Goodbye and thank you for the haddock!

#14 the deep fried marsbar

I think no further explanations needed.

#13 trying to fight an Aberdeenian

Picking a fight with locals is never a really good idea. From Fort Williams to Dundee, from Orkney to the Borders, one will always find a few people, most likely drunk, to get into some nice physical interactions with using punches and kicks. In Glasgow one might get a particular bad beating due to the roughness of the town, but if there is any place, where one might get punched to death in a fight, it's Aberdeen. The Glasvegian might fight dirty or with weaponry, but the Aberdeenian is much larger, more healthy, less drunk and infinitely stronger. With his large hands he normally works at the docks and the local diet isn't so grim as in other places. So these grey giants can tear a man's heart out, once someone provokes them. The ultimate provocation is to declare Aberdeen to be anything but a hard and tough place. Never mention its fair beaches. Its beautiful gulf courses. Its amazing hinterlands. Or its fairly healthy looking maidens. Just nod in silence and agree with the Aberdeenian in everything and he might let you live.

Aberdeen the Granite

According to ancient Asian wisdom particular building materials create particular energy fields and therefore change the mood and behaviour of inhabitants. The people of Aberdeen weren't really bothered with Feng-Shui, when the used the extensive ressources of granite nearby to build their town. Granite is certainly not a welcoming and warm substance. It looks hard, it feels hard and it fits perfectly to the grey sky typical for the Scottish seasons. In rare cases of sunshine it glitters prettily, but this only helps to underline the harsh greyness once the sun it gone.
Aberdeen is called the Granite or the Silver City. It sure is granite, almost every building in town is made out of massive grey stone bricks. Somehow its citizens look similar: large, grey and mostly hard faced. People who work in the harbour or on the oil rigs. Aberdeen also has a large community of guest workers from all kinds of places, but the most present one is the Nigerians. What on Earth must bring people from the Tropics all the way to this grey place next to a grey sea far far in the North? Money of course. Aberdeen will have a few more decades with it, but once the oil runs out, and the clock for that is already ticking, this will become a really, really depressing place.

#12 The Tray bridge disaster

"Tand, Tand, ist das Gebilde von Menschenhand..."
These are the immortal words of Theodor Fontane, the great german poet who was a proclaimed lover of Scotland and these lines come from his most famous poem called "Die Brück' am Tay". Loosely the sentence translates "rubbish, rubbish, is this construction made by human hands" and rubbish it was. It was so rubbish that the construction, a gigantic train bridge spanning the river Tay collapsed while a passenger train drove over it. None of the 72 passengers survived when the train fell into the cold waters on the 28th December 1879. Only a year before the bridge had been opened in a pompous ceremony and was hailed as one of the greatest achievement in engineering in British history. It ended up in the history books as one of its greatest disasters. The main designer, Thomas Bouch, had been completely oblivious to the strong forces a storm might confront the tall metal construction with and missjudged a great many details that lead to the disaster. A committee concluded the bridge was "badly designed, badly built, and badly maintained".

# 11 the tragic loss of the lifeboat Mona

Some stories come not by moving towards things but rather by going away from them. And so some cruel telling of naval disaster comes to us not at windy shores or dangerous cliffs, but in front of a comfortable fireplace in the hills south of Stirling. That is as much far away from the sea as one can get in Scotland. In front of the warm glowing coals we sit with Mister Wilkie, the father of John Wilkie, our seasoned mountain guide. Mister Wilkie has been working on lifeboats off the east coast of Scotland for a few decades and so he knows all of their disasters. When looking further into his stories, we found this particular story to be the most compelling.
In a cold December night 1959, the lifeboat Mona and its crew of eight were called out into a storm to rescue the North Carr lightship that was adrift in severe stormy conditions. The Mona headed out straight into the fierce storm. At 4.48 it sent its last message. A helicopter was sent after the two ships in the morning. The North Carr and its crew were found and saved a few hours later. The Mona was found capsized on Buddon Sands. All its crew members were dead.
In the years between 1935 and 1959, the Mona and its different crews managed to save 108 lives from certain death. This was the price that was paid for the courage of the crews.
But there is an interesting postscriptum: in 2006, some lifeguards took the old hull of the Mona to Cockenzie harbour and burned the remain in some sort of Viking funeral. They were doing this to exorcise the evil spirits, that apparently led to the disaster almost 50 years ago...

