Celebrating 2 Years In Scotland

Yesterday evening Raven and I celebrated 2 years in Scotland

We had a small gathering yesterday - Raven and I, and eight friends (some of which are not pictured in the photographs - N. left before we were photographed, Suzy_Bugs and her husband don't do flash photography, and the chap photographing us was behind the camera, not in front.)

It started off as a garden party in our back garden. I do quite wish I had taken a few photographs as I worked quite hard to make it atmospheric. Anyway, this isn't a post about silver doilies and piles of cushions, this a post about having lived in Scotland for two years now, and what that means to me.

First of all, it doesn't feel like I have lived here for two years - I still feel so new to the area, and feel like it was only a few months ago that I moved here, and that I don't really know the area. I certainly don't feel like I have been here for an entire 24 months!

From left to right; M.W, K., me, Raven, Brian, and M.G.
Photograph by S. Goodwin

Secondly, moving to Scotland was a whole change for me; so many new and different things. I moved to a new country, moved in with Raven for the first time, moved into our very own apartment, both of us moved to completely new jobs  - both twice, after I was made redundant a month into my previous job, and after Raven decided that moving into hospitality from nursing was a bad idea and went back into nursing - new friends, and a very, very long way between all that and what we had once known. I was previously living in the Thames Valley, and Raven was previously living on a farm in Wales, each of us were a good day's driving, or a couple days by train, from where we had once lived. 

I have never been homesick; while where I lived was beautiful, and while I had friends there, I knew I had to go. Sometimes I miss my friends, sometimes I miss my cat and my Dad, but I never miss the actual place. When I left I was so excited; I packed all of my things into the car and could hardly move (I had cans in the footwell and was sitting on cushions...) and just went North and more North and more North... I had no realistic idea how much of Scotland I still had to cross before actually getting to where I now reside, and thought getting as far as the Scottish border had been a really long way. The drive itself was through some incredible scenery. The UK is mostly known for gently rolling hills, little fields with livestock and nice woodlands, for rivers winding through small towns and villages and generally quite a tame view of rural life; Scotland does not look like that. I travelled past mountains and waterfalls and heather moors and ancient castles and suddenly realised just how much the landscape called out to my sense of adventure. Scotland good be Westeros or Middle Earth.

Aside: A lot of Game of Thrones is filmed in Northern Ireland (which has quite similar landscapes), some of it was actually filmed in Scotland, and Lord of the Rings was filmed all the way on the other side of the planet in New Zealand.

Every day I open my curtains to a view out across mountains (snow-covered in winter), the river, forests, farmland, and often birds of prey soaring on thermals. I would love to post a picture up of the view from our flat, but I think it would be too easy to locate where I live from it, so you will have to take my word for it when I say I have a broad panorama of dramatic and beautiful scenery. I've stayed in places with some nice views (like from the gable windows of my friend's Victorian garret flat overlooking Bristol; it was a sea of lights at night.) but now I get to actually live in one. I never, ever get tired of looking at the view. My favourite thing is watching how varied the skies can be, and how colourful. 

Four lassies
Photo by S. Goodwin

Up here it is also quite a different place to live in terms of people. I have noticed that people here are a lot friendlier than where I used to live - total strangers often acknowledge each other with a "morning" or "afternoon" as they pass, people talk to you on public transport and it's not considered weird or even rude, and I actually get a lot more friendly and positive interactions for my clothes than I do get snooty or rude ones.  I have noticed that it is generally speaking (there will always be exceptions) the case that the further from London you get, the more friendly people on public transport are, with West Wales and Scotland being the places I have experienced as the most friendly. It is not perfect, and have been insulted in the streets even here, too, but I have experienced less than I did when I lived in the Thames Valley, even if there are far fewer Goths here, so I stand out from the crowd more. 

No place is perfect though. I guess the thing I dislike the most is the sort of wind-blown driving rain we get here. It falls so far off vertical that it gets under my umbrellas and into my coats. It falls for a lot of autumn, winter and spring, and I end up wanting to stay at home in the warm and yet I have to go out for work. The wind chills, too, so I sometimes end up quite wet and cold, despite being thoroughly wrapped up in several layers. 

Altogether, I am really happy that I moved here, and I feel that it really is something to celebrate, as is living with Raven for two years and still being in a happy relationship. I think the initial period after moving in can be the most difficult stage of a relationship as dating someone and living with them are two wholly different things, and I am glad we have managed to negotiate a peaceful coexistence and never really argue much at all. Two very happy years and a nice party to round them off. May many more happy years follow!

Raven Appreciation ♥

I do not live alone, but together with my wonderful partner Raven. "Raven" is a pseudonym in a similar manner to "HouseCat." Raven is absolutely wonderful to live with, and is an excellent housemate as well as an excellent partner. I could go on at length about his personal attributes, but this would a) bore my readers b) embarrass him and c) have me run the risk of being terribly sappy. Also, I am inherently biased in the matter ;-) . He has supported me and been by my side and been a huge help to me and I adore him dearly and hope to be as supportive and kind to him as he is to me. 

Jabots make men more dashing. 

Raven and I met over the internet in 2009, and first met in person on February 2nd 2010. For a long time we carried on a distance relationship as we lived in separate countries, but summer last year we both moved to Scotland, he in early July and I in late August. We're hoping to eventually get married.

Looking somewhere between 'Gentleman' and "A Clockwork Orange'

Raven also helps me with my blog by photographing things when my skills fall short (he is a semi-professional photographer and runs ::Chance Photography::) and by reading through my drafts and pointing out typographical errors and other mistakes, and also giving me feedback on content.  He is also helping me become better at taking photographs in my own right and supports me in my hobby of photographing architecture, statuary and monuments by coming with me to graveyards and driving me to places too far to walk. He has also helped considerably with the up-coming recipe posts.

