No Tour Guide Today

Today, I'm not playing tour guide.  My sense is that when I do, you lose interest.  I'll be honest, I can't resist.  There are so many wonderfully beautiful days here and amazing things to see and I like to share them.  Instead, I want to tell you about the wackiest weekend that is.  It's called Raisin Weekend and it begins today. We have nothing like it in the States although it's a type of hazing or a "rite of passage" for 1st year students at the University of St. Andrews.

The Raisin weekend tradition has been around since nearly the incorporation of the Uni, in 1410.  It works like this.  A freshmen (1st year student) is adopted by academic parents, a mother and father, who are always upperclassmen.  On Sunday, the "children" are invited to a tea party by their "mother", which in fact no tea is served but a prodigious amount of alcohol is on offer. (it's not unusual to walk through town and see a pipe and a funnel dropping out of a 3rd floor window with a shot sent down to a waiting child) Later, the children are collected by their dads and even more alcohol is imbibed. 

On Raisin Monday, the children are cleaned up, sobered up, and dressed by their parents in the most outlandish outfits imaginable.  It's like Halloween meets god-knows-what.   At the strike of eleven bells a.m., all the children parade through town and then file into the quad and basically make mayhem for 1 hour until the clock strikes again at the top of the next hour.  

There are many other traditions associated with this bit of nut-case behavior but that's it in a nutshell.  I suspect, I will be seeing students dashing through town nekkid tonight (if I'm up that late). By the way, it's called Raisin Weekend because the children are required to gift a bottle of  wine to each of their parents (olden days equivalent to a pound of raisins).  I should mention that one other tradition is that the parents give each child a receipt of sorts that could be anything in the world.  It's not surprising at all to see a child dragging a receipted bathtub down the street or something else that has been proferred illegally.  Yikes! And then of course, there is the foam fight.  It's not to be missed. Very stable town, St. Andrews is.

Any questions?  I remain,

Standing guard for Raisin Weekend,

Mike