aberdeen

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i have an opportunity to get a small radio job in aberdeen this summer. i've heard that it can be kind of rrrrrrraaggh

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:25 (twenty-two years ago)

it's more like rraaaaaaaagghhhh.

― hmmm (hmmm), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:27 (twenty-two years ago)

"I may here speak of some attempts by myself, made hitherto in too desultory a way, to obtain materials for a "Beauty-Map" of the British Isles. Whenever I have occasion to classify the persons I meet into three classes, "good, medium, bad," I use a needle mounted as a pricker, wherewith to prick holes, unseen, in a piece of paper, torn rudely into a cross With a long leg. I use its upper end for "good," the cross-arm for "medium," the lower end for "bad." The prick-holes keep distinct, and are easily read off at leisure. The object, place, and date are written On the paper. I used this plan for my beauty data, classifying the girls I passed in streets or elsewhere as attractive, indifferent, or repellent. Of course this was a purely individual estimate, bat it was consistent, judging from the conformity of different attempts in the same population. I found London to rank highest for beauty; Aberdeen lowest."
From Francis Galton - Memories of My Life: Chapter XXI :Race Improvement

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:28 (twenty-two years ago)

its more like haar

― zappi (joni), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:29 (twenty-two years ago)

(I know I have posted that before, but I love it so. When I think of Galton walking the streets with his needle-mounted pricker, I feel myself part of an great tradition.)

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Keep telling yourself that.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:36 (twenty-two years ago)

I went there in November once. It was a freezing cold and very drunken trip.

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:36 (twenty-two years ago)

I really like Aberdeen, but it's bloody freezing. Yes, even in the summer. Union Street forms a wind tunnel, and the buildings seem to retain no heat whatsoever. I took the g/f there once in the middle of August, and she had to put a jumper on in the middle of the afternoon (I thought it was quite pleasant).

The Francis Galton quote above is trumped by Telly Savalas once having done a public information film about how beautiful Aberdeen is.

Great reasons for going:

Codona's has a Cat & Mouse old fashioned rollercoaster.
You can get butteries without any difficulty.
The people are all pretty nice.
Nargile is a really good Turkish restaurant.
You might learn a bit of Doric.
You can get butteries without any difficulty.

There's probably some other things too, but I'm slightly out of touch.

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:39 (twenty-two years ago)

What is a buttery, and can we eat it?

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:40 (twenty-two years ago)

We had one at our school. It's like a canteen.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:42 (twenty-two years ago)

N I don't know why I said that, I think your quote is phenomenal although it's a little daunting in its implication.

aldo that's great stuff, although at first I thought you said "butterflies" and got really really excited!!

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought that too! "You can find butterfiles without any difficulty" would have been a terrific recommendation.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Oooh definitely. It's like a croissant, but made with lard as well as butter which makes it heavy instead of light. Very salty. Lightly toast/warm and spread with even more butter.

Yet another Scottish recipe which explains our physical condition

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:46 (twenty-two years ago)

a buttery is a type of pastry/scone, flaky, a little salty (due to the butter content i guess) and very nice with marmalade

aberdeen is beautiful in the summer with its grey granite streets. also nice botanical garden type place at duthee park. perhaps not much nightlife. didn't momus go to university there?

― Dave Amos, Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:46 (twenty-two years ago)

I know about the canteen sort of buttery. It's not something you have to get, though, is it?

x-post: oooh sounds tasty good

― Ricardo (RickyT), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I had no idea about this 'other' buttery. Sorry.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I've been living in the 'deen off and on for seven or eight years and, on the whole, it's dandy.

A bit breezey and sometimes a bit of a cultural desert - but there's a few brave souls doing what they can on the latter.

A buttery is a rowie, a roll. They will make your cholesterol beg for mercy.

― coco, Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:50 (twenty-two years ago)

also in bad weather you get to hear the marvellous sound of the foghorn!