#10 for Britain

This is the 4th company of the Blackwatch, an almost exclusive Scottish battle force. The lads on the image just escaped death by bayonet, shrapnel, bullet, gas, artillery and what other niceness the trenches of World War I had to offer. Mysteriously enough and despite their ongoing rejection of the idea of British rule a disproportional high amount of Scots signed up to fight for the Empire in this war. The English generals gave them special treatment, such as being in the vanguard and so the Scots also died in significant higher numbers then their fellow comrades from south of the Borders.
With Britain being still a bit of a warmonger, though in much small proportions then in the good old days, there is always the chance for any brave Scot to sign up for armed duty to get killed in some shite hole on the other side of the planet. Update: If you don't fancy the army, you can also die for Britain as a civilian. Just follow the example of some adventurous brits, who didn't take a closer look at the map when booking their beach holiday in Kenia. The Somali militia could easily walk over the border, gun down a few infidels and be back home for tea and evening prayer.

Dundee the Fair

Every tourist guide that can be purchased outside of Britain makes the same crucial and cruel mistake by downplaying the beauty of Scotland's pretty little harbour town Dundee. Most of them don't even mention more about this pretty place then the notorious Tay Bridge disaster and possibly the decaying state of the city's industry. But what mistake! Why not mention the pitoresque streets around the university district? Its excellent sea food restaurant? Its contribution to the world of gaming with the infamous carjacking adventure "Grand Theft Auto"? Its newly done riverside walk ways? Its gigantic Primark shop, that towers over more puny shops in the city's shopping heart and offers a wide array of cheapest clothing sewn together in the exotic Indian province of Tamil Nadur by skilled children? It's hearty pubs along the marina, where people held up the tradition of karaoke while still wearing amazing garments and haircuts from the late 70ties?
Dundee was also the home of the world's worst poet ever: William Topaz McGonnagall. He wrote these glass shattering lines about Dundee the Fair:

Oh, Bonnie Dundee, I will sing in thy praise,
A few but true simple lays,
Regarding some of your beauties of the present day
and virtually speaking, there's none can them gainsay.

Ouch.

#9 being made into a purse

In the otherwise completely uninteresting Lothian Police Museum on Edinburgh's High street, there is a grim little item at display: a tiny purse made out of human skin. This is not the result of a crime, but the result of the punishment of a criminal that was part of an infamous serial killer duo called Burke and Hare. Mister Burke and Mister Hare were two Irishmen, who came over to work in construction in the 1820s'. In their lodging-house was a great deal of foreigners doing exactly the same. One night they were confronted with the sudden death of a house mate of theirs, while drinking with him. When faced with their duty to send the corpse of the poor soul back to its family in Ireland, Burke and Hare found a much more profitable solution. They sold the body to the local medical college who had a constant yet unofficial demand for bodies to study the human anatomy. With this one transaction they made more then a worker normally did in a year and so the two decided to make a good business out of this. They hung around their accommodation for more cases of illness and death, but their fellow lodgers just wouldn't suffer from mortal illness. They decided to become one themselves. A good night of drinking with the generous Burke and Hare would quite often lead for the victim to be pinned down to the ground by Hare, while Burk would hold the nose and mouth shut until death arrived. Till now this way of killing is known as "burking". Burke and Hare made a small fortune with producing bodies for the thriving medical research, especially a famous physician by the name of Robert Knox. The numbers do vary, but at least 15 people had their very last drink with the killers. Their killing spree came to an abrupt halt, when they tried to kill an sturdy Irish woman, who resisted so hard that they had to bludgeon her to death. Their next door neighbours found the unsellable corpse under a bed and the police arrested the murderers swiftly. However, due to a lack of evidence, the lord advocate decided to offer Hare immunity if he would make a complete testimony against Burke. Hare agreed to this without hesitating and so Burke was send to the gallows shortly after. His execution was attended by more then 30,000 people and his body was then publicly dissected in the medical college. Several pieces of Burke started to circulate as trophies around Edinburgh and so did our wonderful little purse, that a man of refined taste had made to store his business cards.

#8 the wrong sign

In the beginning of "Die Hard: With a Vengance" the hero is being forced to carry a rather racist sign through wrong area. Some friends of our adventurers suggested a similar thing. This would result in "being proper beaten to death, not just comically injured" (Ruth Marsh). Incredible, what the right thing in the right location can do. This right spot would be somewhere in eastern Glasgow, a merry neighbourhood with a male life expectancy of 58.

Obviously there is place for improvement here. If you want to do this yourself, please make it much larger. Also, hold it over your head and attract the attention of the local population. If you want to take it all the way down into hell: please jump up and down and shout these lines: When I see the Celtic, All I see are Neds they just cant get enough they just cant get enough burberry hats ,, scarfs and gloves oh they just cant seem to get enough of... bur bur bur bur burberry bur bur bur bur bur bur burberry. There is plenty of space for musical improvisation, when you think shouting is too crude. Maybe give it some wagnerian flavour, for once the local Neds see you, it will be only a matter of minute before you are uncomically cut into pieces with razors.

