Last weekend, the city of Dunedin proudly observed its heritage with its annual Scottish Festival. Och aye, wee laddies and lassies. One thing we've really noticed here in New Zealand is that festivals and parades are very poorly organized, not well advertised, and subject to sudden and unexpected changes. You might walk out of a shop on George Street and find yourself in the middle of a parade no one has told you about, swept up by marchers and drummers and parade floats. At other times, you might go somewhere to attend an event advertised in the newspaper only to find that the times were changed and it already happened. Or it will happen three hours later. Or that it happened last week.
We're not sure why this is.
New Zealand?
The griping is only relevant because I turned up a full week late for the unveiling of the Queen o' the Heather contestants at the local mall. Queen o' the Heather: an annual beauty contest that takes place during the Scottish Festival. I found the idea of unveiling beauty contestants in a mall on a Saturday afternoon quite an intriguing mixture of the shiny and the tawdry -- sort of lowbrow and, well, lower brow. So, I was disappointed when I found out that when the newspaper (which comes out on Thursday) stated the unveiling was on Saturday, it meant the previous Saturday, as in, before the newspaper was printed.
Useful.
Fortunately, a week later, on the final day of the Scottish Festival, which was poorly advertized, and therefore poorly attended, Emeline and I watched the more important half of the beauty contest equation: the crowning of Queen o' the Heather.
There the contestants stood, expectant on the dais, under a gray Scottish sky, with the mayor of Dunedin -- Peter Chin, a Chinese man wearing a traditional Scottish tartan kilt -- waiting to find out who was the prettiest of them all. In the distance, Scottish games were being played. Piper bands were competing noisily in the arena. (Emeline might even write a post about my caber tossing adventures later.) Back on the dais. The tension. The girls. White knuckles. To one side, Queen o' the Heather 2007 waiting graciously. Trophies. The skirl of the pipes. The crown. The cabers. The mayor.
And the announcement: Yes, one of them won! We couldn't hear anything, but, indeed, one of them won.
And gracious was she, Queen o' the Heather.
3 comments:
Not to be overly critical or anything but it is kind of a motley crew to be the finalists of a beauty contest. Even the winner and previous winners seem to leave something to be desired IMHO. Would love to get Emeline's aesthetic view on "the men of Dunedin". Seems like a good photoblog.
Ha! I'll pass your insightful comments on. To Emeline at least. But probably not to the women of Dunedin.
Thanks for the assignment, Randy. I'll get on it, ASAP.
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