(when in aberdeen, not as a result of eating butteries)

the beach is nice-ish too, as i recall.
the highlands aren't far away and they are arguably the most beautiful part of the UK

― Dave Amos, Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:52 (twenty-two years ago)

As long as they have less grease in them than fried toast I stand a chance of downing a couple.

I don't want to be "brave."

Is Aberdeen the place where most of the oil-riggers stop off before getting shipped out to the North Sea?

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Big oil rigger community. Quite a lot of English there as a result, I believe.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:53 (twenty-two years ago)

... although North Street is constantly hinging of John West

(yes, most of the offshore air traffic is via the helipads at Dyce airport)

― coco, Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Buttery! That sounds so good. my dad lived in Scotland (he was Scottish and returned after my parents divorced)so I spent my formative years travelling over every year. Thus I am the only American who extolls the virtues of Scottish food. But I never had a buttery! And now I'm upset.

― aimurchie, Wednesday, 19 May 2004 11:56 (twenty-two years ago)

aberdeen aberdeen cannae kick a jelly bean!

are jelly beans that easy to kick???

Aberdeen town centre made me feel slightly queasy when I went on a uni open day there, but i found the uni campus delightful. that was the first time i'd been and i haven't been since then (1998, i think). however i do like to say phut-a-graphuc evudunce in an aberdeen aaaaaccent.

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 12:34 (twenty-two years ago)

go for the butteries alone.

― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 13:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Said g/f has asked me to point out she thought it was "cold and bleak", and that she doesn't like butteries.

She's from Dumbarton though, so what does she know...

I've just remembered you can get a decent pint in the basement bar of the Brentwood Hotel ( a bar called Carriages) - it was CAMRA City Pub Of The Year 2003.

Coco - I was going to say rowies, but I suspect it would mean nothing to almost everyone. Ditto knotties (a bit like lebkuchen, for those not conversant in NE ways)

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 13:27 (twenty-two years ago)

I get the impression that there are some pretty cantankerous characters there, but that's based on a very limited sample.

― Rockist Scientist, Wednesday, 19 May 2004 13:31 (twenty-two years ago)

"Aberdeen - go for a laugh, come home in stiches"

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 16:52 (twenty-two years ago)

It is cold. And expensive.

But it has butteries, which I have just discovered for sale in my local Tesco - no more pining for home!

― ailsa (ailsa), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 16:55 (twenty-two years ago)

"Aberdeen - go in on a whim, come out on a stretcher!"

― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 17:15 (twenty-two years ago)

My favourite graffiti there read: "Aberdeen kills all visiting fans."

― Jocelyn (Jocelyn), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 17:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Kurt Cobain hated the place

― Sym (shmuel), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 17:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I visited Aberdeen, WA on a road trip once. It makes Olympia look like Prague.

― donut bitch (donut), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 18:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Having lived in both places I much prefer Aberdeen's weather to Glasgow's - only very marginally colder and much drier.

― Stew, Wednesday, 19 May 2004 19:02 (twenty-two years ago)

I went to Aberdeen once with my old girlfriend Jane, who is Scottish and who worked and lived there for a while. Even in summer it did seem a bit dreary, though it wasn't all bad. The Mexican restaurant in the mall right on the seawalk, though -- words can't describe how wrong that was.

The Bervie Chipper some ways down the coast, though, that was good eating.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 19:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Proper Aberdonians have fantasticly amusing accents. (Is the job for Northsound, by the way?)

― ailsa (ailsa), Wednesday, 19 May 2004 19:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Aberdeen restaurants are not good. Plenty of 'em but the quality is generally not good. You don't have to go as far as Bervie for great fish'n'chips though - The Ashvale is one of the best in the country and bang in the city centre.

Talking of graffiti, actual epitaph on Aberdeen gravestone:

Here lie the bones of Elizabeth Charlotte,
Born a virgin, died a harlot.
She was aye a virgin at seventeen
A remarkable thing in Aberdeen.