Edinburgh the Undead

Thousands of tourists flood the streets of Edinburgh on every given day of the year to take tens of thousand of photos. That's an avalanche of millions of pictures throughout the year and oh boy, so much to be photographed: ancient gates, ancient cannons, ancient walls, ancient yards, ancient places of murder, ancient markets and a few museums with a lot more ancient thing in them. You might get the idea by now, Edinburgh is a place with a good dose of the past. There is so much past here, that life itself has eluded the place all together and with no life there is also a drastic absence of death. All the beautiful things that one might find from Ayr to Aberdeen, are simply not there. The beggars are a merry bunch of gentlemen with a decent tan from working outdoors and tourists are being adressed in a polite way using their native tongue. With only museums and tourist guide left to tell the story of death and disaster, life becomes a stale repetition of tartan patterns, shortbread jumbo packs and rugby shirts. Edinburgh might have seen centuries of riots, public execution, warfare and plagues, but now even films set in the very close past couldn't be filmed here, since there is no spot of filth left. The notorious junky comedy "Trainspotting", supposedly taking place in the late 80ties, had to look somewhere else for proper locations. Needless to say where they were found: Glasgow, which is just miles better when it comes to urban decay.

#7 playing children

Every Scottish community has it: notorious areas. In some villages it might only be a few houses on a hill nearby, inhabited by connaisseurs of Buckfast, but some of the bigger towns have larger council housing estates that are some of the most gruesome ghettos to be found in the "first" world. Glasgow has quite a few of them and the most notorious one is located towards the east near the Parkhead stadium. Our adventurers encountered a rather fierce group of children who decided to spend their afterschool time.. or wait, it was actually in the morning, who decided to spend the time they were supposed to be in school with some rather different forms of communication: throwing fist sized stones at each other for a laugh. This was no battle or fight in the traditional way. Their happy pale faces showed smiles and there were friendly exchanges of curses. Nevertheless, stones were being thrown, while the young males took up hooligan chants. Yet another great example how children and young adults should not just sit in front of the television, but engage more in physical activities.

#6 being a bumblebee in the garden of death

No one ever made it a rule, that is is about the death of a human being. It might as well be about totally other forms of death, as long as it is: in Scotland.
In Scotland's former brightest city, Glasgow, stands the beautiful Botanical Gardens, full of the most amazing flowers, cactae and palm trees. There are rare ghost orchids and a room full of flesh eating plants. On September 3rd 2011, a rather large bumblebee was doing its pollen collecting business just outside of this room.



When our two adventurers innocently went through this door, the bumblebee made a fatal mistake. It followed them. There could be few rooms in the world more dangerous for a pollen collecting flying insect then a room with more then 5000 flesh eating plants from 8 different species. They were waiting for the big fat bumblebee, who went completly amok when smelling the treacherous pheromones coming from the various deadly orifices. The last time we saw the bumblebee it was just about to crawl into a large yellow gorge of one of those lethal beauties. We simply couldn't watch and escaped to a chip shop in the west end to mourn the bumblebee while eating chips with gravy.

A short excursion into the third dimension

Some of the avid reader might have asked themselves: What are those mysterious 3D cameras? Are the adventurers equipped with bulky dual lense advices, carrying senseless amount of technology on muleback through the wilderness of the Gorbals? Au contraire! The little miracle being used here is a average size consumer 3D camera made with two lenses and a little 3D screen. This does sound incredibly cheesy. It was planned to look incredibly cheesy. Shockingly enough, it looks fucking awesome. At least on that little screen. So do trust us, that the best imagery the world of 3d has ever seen was made yesterday. Council housing in 3D. An ambulance trying to revive someone with a heart attack in 3D. A bumblebee in the botanical gardens of Glasgow that accidently flew into the room with the flesh eating plants in 3D. Scottish soccer fans roaring in triumph in 3D. A pack of ultrablond and ultradrunk bimbos wearing 10 inch stilettos in 3D. And best of all, some sorrow resistent soccer supporters dancing to the inofficial national anthem on Sauchihall Street. In 3D.

