It dawns on me that, as we slide into 2010 (quite literally in fact, but more on that later) I really should tie up all of the year-end cliffhangers I tossed into my previous few posts. When last you last checked in, I was battling through a bizarre and frustrating employment situation while doggedly attempting to find the True Spirit of Christmas™ in face of frustrations.
It seems only fair that, as I’m starting the new year off in incredibly good spirits, I should allow you to catch up.
…and to be perfectly honest, a bit of typing would likely do wonders for warming up my fingers. Edinburgh has had snow and ice since a week before Christmas, with temperatures only rarely venturing into the positive. Don’t get me wrong, Edinburgh in the snow is an absolutely captivating sight. It simply doesn’t change the fact that heritage tenements and sub-zero temperatures make for f*cking freezing bedfellows.
And no, my Canadian heritage should not leave me inclined to properly appreciate these frigid climes, so you can just shut your pie hole. I hail from the west coast, and it’s a well documented fact that our delicate lycra and gore-tex coated skins rarely see a flake of snow and don’t do cold. Rain, yes. We do rain. Occasionally sleet. Followed by more rain. Okay, it actually rains really quite a lot over there. But the rest, the freezing and the snowing and the ice storms, we leave for the masochists in the prairies.
(Working a treat, this; they’re warming up already.)
Speaking of work, it seems a convenient place to start. Shortly following my mid-December whinge on what was a decidedly ridiculous employment situation, I decided to extricate myself from the proceedings, there being no clear resolution yet in sight. I cut my losses and walked away, with little expectation of finding anything until the new year.
Mere days later, I was invited to an interview for an Edinburgh-based multinational seeking to hire a Technical Author. I had applied for the role some time ago, and their timing in contacting me could not have been better. I went through a set of two comprehensive interviews before the holidays, and felt very good about them in retrospect. But I was still waiting to hear back when Christmas arrived, and I had begun to doubt my chances – see the Little-Shrub-That-Could interlude.
But as it turned out, I hadn’t long to wait.
I received a job offer on Boxing Day, I start tomorrow, I’m absolutely thrilled.
With this knowledge in hand, I was able to relax and enjoy the rest of the holidays; we even went out for New Year’s Eve. As I learned only recently, the Scots go in for New Year’s in a big way – so much so that “New Year’s Eve” as a descriptive term simply isn’t sufficient to describe the extent of festivities that take place thereabouts. You don’t simply celebrate New Years here.
You celebrate Hogmanay.
Not yet knowing anyone in town, we hadn’t planned to go wild, but thought it only appropriate to at least dip our feet in the water. With this in mind, we picked up a pair of tickets for the Edinburgh Street Party on Princes Street – an excellent vantage point for watching the fireworks, and a chance to rub shoulders with the locals.
Unfortunately, I have to admit that this plan turned out to be a bit of a bust. Naively, I hadn’t appreciated just how popular this particular event was, and so was wholly unprepared when I was jammed into an enclosed space with approximately 80,000 other revellers. We did indeed rub shoulders with the locals, and a lot more besides. It was quite literally crushing, and more than a bit scary for my tastes. We ended up squeezing our way down one block of the street party, hiding in a Starbucks for 20 minutes, and then bailing out by the nearest exit. I loved the concept of a big bustling street party, but the reality of it was just nerve-wracking.
I’m happy to report that we managed to salvage our evening. We walked along the snow-packed walkways around Calton Hill and found what turned out to be a spectacular spot to watch the skies light up over Edinburgh Castle. It was an unexpected but perfect end to the night, much in the way my December goings-on were an unexpected but perfect end to 2009.
So happy new year, kids, and all the best.
Now if you’ll excuse me, tomorrow’s a work day.
