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How Scottish accidents happened to an Australian friend
Not so long ago, an Australian friend of mine was over here in the UK to help out with a theatre company for the Edinburgh Festival, working on a voluntary basis in exchange for free entry to various plays and comedy performances. She talks about it being the year of her Scottish hat, her Scottish food cravings, and her Scottish accidents.
Expecting a stereotypical visitor's holiday purchase, you might expect a Scottish hat to be one of those tam-o-shanters, whether one of the more authentic ones or the comedy ones with the enormous woolly bobble that tourists buy. But no, the only reason this is the Scottish hat is solely that it was bought in Edinburgh. It's a cowboy-hat shape, but woven from a good quality straw, and the ribbon isn't even tartan.
That stereotypical expectation is one she came over with, and got instantly beaten out of her. Metaphorically, anyway. One of the staff at the theatre company was herself Scottish, and - while proud of the country's traditions - hated to hear stereotypical assumptions made. I hate to think what the effect might have been of the appearance, in the flat, of Edinburgh's equivalent of London's quilted Union Jack hats.
The Scottish food cravings, despite this, are more stereotypical. Now back in Australia, what she misses most is the easy access to Scotch whisky - the mellower Lowlands malts, not the seaweedy Islay malts that I like - and the haggis. We had haggis first from the hands of that Scottish employee, who provided it as part of a 'welcome to my world' party once we arrived in the hired flat in the New Town. Then in various pubs and restaurants during the month-long festival, then again in London. It's not so big in Sydney.
And while in London, we talked a lot about her recuperation from the Scottish accidents.
The first was not so bad, in that at the end of one drunken evening she was getting a piggy-back from someone almost a foot shorter - you can see how this story's going - and as the excitement grew, so did the speed and the silliness, and before any of us knew it, she and her 'steed' were sprawled across a pavement giggling at their grazes.
That wasn't so serious an accident, although had they fallen differently it could have been. But her second mishap occurred while smoking out of the window of the flat, while wearing that Scottish hat. It could have made a glamorous black and white photograph - huge sash windows slid open, sun streaming in so her face and funky t-shirt glowed, her arm crossing the boundary between the inside and outside of the flat.
And that was when the sash-cord broke, and the window plummeted onto her upper arm. There were three others of us in the flat, who all felt the same way, that this moment suddenly extended into a long stretch of time before we each leapt to pull the window up, then separated into one comforting, one calling an ambulance, and one making hot sweet tea for the shock.
Fortunately, we were able to cancel the ambulance; my Australian friend had managed to escape without a break, but it can only have been by a whisker. That was a big window.
Now I look back with my personal injury experience and wonder if she'd have been able to make a compensation claim, but at the time we were thinking about actors and artistry, not no win no fee solicitors, and whoever was responsible - our immediate boss, the rental company who supplied that flat, its ultimate owners - got away without a Scottish accident claim being made. If her arm, or the window, had broken, I imagine things would have become more complex.