#5 The Clyde Riverwalk

Many cities that have a river running through them are using this to provide their citizens with some leisure walkways right next to them. Some of these promenades have become world famous and part of the cities' main tourist attraction. The neatly done Clyde Riverwalk in Glasgow is not amongst them. Not only is the Clyde a rather unmoving and unattractive body of water that is surrounded by a thicket of rotting weeds, on it's shore are some of Glasgow's fiercest social housing projects. The gentlemen living there love the banks of the river and so they flock their in large merry crowds and huddle under the trees and wee underpaths that the "promenade" takes. There is certainly a less dangerous way to go for a walk then pushing through loud crowds of Buckfast drinkers with pitbulls. A small bit of information that gives yet another edge to this walk is the fact, that the city has employed someone to fish corpses out of the water on a regular basis. Who knows how many innocent tourists are amongst them, who only wanted to have a wee walk down at the Clyde...

#4 getting glassed

It is a specialty of Britain and some of its Commonwealth offspring to use glass objects as fighting weapons, when there is a disagreement between gentlemen. There are arguments about whether Manchester or Glasgow is the world capital of glassing. Looking at particular details, Manchester has the upper hand on pint glasses, while Glasgow leads the field in glass bottles.

One might argue now, that getting glassed has never really killed someone. This is true. However, a glass smashed against someone head is almost always the overture of a symphony of destruction with much more lethal chapters such as getting jumped or the very common getting knifed. On this one and the particular local folklore surrounding blades more later in this humble online journal.

Thanks to Nick Anderson for pointing out this particular technique.

#3 The Glasgow cab

Not only are these rather large vehicles a jolly way of transportation for the drunk, the lazy and lame, they are also extremly dangerous. The Glasgow cab does not break for pedestrians. It doesn't want to and it is mostly operated in a way that it is not able to. Trying to get into the way of those shadowy gigantic street beasts can kill people of all ages on foot, bike or crutches.

Apart from their murderous driving style, the operators of these monsters are a funny bunch. Here's an excellent journal of one of them.

Thinking about death - a bit of a mood killer

When one walks the streets of a foreign country with a particular focus concerning the afterlife and how it can be reached, one can not avoid feeling at least slightly somber. Despite the sometimes dark and ironic ways of dying, it is still a rather philosophical undertaking and one can not avoid feeling a bit heavy, while looking around for possible sign or indicators for death and decay.
It is on the other hand a remarkably interesting way of trying to travel a country and look at life. It should be mentioned that this undertaking is part of a series of events called Area. While previous parts of this series were very much dedicated to find particular performative formats for public space and life in public, this undertaking looks at possibilities of how a place can be comprehended by looking at it from a particular point of view.
"99 ways...", amorphous as it might seem, especially for the adventurers themselves, is some sort of philosophical field research, amateur parascience and journey into death, while walking amongst the living.

#2 failing as a suicide bomber

Arriving in Glasgow Airport immedeatly reminds one that "we" are still "at war". Strathclyde policemen wander around with massive machine guns, having wee little chats with some orange skinned ladies on their way to Teneriffa. Outside massive concrete structure are ready to prevent any more possible suicide attacks. Yes, that is right. Glasgow Airport was attacked by suicide bombers. These two geniuses ran their Cherokee jeep into the main arrival hall to blow it up there and kill as many people as possible. The only thing they lacked was explosives. Instead they had petrol and propane, that they successfully lit up while still being in the vehicle. One of them caught fire and then ran against people, hoping to inflict at least a few second degree burns. The only thing he managed was to receive a massive punch in the face by John Smeaton, who received a medal for this act of honor. The attacker died a few weeks later from the heavy burns.

#1 air travel

It is statistically proven that aeroplanes are by far the safest way of transporting humans from one place to the other. Few mountainsides in Scotland were ever hit by passenger planes and the surrounding ocean holds relatively few wrecks of aircrafts, apart from the occasional WW2 Stukas. The North Sea, over which most transportation towards Scotland passes, is a quiet beauty and only rarely attracts big storms or even orcanos.
However, accidents do happen. And so to terror attacks. Luckily almost no middle eastern men with an intense stare have entered the plane so far (Yes, an indicator, that these lines were actually written just before takeoff to Scotland). Scanning the passengers for potential bombers leaves the writer with no panic whatsoever. Only some enthusiastic German mountaineers, quite a mass of lardy and sunburned Scottish tourists and a group of dutch boys with terrible spiky hair are getting ready to fly over to the British Isles.
So the travel seems safe. Apart from freak tornados, air defense system malfunction, alien abduction, turbine failure or the sheer incompetence of the crew. Luckily, this is not an Air France flight.

p.s.: The author is aware that he is challenging the universe and its irritating sense of irony. This seems almost like an invitation for disaster. For the grim reaper to snatch the plane and its passengers out of the heavens. For these scribbled remains to be found in the burning and blood soaked mess of plane parts, luggage parts and body parts. Luckily, this is not a Douglas Adams novel.