Aberdeen

Arsehole of Scotland. Really IS a shithole. I know, I've had the misfortune to live there for the last 5 years.

Punctuated by a proudly melancholic people of stony face and hopeless demeanour. Narrow horizons are projected often through the assertion that they "wouldnae want to live onywhere else", having never ventured south of Dundee.

The city itself is entirely composed of grey, mildly radioactive rock from a local quarry. Often euphemised as "silver", it is important to assert that this is only a reference to the way in which the rock shines when wet from the ceaseless rain. The sun is seldom out without rain: earning an even more far-fetched euphemism of Aberdeen as: "the Rainbow city".

On becoming aware that an elderly woman was ill at ease with me, a male in my early twenties, standing at a bus stop in a rough area of Aberdeen, I seek to break the ice and put her at ease with some gentle conversation (We brits always make polite conversation about weather) :

Me: Day's looking better, was awfully grey this morning.
Old Woman: Fit? (It means "what" in Doric, a hilarious regional dialect of said shithole)
Me (Talking louder so the old dear could hear me): Terribly overcast this morning: but it's nicer now!
Old woman: Better overcast than sunny!
Me: Eh?
Old Woman: Terrible thing the sun. Gives ye cancer: the sun.(pronounced cOncer in doric...)

This "glass half-empty" approach to life is ubiquitous with the festering place. If misery could be bought the city would bankrupt itself.

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