― Stew, Wednesday, 19 May 2004 19:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Café 52 is supposed to be excellent.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 20 May 2004 09:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Isn't W*rr*nd*r J*hn, known to v old skool sinisterites, an Aberdonian? I find his accent pretty impenetrable. Especially if he is on the ale.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 20 May 2004 10:03 (twenty-two years ago)

I like the Banff accent best. Everything that begins with a 'wh' begins with a 'f'.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Thursday, 20 May 2004 10:13 (twenty-two years ago)

fit like?

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Thursday, 20 May 2004 10:13 (twenty-two years ago)

aye tchavin - foos yer doos? iver seen i likes o iss threed? fit kinna radge iver cried a rowie a "buttery", min?

― Stew, Thursday, 20 May 2004 11:59 (twenty-two years ago)

two months pass...

did you go tracer? how d'you find it?

― cºzen (Cozen), Thursday, 5 August 2004 16:59 (twenty-one years ago)

three weeks pass...

hows aberdeen for cinemas?

― cºzen (Cozen), Thursday, 26 August 2004 09:42 (twenty-one years ago)

start the day with the P & J

― zappi (joni), Thursday, 26 August 2004 10:17 (twenty-one years ago)

four months pass...

http://photos3.flickr.com/3453330_4fad84512d_o.jpg

― cozen (Cozen), Monday, 17 January 2005 18:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Spent 4 years there. It's a good place to do the 'dreaming spires' thing because there's really not much to distract you from the books.

When I was there, Nicky Campbell and Alan Robb were taking over Northsound and using it as a launchpad to national radio. Which I'd imagine would be Tracer's only motive for serving time there... to get back, eventually, to London, but in a better job.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 January 2005 18:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Nice tower block Cozen! I like Appleton tower better, but that comes close.

― KeithW (kmw), Monday, 17 January 2005 19:13 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

Mechty me min! It's a rare place. Miss mi buttries fae calders in torphins aside eberdeen. Miss mi fitba team ana. Dinna miss the cauld wither though. It' a sare fecht fur a half loaf ye ken!

― Chris Bruce, Wednesday, 3 May 2006 11:47 (twenty years ago)

two years pass...

I had no idea about this 'other' buttery. Sorry.
― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 19 May 2004

― the pinefox, Friday, 17 October 2008 08:57 (seventeen years ago)

(I know I have posted that before, but I love it so. When I think of Galton walking the streets with his needle-mounted pricker, I feel myself part of an great tradition.)
― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 19 May 2004
Keep telling yourself that.
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 19 May 2004

― the pinefox, Friday, 17 October 2008 08:59 (seventeen years ago)

hoquiam

― Teddy Riley (The Reverend), Friday, 17 October 2008 10:44 (seventeen years ago)

two years pass...

I am going this afternoon to visit friends, I was hoping there would be a recommendation of a good record shop in this thread, now I'm just anxious about the cold and my personal safety.

― get the fuck out of my mouth (boxedjoy), Saturday, 13 November 2010 11:39 (fifteen years ago)

eat a buttery, it'll instantly add to your personal fat content thereby staving off the cold.

Don't go near the docks and you'll be fine.

― ailsa, Saturday, 13 November 2010 11:48 (fifteen years ago)

And don't get your loons and quines mixed up

― Tom A. (Tom B.) (Tom C.) (Tom D.), Saturday, 13 November 2010 11:51 (fifteen years ago)

Think brewdog have a bar there now if nice ales interest you. It is fucking freezing tho, can't say I ever fell in love with the place despite repeated visits...

― I see what this is (Local Garda), Saturday, 13 November 2010 11:57 (fifteen years ago)

There's "One Up" in Aberdeen for record shops: http://www.oneupmusic.co.uk/

― krakow, Saturday, 13 November 2010 12:02 (fifteen years ago)

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