Blacking of the Bride and a lazy Sunday.

Day 4 and 5 in Fraserburgh, Saturday and Sunday 10th and 11th June.

I spent all morning on Saturday catching up with blogs and Lianne, a colleague of my sons, called by the boat. She too is a struggling actor like my son and she lives in Glasgow but originally comes from The Broch. She has given us lots of tips on where to go but sadly no launderette...so in true friendly Scottish style she has offered to take our washing home and do it for us! She is home this weekend because her friend is getting married soon and she is here to honour a timeless tradition unique to this area, called "Blacking of the Bride." The tradition is, apart from the usual hen and stag nights, that  the bride and groom have a blacking. The girls cover the bride in "yucky stuff" dress her in an old dress and veil and parade her around the town. These days a truck is used, and the friends will sit in the back of the open truck making as much noise as they can by bashing pots and clanging tins. They tour the town then tie the poor bride to be to a lamppost or some such (we did volunteer our mast) and leave her there for a while, then come back and take her home. They then all clean up and go out for a night on the town. The boys do the same but apparently get more into the mood and black the groom with more disgusting stuff such as fish guts, horse manure etc.

We had to see this so we went for a walk about five in the afternoon and heard lots of noise and shouting in the distance. We tried to find the truck and were hovering around on street corners when a local man asked if he could help, were we looking for something? We replied that we were waiting for the blacking of the bride, did he know what that was. "Aye" he replied. (No one says yes up here, only Aye and Nay and Nay Bother.) We did finally catch a fleeting glimpse of the bride to be as the truck wizzed past; Josh just managed to get a picture.
Lianne spotted us and waved as they disappeared up the road with much whooping and banging!

Sunday dawned sunny at last, blue sky, at least for a while. I went for a long walk on the beach up as far as the large sand dune, known locally as Tiger Hill.
Sand dunes on a sunny day!
 
We had booked a table for 2.30 at The Tufted Duck, a restaurant in the nearby village of St. Comb. We enjoyed a leisurely Sunday lunch in lovely surroundings and the food was very good. We had a brief stroll round the village and then got a taxi back to the harbour. A very lazy Sunday.

A lane, St Combs, with cemetery on left and the Tufted Duck just visible on right.

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