be in Scotland afore ye. Stretching from slightly north of Edinburgh to pretty much every other part of the country, the highlands are mountainous, sparsely populated, and comprise forests, castles, coastlines, and thirty three thousand lakes, called Lochs just to confuse the average tourist. Now the average tourist would make a beeline for Loch Ness, since they would have heard of Nessy, the monster that lives there. Not us though, the clever tourists that we are. Being brought up on a steady diet of Tintin comics, we headed to Loch Lomond, the closer (and more affordable) tour offered by Rabbie's. The lake and the surrounding hills are drop dead gorgeous, and is absolutely a must-visit if you are in the area. 

Inveraray, north-west of Loch Lomond

 We also got to visit multiple castles, some of which you may have seen on shows like Outlander or Game of Thrones, or in movies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In fact, Doune Castle has a souvenir shop that sells not just Python t-shirts and hats, but coconuts as well. 

Doune Castle, of Outlander & Winterfell fame (just S1E1 though)

Kilchurn Castle, stronghold of the Campbell Clan

 Cows in the highland have a shaggy mane, powerful horns, and are called Coos, to make them look cuter to tourists. They are apparently the oldest breed of cattle in the world, and have survived for centuries as Malayalees hadn't made the long voyage over yet. The three we met were called Hamish, Honey, and Baxter (the Efficient one). 

 

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

August 1947 witnessed two historic events. One was the completion of a 4300-mile long voyage on a wooden raft by Thor Heyerdahl, and the other was the start of the Fringe Festival at Edinburgh. The story goes that the Edinburgh International Festival was created to celebrate and enrich European cultural life in the wake of the Second World War. Eight theater groups who were not invited to this festival went ahead and did their own thing on the fringes of this event, thus establishing the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which now attracts millions of people from all over the world.  The festival organizers are committed to include anyone with a story to tell and a venue willing to host them. This makes August a crazy time to visit the city though, with streets packed with tourists, locals, and artists.

Street Performer at the Fringe Festival

The Royal Mile, connecting Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood House

We attended an hour of stand-up comedy where five performers took turns to come up on stage for ten minutes each, which was a lot of fun. We then went to KC Shornima's show at a bunker nearby, which we thoroughly enjoyed. I'd highly recommend checking her out - she's really good! The last was a rock show by this tribute band from Australia, called 27 Club. They play cover versions of songs from Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse, all of whom died at 27. 

And Finally...

 I loved Scotland. The people were friendly and welcoming, the food was great, and the weather was just perfect during our visit. It's a very inclusive country, which actively invests in human rights. They were the first country in the world to protect, in law, the right to access free period products for everyone who needs them. I was pleasantly surprised to find tampons and pads in restrooms, marked as free. Their LGBTQI+ community seems vibrant and active, with a clear voice during the Fringe festival. They take pride in their heritage and culture without making a huge deal out of it. I'd visit again, in a heartbeat.

No Land

 I run.

 

Run from messages

Messages that are forwarded

Without thought

As received

Received by warm minds

Eager minds

Eager to agree

Agree to hate

Hate the other

The other who is 

Not as pure

Not as pristine. 

I run.

 

Run from arguments

From conflict

From debate

From questions, and

From answers.

There's no land I haven't run to

No land without hate

Without fear

Without being othered.

 

Yet, 

I run. 

 

 

 

San Diego Comic Con 2025

 I checked off two items from my bucket list in the past thirty days: attending San Diego Comic-Con and visiting Scotland. Interestingly, the most common question I got asked about each of these wasn't the reason for my visit, nor was it something I did out there. Most folks who have a peripheral knowledge about Comic-Con ("civilians", as my friend the illustrious Satya calls them) asked who I was going as. Most folks who know one particular thing about Scotland asked which distillery I was visiting. While I wasn't there to cosplay or tour a distillery, both trips were amazing, and I'd love to go back.

