Second day on Stornoway dawned bright and early. Weather was nice and sunny with a light breeze.
After breakfast was fussing about in my room sorting out photos and writing my first entry for this blog.
Liz came over at around half ten and me, her and anne decided to head out for a walk around the island.
Alright so some things to clarify. In Stornoway, there is very strict sunday observance. That means that basically people here honour th sabbath to the T. You are not allowed to hang out your washing on a Sunday and basically there are no shops or businesses open on a Sunday save for a petrol station, a chinese-malaysian takeaway and an indian restaurant. In th past they even forbade their children to play or watch television on a Sunday!
The most interesting of these is the petrol station which, get this, sells guns and hunting knives. Talk about irony. So basically stornowaynians appear to be a highly religious lot. The free presbyterian church has got quite a high standing on the island, but surprisingly as I have been informed by my equally cynical housemate, that the biggest building on the island is apparently home to the Free masons. For those of you who don't know what they are.....read da vinci code and google it. Quite an interesting history behind this lot.
Well so anyways, we went for a stroll down from the hospital to town which was a fair 20 minutes walk and although all the shops were closed it was quite fun looking into the darkened window shops and see what retail therapies would be available for us. Lots of shops selling tweed. An arts centre which shows movies ever so rarely....apparently in the following week ' Journey to the centre of the Earth' and ' Dark Knight' are coming to the shows of Stornoway...whoohoo.....Looks like I will be spending more time with my DVDs and laptop.
And surprise surprise, there's actually a Boots, supersavers, woolworth, 2 computer shops and a couple of other small enterprises. I suppose I will be checking those out one of these days. An ineresting thing that I found about Stornoway was that 1) Cars here are SERIously cheap ( 700 pounds gets u a 2yr old audi...nae too bad really) 2) Pple attempting to sell their cars park them along the roadside and put up notices with details about the last MOT etc. on one of the side windows. Interesting way of doing businessm, but I suppose it must work if pple are still doing it.
After having a ramble around town we decided to head up towards Lews castle which is open a hill on the other side of the river that runs through Stornoway. Unfortunately, for safety reasons the castle is no longer open to tourists or locals to have a walk around inside. Which is a shame i suppose but the grounds of the castle are a REALLY nice walk. Nice greenery with good vantage points along the way overlooking the bay.
After that we started wandering along some paths that led along the bay and got to see some really gorgeous views of th landscap the sea and perhaps in our delusional state of missing Aberdeen we fathomed that we could actually see the mainland. Probably not but still it was just breathtaking the scenery that was around.
Yeah, interesting point of note. People in Stornoway are really friendly. Whilst they huff and puff up the hills they say hi to you in between gasps of breaths. hmm...so I suppose we had to discard what our parents told us about not speaking to strangers and say a polite ' hello ' back. It was a refreshing brand of niceness that we city folk are not used to I suppose. Saying hi to some random stranger in aberdeen, you would either be asked for a price quotation or be speed dialled to cornhill.
After our lovel 2h walk, we headed back home and just sat around the rest of the afternoon chatting. Its strange and somehow reassuring when you discover that pple that you were originally not close to have got such similar thinking to you in terms your take on certain undesirables or annoyablers in your class. I suppose it's reasurring that it's not only you who find these certain pple irksome, but in fact it's the majority of the class that finds them irksome. I suppose it proves the point that these pple naturally ooze irksomeness that effects just about anyone who comes in contact with them. Poor souls.
For dinner, Duncan Goudie, one of our fellow Aberdeen mates who's been exiled to Stornoway for GP came up the road to join us for food sampling from the malaysian chinese takeaway that was just down the road. Apparently, Ian Wilson another of our mates who's also doing GP is currently missing TV and football quite a bit and was thus unable to make it up the road to visit us. Sure hope, we don't have to clerk him into psych ward for anything.
The malaysian chinese takeaway is an alright establishment. I suppose it does get a bit of faff from the locals for actually being opn on a Sunday, but judging by the number of pple there and their phones ringing off the hook whilst we were there, I could say it was actually a sound enough business decision and that pple here really are quite thankful for them being open on a Sunday.
Sunday in Stornoway is a really interesting experience. It's not wholely religious or anything. But I suppose it gives people time to sit down, and relax or do the one thing that is not frowned upon by the church which is going for walks. ( yes! we're assimilating into the way of life here!).
And I suppose people do need to sit down and relax, especially after a frantic Saturday swarming about Tesco and Co-op trying to stock up their larders for Sunday! So yes, Sundays in stornoway...are interesting after all. In a quaint insular way.
The streets of Stornoway on a Sunday
Lews Castle
Roosting Rook
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