...OK, apart from Sir Jean Charles de Menzies resigning as leader of the Liberal Democrats, it's actually been pretty dull (and even that was quite tedious). And so it is to August that we must turn to provide an entertaining narrative, when, despite usually being located just off the A19—a few stops away from the Batcave on the number 23 bus—El Twad HQ found itself in Edinburgh, right in the middle of the Fringe Festival. (OK, maybe not quite right in the middle.)
One of our beloved El Twad dinnerladies had gone out to buy supplies for the El Twad canteen; much to her surprise, though, upon opening the HQ's grand oak front door, the luscious pastures of the HQ's front lawn were absent. In their place was a big road, full of Scotsmen, Scotswomen and Scotschildren, in addition to one or two Scotsrickshaws. Dashing back inside to inform us of the news, she noticed a large sign above the door, reading “Bank Of Scotland”.
—which was weird, because we don't have a large sign above the HQ's front door. Perhaps we should get one.
Intrigued, we decided to take a stroll down the Royal Mile, to peruse the many, varied street performers plying their wares for public enjoyment. But, we thought, a mile's a long way. And we're lazy. So instead, we headed to the garage and fired up the Twadmobile.
The Twadmobile's an old VW van that's been running on chip fat ever since we saw an item on Top Gear explaining that you can basically just shove a barrel of vegetable oil into a normal diesel engine and it'll still go.
As usual, we had the dinnerladies cook us copious quantities of chips, and shooed the bloody Hoobs out of the back. They seem to think it's their Hoobmobile and insist on borrowing it all the time to interview children about everyday phenomena for their “Hoobopedia”. It took us a while to figure out quite what they were doing—for ages we thought “we're off to see the tiddlypeeps!” was a confession of their mental health status. We still reckon they've just got a cute name for Wikipedia.
Tip: with copious quantities of chips available, Hoobs are easy to lure.
Whilst driving down the Royal Mile in the Twadmobile, we came upon an old Scotsbloke, who was singing a traditional Scots song, about Scots, and Scotsness. Intrigued, we pulled over to listen, much to the relief of the pedestrians sprawling all over the road, many of whom we'd run over, and of the police, who were keen to prevent the Twadmobile from driving along the supposedly “pedestrian” street (though we were quite enjoying the entertainment and found it far from pedestrian).
The Scotsbloke regaled us with the ancient tale of how the kilt, traditional Scots non-skirt attire, was invented: one fateful morn, many a century ago, a Scotsman (possibly an important one—we're not really sure) was visited by the King of Scotland. Unfortunately, when His Majesty arrived, our plucky hero was in the shower: “Aw, craaap!”, he exclaimed in his entertainingly broad Scots accent. Quickly, and not wanting to annoy the King (for fear of beheadings and such) he donned the only thing he had to hand that remotely resembled clothing—a towel.
When the King inquired of him “What the hell's thaaat? Is that a skerrrt?!”, our hero resorted to his love of Lilt to concoct a suitably believable nonce word to describe his alleged garment. (It should be noted, however, that the Lilt of the time wasn't quite the same “totally tropical” carbonated beverage we know and love today—it was primarily a non-alcoholic variation of grog.)
Enlightened, we performed a textbook three-point-turn, deftly proceeding into roadspace no sooner had the pedestrians eagerly relinquished it, and headed back to the HQ. Once we'd negotiated the snaking, velvet-roped queue that had inexplicably formed in the garage, we parked the Twadmobile, emerging just as the Hoobs scoffed the last of their chips. They listened intently to our story of the Lilt-loving, towel-wearing Scotsman, then scurried off to add to their Hoobopedia.
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