Heya,
I was instructed to do a blog post, so here you go:
Roslin Glen, the first time I escaped Edinburgh to do a dirty. Walking through a graveyard to get there was ominous but no one lost any body parts to the slashers – fearsome sounding tools for clearing undergrowth. We had two kinds of slasher, a short and heavy medieval weapon and a spatula for tall people.
Our group was meant to perform maintenance on a patch of trees that I heard the dirties had planted a few years ago, while others handled another patch and planted daffodil bulbs. I managed to grab a heavy slasher, but we were too quick at our work and by the time I’d cleared around three tree cylinders it seemed like the rest were neatly sorted and weeded.
Soon enough Alan (our keeper) had found us some more work doing the same thing to what was going to be a hedge. This kept us happy until lunch, sometimes chatting to each other, sometimes concentrating intensely on shredding weeds. There was a bread crisis at lunch so I had something more like an enormous canape than a sandwich, but it was tasty enough and later there was a free-for-all hunk of cheese. Looking at the block that was left I thought I could get away with a pretty huge slice, but someone pointed it out and whenever I saw that person during the rest of the day I felt guilty about my cheesy gluttony.
During lunch a wee boy set off a rocket and Frenchmen juggled hammers. Afterwards we lined up and did a scan of a patch of land for tree cylinders that hadn’t been tended. If there had been any missing people in that patch, we would have found them. That search led me to find my excellent stick, which I was very, very pleased with.
After some more hedge tending, I was shown what poohsticks was and supplied with a dud stick! The dirties may be lovely people but they are viciously competitive when it comes to that game. I’m sure Morna was using a non-regulation stick. After the day was done we marched back to the bus station, and the cyclists beat us again. After we’d packed the tools it was off to the Hoose, then beer, pie, natter, home. Another cracking Sunday of being outdoors, meeting new people and smashing plants. Lush.
Written by Rudi, Photos by John 🙂
