Back to the Burn

Last weekend I ventured back to The Burn with a group almost three times the size of last years'. There were 25 history postgrads and 5 faculty members on the trip, and this time we all took a nice coach up instead of getting our own train tickets. The Burn house, an eighteenth century manor home about 2.5 hours north of Edinburgh, was much warmer than I remember. There was a light coating of snow everywhere, which made the hills in the distance that much more beautiful. The place is too far east to be in the highlands, but there's rolling hills on the horizon.

We made the same two trips as last year, Edzell Castle on Saturday morning and Arbroath Abbey on Sunday afternoon, and had beautiful sunny weather on both days, although the winds were pretty brisk and it got cold in the evenings when the fire was allowed to die down. Saturday night consisted of a rather amusing performance of a medieval play, in which my character ordered the torture and death of three holy virgins, portrayed by the three younger male profs who'd come along, and who were hilarious in the roles. One was a modest girl, one was a Scottish girl, and one was himself dressed as a girl. deep voice and beard and all. All three also had blue eyeshadow on, which to me seems an odd choice for a medieval play and for three modest virginal female characters, but I suppose we weren't really going for historical accuracy with our production.

It was a good relaxing trip. I stayed away from all electronics, including my phone, the laptop and its wireless internet and email. I didn't even watch the tv to see the Australian Open final with Andy Murray. The trivial pursuit game was a lot of fun, even though as it was an almost 20 year old version a lot of the questions were pretty difficult. Each team had one prof to try to make things easier. I got our team the pink entertainment slice because I knew which Beatle was deported from Germany in 1960 for being underage. The food was excellent -- on Saturday night the cooks and staff held a Scottish theme night, with haggis, neeps and tatties. They also provided a box of fabric and clothing to fashion our own Scottish looks. The vegetarian haggis was excellent! But then it turned out that this was only the appetizer, and lasagna followed! They sure kept us well fed over the weekend!

So it was an excellent weekend, and one that might not have happened if I hadn't helped. Back in September I planned a letter-writing campaign when it was confirmed that the Grad Studies Committee had decided to cancel the trip without telling any of the students. I didn't even need to submit my own letter -- I guess the threat of a written protest against canceling one of the two socialising opportunities of the year for history postgrads was enough to make the trip a possibility again. Then, with the help of my stories and photographs from last year to promote the trip to new postgrads, 27 students signed up immediately and paid their deposits right away, and we received supplemental funding from the Head of School Tom Devine's personal budget to ensure the trip would happen. And everyone of course had a great weekend! I wonder if we'll have to go to all this trouble again next year...