When the dips are down...

It is a beautiful, bright day, and the football is on. The streets below are filled with drinking, chanting men who to me look more like howler monkeys than human beings. Judging by the colours of the scarves of the away team fans, Hearts is today playing Celtic.

Normally there are no problems when the games are on, but normally the weather is also cold and wet, which dulls people's desire to brain one another. Today, with the high blue sky and the bold sun, the men seem to want to grow antlers and knock their heads together. Some gather in the park across the street, and occasionally one will leap the fence and run toward the pavement where a heckling opponent taunts him. But the game is about to start so they leave their half-empty bottles scattered in the park (rubbish bin - what's that?) and make their way to the grounds. Soon the streets will be empty but if I open my window I will hear the bulge of sound that is the singing of thousands of men who believe themselves to be filled with pride and strength. Our team. Us. We are better than you. A good number of these men have guts so large they haven't seen their own dicks for at least a decade.

Some men seem to need to war - they need some kind of conflict, even if it is half in jest. Much of the football conflict is leftover from the "Troubles" when the Protestant and Catholics were blowing each other up in Northern Ireland. The teams' supporters lean religiously one way or the other and use this as an excuse for hatred. It is these men who remind me that humans are nothing more than animals, working on instinct: food, sex, sleep, guard territory, fight, food, sex...

I have forgotten to buy milk. I have two options. Wait for another 30 minutes and duck out while the game is on, or chance a trip at least an hour after the game is over. I will likely go for the first option, as after the game many of them will head to the nearby pubs, and depending on the result, there may be fights.

In comparison to hiding out from the hooligans, Friday night was a dream. Of course right after my wonderful time at the Scottish Storytelling Centre I bolted for home, avoiding the brazenly drunk costumed folk who were clamouring about the streets.

It was on Friday night that I heard story-teller and ballad singer Stanley Robertson. His accent is so strong, but I couldn't describe it as "thick" because that's a Glaswegian accent. The Glasgow accent is blue collar grinding steel, heat and strength. Stanley comes from Aberdeenshire and there is the bulbous gurgle of the North Sea in his language. He says Samhain (pronounced saw-huin) in such as way that the night and all of its mystery is sewn together before you.

I am utterly fascinated by the process of story telling. I love the subtle power of it, the way it feels like the teller is stoking a fire in the minds of the listeners. The storytelling centre sometimes offers workshops and I am determinded to take one, in order to start learning this craft. The other magic thing I desire is to learn to play the harp. But I can hear now that it is my chance to buy milk, so off I go.

Happy Samhain!

A most glorious Samhain to you all. I shall be attempting a trip to the Storytelling Centre tonight (if it's not sold out), to hear tales of the dark season.

This picture is by Kundry. For me it is the perfect Halloween, full of shadow and bulbs of warm light, a full moon and plenty of magic. For anyone who is as amazed as I am at what this woman can do with Photoshop, Kundry now has a Deviant Art page and folks can order her work - this Halloween one is available as a postcard, which is cool.

For some of us, the New Year starts tonight!

Still searching for the perfect spell

The Samhain season is never long enough for me. If I could stretch October and November to cover half the year, I would. Just to hold onto this feeling of eerie suspension, when the rhythm of the world slows to a throb. I love the sweet, rich scent of decay, the way the earth feels darker and thicker while the air grows thin, the wild, cold-loving old crone of my heart. I love the darkness, and all the promises that hide there.

Reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which is ideally suited for autumn consumption. The story and language feel like they have been brewed, strange, unknown ingredients perfuming the reader’s mind. One of my favourite descriptions - a portion of painting in a monastery, in which there existed “all the animals of Satan’s bestiary…brutes with six-fingered hands, sirens, hippocentaurs, gorgons, harpies, incubi, dragopods, minotaurs, lynxes, pards, chimeras, cynophales who darted fire from their nostrils, crocodiles, polycaudate, hairy serpents, salamanders, horned vipers, tortoises, snakes, two-headed creatures whose backs were armed with teeth, hyenas, otters, crows, hydrophora with sawtooth horns, frogs, gryphons, monkeys, dog-heads, leucrota, manticores, vultures, paranders, weasels, dragons, hoopes, whales, scitales, amphisbenae, iaculi, dipsases, green lizards, pilot fish, octopi, morays and sea turtles. The whole population of the nether world seemed to have gathered to act as vestibule, dark forest, desperate wasteland of exclusion…”

Looking forward to Tuesday’s showing of The Phantom of the Opera – the 1925 silent film staring Lon Chaney. The screening, at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall, will feature live organ accompaniment. I hope they make the room very dark. I want to be chilled, magic fingers of macabre sweeping so softly up my spine, stopping just below my ear, so that instinctually - obediently - I lean back my head to expose my neck.

Wednesday evening shall include ghostly tales and songs, as part of the Scottish Storytelling festival. Thursday I’ll digest my fears and recover with more stories during Afro-Celtic night, an evening dedicated to the rhythm of words and drums.

I am of two minds at the moment. I feel I need to get out more, do more, see more. But I also just want to sit. Find some graveyard and just stay all night, in the company of shadows and friends.