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I would like to thank him publicly for the contribution he makes behind the scenes on this blog!

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A friend described this pose as "Posh Vampire"

He would not describe himself as a Goth, despite the fact he occasionally wears Romantic Goth fashion and has a few Gothic interests, but is probably better described as a something of a combination of Metalhead, Industrial/Rivethead and Cybergoth, with a wide taste in music but especially liking heavy metal and various forms of industrial, dark techno, aggrotech, power noise, E.B.M, etc.  I am not entirely au fait with the genre distinctions of that sort of music (Raven has tried to educate me, but I fear that it is like trying to educate a brick.), but basically what I call "the stompy, angry and beepy stuff". He is himself, and that is more important than what subcultural ties he has and does not like to categorise himself as part of any one subculture. I'm not in love with him because he's  oh so dark and spooooooky, I'm in love with him because he's a wonderful person.

Myself, later that afternoon

The photographs in this blog post were taken in March, in Wallingford, Oxfordshire where Raven and I were both in Romantic Goth fashion and appreciating the castle grounds and beautiful architecture. His hair is slightly more golden than it appears in these photographs, maybe a consequence of I having taken them towards dusk on a grey English spring day. 

Cultural Appropriation, Eclecticism and Subcultures

Today I have been reading about cultural appropriation. It started out with reading ::this post:: at This Is Corp Goth, about how mainstream fashion appropriates outward signifiers of Goth sub-culture, stripping it of the meaning it has to market it to masses, especially to those who are looking to be "edgy" and distinguish themselves slightly from the mainstream in pursuit of a bought "individuality", not because it reflects their inner aesthetic preferences (if they have developed a core set of aesthetic preferences), but because it is the current trendy way of seeming interesting; they want to be seen as "different" and "interesting" and "individual", but dare not do anything that endangers them to being thought of as "freaky" and "weird" or "not normal", distancing themselves from the originating subculture and the roots of what they have adopted.

This is an issue that has been much talked about in the Goth community, but there is another issue that is not talked about, or at least that I have not seen talked about: do members of the Goth community appropriate things from other subcultures, cultures and traditions, and are our inspirations being used in a way that is cultural and subcultural hybridisation, or in a way that is simply adopting something because it looks nice or is popular amongst other goths, without thinking of the origins of these things.

I routinely see things aimed at Goths that are marketed as "Celtic", "Gypsy" and "Japanese" which are either based off stereotypes or have nothing to do with those people, or even worse are based off hugely erroneous romanticisations of those people with vast historical and anthropological inaccuracies. There is, for example, a difference between the interlace animal designs of the Vikings and Pictish crescent designs and ancient Bronze Age spiral designs, and the interlace designs of Irish monasteries, but all get marketed as 'Celtic knotwork', despite not all of them actually including knots, or being from a group called 'Celts'. This is taking a broad an inaccurate view of what the word 'Celtic' means, and ignoring a lot of history to market something to people who have only a vague knowledge of the term. Often this is pandering to those seeking something exotic, and conflating something being exotic with it somehow being better with what is usual simply because it is different. 

It is not wrong to appreciate the artistic styles of another race or nationality or culture, but to genuinely appreciate something you have to understand that more than just words and obvious symbols are signifiers of meaning, and that some things that we think are merely art or decoration have long and deep traditions as something deeply personal and meaningful to many people in their originating culture, and to them it as vexing to see us appropriate those signifiers and unintentionally strip them of meaning as it is for us to see non-Goth people wear obviously Goth-inspired fashion and then denigrate Goth and Goths.

That said, I do not think it is wrong to wear or have or make things inspired by other cultures and traditions, as long as the inspiring items/traditions are understood, and as long as it is not too direct a copy, more a new creation with artistic ties, because one is not directly copying a symbol or item, but appreciating the aesthetics and then combining them with whatever else lurks in the designers brain and producing something new and appreciative and therefore not taking a specific symbol or item and re-using it stripped of its meaning.  A lot of it comes down to understanding what a specific symbol or item means, and the context in which it is used in its originating culture, something that can easily be learnt with a bit of research, and avoiding using that symbol or item in a way that would be disrespectful to that culture, and if you do wish to use something outside of its proper context, changing it enough so it is clear that you mean no accidental insult or sacrilege, and are merely being aesthetically inspired. 

For example, walking down the street wearing a feather in a band in the same way a Native North American people would do in the context of a feather earned by a warrior would be a bit like walking down the street wearing a medal that would normally be earned by a soldier when you haven't earned it yourself, compounded by being from the people who fought against those who would have earned it, but wearing a different type of feather in a different way altogether would just show an appreciation for that feather. 

It is also important to remember that just because something happened a long time ago, it does not mean that the event or culture is no longer relevant to people today.  A lot of people are very proud of their ancestors, and very connected to their roots, and historical events that caused harm to large swathes of certain cultures have not been forgotten or relegated to the history books, so be careful when using symbols from times past.  A red ribbon around someone's neck meant something specific in the French Revolution, and there are definitely people around who still know what that means, and whose ancestors did end up killed on the guillotine. Even more pressing, there are cultures who still feel the repercussions of historic events, and if you happen to come from the culture they feel has injured them, wearing their symbols could be seen as a grave insult. 

I think this is an important issue for us to bear in mind as creative people and people interested in fashion, especially as people whose tastes are likely to be more eclectic and to draw on things outside of western culture, or from different historical periods. It is basically a case of being aware of what symbols and items mean before using them, and of doing the research. We are a magpie people, who spot something and want it, but sometimes we have to acknowledge that, no, we can't have that exact thing, and then use it as an opportunity to be creative and create our own thing, which will mean so much more as something made by oneself.