Friday 12 August 2011

The Hybrid Medieval Space Bonnet

Hello dear (imaginary) reader. My stay up north is getting no more interesting. Today I did the ironing, read Harry Potter, and went to the post office and the spar. My dad fixed my laptop power supply, and then my belt broke. I watch some funny stuff on telly. Not really worth a blog post.

SO instead, I'm going to kick off telling you what I did this summer.

The FIRST thing I did this summer was to graduate from university!


(Look, there's my mum!)


The graduation ceremony at University of Edinburgh has some interesting traditions. We graduate in the McEwan Hall, which is a grand, circular building with classically-inspired paintings inside, and gorgeous architecture outside. The ceremony of actual graduation involves walking along the platform and getting "doffed" on the head with this hat - the Geneva bonnet.



Now this hat was made, apparently, out of an old pair of John Knox's breeches, which is nice... The Dean was also telling us how a former student called up one day and asked if he could take the hat into space! Unfortunately, the hat is somewhat sacred to the ceremony, so instead he took up a university emblem patch which was then sewn into the hat onto its return. You can read about that here.



After four years of solid hard work, it was nice to finally get a bit of time off to have a drink with my friends (!) We had a really great day, and I'm so proud of all my friends who graduated along with me.

Love and hugs

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