Smu Hard 3: With A Vengeance

SMUHA
The Smiths were up early the next morning.  I missed the whole thing.  Louie the dog came for cuddles, I we both fell back asleep on the bed together.  That dog is just a cuddle waiting to happen, even if his poos smell of fluoride.

Easter took Caro and I over to Jackson’s school which was one of the stations where the Jarl Squad were to be appearing.  She also brought her friend Jean, who was English but had been living in Shetland for 36 years.  “I just fell in love with the place,” she explained as she wrapped a scarf up to her eyebrows.  I could see her point exactly.  Once you are used to the wind, the beauty of the islands and the friendliness of the people wins you right over.  Once you are used to the wind.  

I had discovered that I needed to start tucking my t-shirts into my underpants otherwise the wind shoots down places and whirls around like your own personal tornado.  It’s a bit like dropping a choc-ice into your knickers.  Not that I do this often.

But here comes the Jarl Squad!  Marching around with a RAAAAAARGH and a rousing chorus of the Up Helly Aa song.  This, in a surreal bit of segue, then turned into “Hi Ho Silver Lining” by Jeff Beck.  “I never realised what nonsense the lyrics were until I had to type them up for the squad,” explained Jean.  They really are the height of 60’s hippy rubbish –
 
Flies are in your pea-soup baby
They’re wavin’ at me
So open up your peach umbrella
While you’re watching TV

Now imagine that sung by 40 hairy Vikings and you’ll have rough idea how I spent my Friday lunchtime.  This then blended into “I Got Chains” which I hadn’t realised was an official Smuha song.  Only they changed the lyrics slightly – 

I got stripes, stripes upon my shoulders
I got boots, boots upon the ground
I got stripes, stripes upon my shoulders
I got torches, torches, burn my galley down

Apparently the previous year, the Jarl Squad had assembled itself to the Theme from The A-Team.  And this is what’s GREAT about Smuha.  Yes, it’s a celebration of local culture and way for the community to get together, but it’s also ABSOLUTELY about taking the piss and having fun.  Wouldn’t it be great if the big national occasions were like this too?  If the Queen mounted her horse for the trooping of the colour and found a whoopie cushion under the saddle?  Or when they opened parliament, someone replaced Black Rod’s sceptre with a massive dildo? 
 
Never put me in charge of UK tourism.

So after this, we had a brief stop at Easter’s which was great, because women always feel like they need to feed me up and I am totally into that.  At first I tried to avoid the meat sandwiches, because in theory at least I was still a vegetarian, but – well – you know.  It would be RUDE to turn down sandwiches, right?  So I worked my way through the cheese and tomato and kept on going through the ham as well.  I am definitely the World’s Worst Vegetarian.  Gwyneth Paltrow is going to kick my arse.

Easter, Helen, Grace, Jean, Caro and I then headed out to Hoswick for the burning of the galley.  It was an amazing spectacle that you can smell and hear before you can see it.  Well, that’s not quite true – we could see the glow from those burning torches from some distance away, getting closer and closer – then the singing and the RAAAAAAAARGH-ing and that smell of paraffin.  Finally, the squads themselves, approaching like some firey serpent winding its way along the road, preceded by the galley towed on the back of a tractor.  The galley looked great at night, with its green eyes glowing eerily in the darkness.  Then the squads were amongst us, the sparks flying from their torches.  One of two of the torches gave out just as they approached the beach, sadly.  (I expect they were the ones I’d steeped).

Helen was a bit concerned for Jackson who was toiling a wee bit.  He’d just come down with a cold but wasn’t going to miss this for the world.  Helen had done her best for him by ensuring that he was wrapped up warm beneath his deerskin and the rest of his Viking garb.  She’d also found these adhesive pads at the chemists that generate heat on exposure to air and had plastered them all over him.  “He looks like the only four-year-old in the world covered in nicotine patches,” she said.

Still, Gary was taking good care of Jackson as he rode in the galley.  “I think it was a mixture of excitement and fear,” he told me later.  “All I could see were these huge eyes underneath a helmet.  He’d been looking forward to it for months, but when he was up there with the sparks flying I think he was a bit overwhelmed.”

At the climax of the ceremony, the tiny Vikings were removed from the galley and the squads lined up to throw their torches as the galley exploded into flame.  The tide brought the galley back time and again, and somehow this seemed to add to the atmosphere of it all.  We watched the galley at its finest and at its end at the same time.  It was spectacular.

And then it was back to the Sandwick Social again for the skits.  See, this is what you DON’T see on the news when they report on Up Helly Aa.  All the squads have to rehearse a “bit” that they do at the stations for Up Helly Aa night.  The nature of the skits is determined by the fact that the stations are noisy, full of people drinking and laughing, so they tend to be musical and pantomime in nature.  Again, they’re often about the local people so a lot of them I didn’t get.  But it was hard to misunderstand others – like “Fifty Shades of Grey” which involved a bunch of businessmen in stockings being lead around on dog-collars by a bunch of dominatrixes.   Then came the “grey” part in which a bunch of grandmas came in with inflatable zimmer frames and everyone ended up being chased about to the Benny Hill theme.  

In between the skits there was Scottish country dancing, the sort of dancing that makes Scottish women go “Eeeeeey-oooooh!” when they are excited or when someone kicks them.  I am ROTTEN at Scottish country dancing but always enjoy it, which probably makes up for my incompetence, I hope. 

So when Helen grabbed my hand and lead me to the front I did the best I could which was “not very”.  It was not entirely my fault.  It was one of those dances where you hold your partner two-three then reverse three-four, then hold the hand of the person next to you, then whoop, whoop, then back to the start.  Or something like that.  Even the whooping was beyond me. 

When I got back to Caro, I found she’d discovered a long-lost relative named Marie, who had been her pen-pal when they were little.  The cool thing about Marie was how much she looked like Caro’s mum Janette from the pictures I’d seen of her as a groovy 1970’s chick.  So clearly, Caro was having her “Roots” moment.  

Then it was back to the skits, including a squad of “Sergeant Pepper” era Beatles (about twenty of them) who sang “Day Tripper”, “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Hey Jude” – they were brilliant.  We also had aliens, teddy bears, a spoof of talent shows called “The Axe Factor” and lots of men dressed as women.  I’m told that Lerwick Up Helly Aa, which takes place on the last Tuesday in January is often referred to as “Transvestite Tuesday” for this reason.  “I LOVE dressing up as a wife,” said Gary.  “I’ve got three bras of my own in the wardrobe.”

Speaking of Gary, the Jarl Squad came in at the end of the evening with more RAAAAAAARGH-ing, and their three songs.  Gary looked very pleased with himself, “I’m HAMMERED,” he explained as he downed a port in one.  I was impressed.  He’d been going hard at it since 7am and looked like he could KEEP going.  I think it was a mixture of adrenalin, excitement, enthusiasm and Viking spirit.  Possibly a quart of Stewart’s as well.