 My visit to Comic-Con was all thanks to my buddy Satya, who is well-known to pretty much all the dealers out there, as well as to quite a few of the major artists. There was a long line of people, rivaling the one for George Lucas, waiting to get face time with the illustrious one and I imagine offer him multi-million dollar deals for his prized comic art collection. I had to beat them off with a rolled up poster so that the man could negotiate a copy of the first page art for the comic book you've never heard of but would have watched the movie version. To be fair though, Satya says his collection is small fry compared to those of the passionate folks he hangs out with.

Satya negotiating one of his multi-million dollar deals

 

 So anyway, since I had a dealer pass courtesy Satya's friends, I was able to get in early Wednesday afternoon before the civilian throng arrived. This turned out to be a huge deal, as I could saunter along the entire Con (as we in the industry call it) and look at all the unsullied booths without having to fight through hordes of plant zombies. That said, we were asked to not loiter in front of bigger displays like the Star Wars area or the DC booth, and were specifically told not to buy anything as it would put the general public at a disadvantage. However, that changed from 6pm when the hall was open for preview, and the masses started trundling in.

Alright, about cosplays. Sure enough, they were on full display throughout the Con. People outside the venue without tickets like this guy in a Deadpool costume driving around the block every ten minutes, to Ninja Turtles lining up to enter the venue, to these ladies who were apparently a version of Red Sonja far removed from the Brigitte Nielsen avatar I knew from my childhood. And oh, those plant zombies showed up too.

  You also had the usual bunch of religious folks protesting outside the venue, as comics are obviously bad for you and a sure shot way to get you into hell. This cosplay didn't make me smile as much as the others, strangely enough.

What was the best part of the Con? I'd like to think there were two - first, all the panels I attended were awesome, with some great discussions. I loved listening to these artists talk about their inspirations, their creative processes, what worked and didn't work for them. Their interactions with each other, responses to the audience questions, and just being a regular person geeking out at a convention, happy to be among like-minded souls and interacting with fans made them seem approachable and... human.

Panel with Eddie Campbell, Craig Thompson, Lee Marrs, Thien Pham, etc

Panel with David Dastmalchian, Eric Powell, et al

  I looked up books written by authors I hadn't heard of before, and have been reading them after getting back. I loved Thien Pham's Family Style, and was floored by Harold Schechter & Eric Powell's Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? The movie versions of the Ed Gein story (Psycho, Texas Chainsaw..., etc) pale in comparison to his real life.

 The second highlight was one of the main reasons I attended SDCC: getting to meet some of my favorite artists. I loved taking pictures with them, interacting with them, and getting their books autographed. Some of these were easy enough, but others required spending money AND standing in lines to get a chance at standing in lines to get their signature. 

Lunch with the incredibly talented Craig Thompson of Blankets fame

With Brian K Vaughan, he of Saga, Y: The Last Man, Paper Girls, Runaways & more

Daniel Clowes, creator of Ghost World, Monica, etc 

With the awesome Emil Ferris, of My Favorite Thing Is Monsters

 I didn't tell my kids about this earlier as I wanted to surprise them with the actual signed comics. So getting Brian K Vaughan, Bryan Lee O'Malley, and Neil Druckmann's signatures for Rachu, and the legendary Frank Miller for Karan was absolutely the highlight of my Comic Con.

Neil Druckman

After getting Frank Miller's signature

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life! 

Brian K Vaughan apparently knows me very well

With Tom King, writer of the Vision books and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow

Jeph Loeb signing (and doodling) Hush for me

The doodle bit is interesting, as it's an additional little gesture from the artist towards the fan. As I understand it, the vanilla signature on a book is the baseline. Artists often prefer that you ask to make it out to someone, as then the chances of you trying to sell the book with the signature on eBay are low. The next best thing is to get an additional little doodle on the page, which adds pizzazz. You can see some of these in the pics above.

The artist who drew my favorite Alan Moore comic, From Hell, Eddie Campbell

 I got back home with a suitcase full of books, a long list of comics to read, and a heart full of thanks to Satya and his friends, who were kind enough to accommodate a wide-eyed civilian in their midst for a few days at this mecca of geekdom.