AND NOW FOR SOMETHING . . .

completely different.  Bagpipes.  Grown men in skirts.  Running with blunt logs.  Ah, yes, it must be the Queen Mary Scottish Festival.  Mom was keen to go, and the weather cooperated with one of those only-in-SoCal-in-February days.  Both the old girls looked mighty good:

They had both individual piper and band competitions.  We tried a couple of the former, but that’s a little too much torture, especially as they were being conducted on the inside promenade deck which was all hard wood and metal surfaces.  The ears said “run away, run away.”  The full band competitions were held outdoors on a lawn and were much easier on the psyche.  The judges were from Canada (2), Scotland, and Ireland, so I guess this was a pretty serious competition.  Our untrained ears thought they all sounded great. 

 

If hotdogs are an option for lunch, you-know-who will choose them every time:

We’re seated here while watching the Highland Games portion of the festival.  They threw the stone, pitched the bale over the bar, cast the weight backwards over the bar, heaved the hammer, and tossed the caber.  What is it with the Scots and moving big weights?  How many ways can you say “throw?” 

There was a sheep herding demonstration using a variety of border collies terrorizing a group of four sheep.  It was pretty cool how they responded to voice and whistle commands over great distances.  According to the trainer giving the demo, dogs either are born with the instinct to stalk sheep or they’re not, and he can tell at the very first encounter whether the dog can be trained or not to herd.  It’s useless to try to train one that lacks the desire.

In the afternoon there was a demonstration of Scottish Country Dancing (they disfavor terming it “folk” dancing since the dances are engaged in by nobility as well as common folk).  This certainly isn’t the most exciting thing to watch, but I will say that it was intricate and I doubt I could remember the steps to one dance let alone the variety they performed.

We managed to avoid the clutches of the many “craft” and Scottish-gear stalls, but no visit to the Queen Mary is complete without a souvenir pin for Mom to add to her hat, so it was off to the shops to hunt one down.

We just about wore Mom’s nearly 87-year-old legs off going around the venues and the ship, so we called it quits and headed back to West L.A. for an early Valentine’s dinner at Tlapazola.  A Cadillac marguerita and lobster enchiladas did the trick for me!  Just another winter’s day in L.A.