What if the Torchlit Procession was run like Beltane?

[akicif]

First of all, let's ignore the signing up ages in advance and practicing. However, for that many people with fire on sticks we would need to have a truly enormous health and safety meeting (I suspect that Tynecastle or Easter Road might be too small) and a similar-sized venue would need to be taken over for the spraying of people's clothes with the obligatory fire-retardant.

No kids and animals of course - this definitely means no pushchairs.

Lots more stewards, of course, and if there weren't going to be enough on the night, the organisers would be stuck phoning round all their friends until they'd sorted the numbers (but, as these organisers' friends include the council and the Police, the number of stewards needed would soon be cut).

No alcohol - can't mix fire and alcohol, oh no. Similarly, no glass to be brought onto the Hill.

But the biggest difference of all is that the people organising the Torchlit Procession don't have to spend a chunk of the run-up clearing away Beltane's mess, whereas every bloody year, it seems, the ruin of the "longship" leaves its cargo of nails (someone's been misreading Norse mythology, obviously), hinges, and chunks of random burnt metal for the Beltane performers to tidy up lest someone should get an involuntary tetanus-flavoured piercing.

That said, off I go - still a sucker for fire onna stick!

Comments

[wolfette]

I'm too tired, or I'd be joining you with a camera and a tripod.

[serendipoz.livejournal.com]

More explanation please? (Just an American lost child.)

Thanks.

Joyce

[gnomatron.livejournal.com]

photography proved pretty difficult, rather crowded and there was a disappointing ratio of people to fire to people without fire. still, i hope i got some good shots.

[fenland.livejournal.com]

Went and saw it last year... and all I thought was Beltane's Better...

And yes when I saw the ship last year. I thought 'oh gods here we go again... Tidy up duty again'

[gominokouhai]

An illuminating analysis. And yet---the nails, hinges etc. are still there five months later?

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Yup - even some of the charred wood. I think we usually get several bags worth after the last walkththrough each year (my memory is trying to tell me "half a dozen bags" and bin bags at that, but I don't want to believe it).

It's hard to tell how much of the broken glass left on the Hill is from this event, and how much is just dropped by the random people who crowd the Hill the rest of the year, but the high number of partly burned "torches" (<voice style= "Paul Hogan">That's not a torch....</voice>) would seem to indicate there's dash-all tidying up afterwards.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Actually - just been up the Hill, and they've done a certain amount of tidying up: hardly any glass or bits of firework or wax candle. The fire was still cordoned off, as there were two guys with an oxy-acetylene torch cutting up the metal framework and stacking it on a truck - couldn't see if they'd already removed the burnt wood and other remnants.

Still, having just had the wickerwork Lion Rampant and no Longship, there's less reason for there to be insane amounts of metal, I guess. Must check in a few days time.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

I should come back to this with a longer answer later, but the short form is that I was comparing two events on the Edinburgh calendar:

• The Torchlit Procession, which is a mass-participation public event held between Christmas and Hogmanay - people turn up on the night, pay for a "torch" (basically a garden candle) and process from the old Parliament Square, down the Mound, along Princes St and Waterloo Place, and then up Calton Hill. On the Hill there is some music and a fireworks display and then people head home (or to the pub).
• The Beltane Fire Festival is held on April 30 every year on Calton Hill and involves 300+ performers processing around the Hill, pausing occasionally to perform to the audience of ca. 12000

In the old days (ie before about 2003), the Beltane event was free, and tended to go on into the not so small hours of the morning of May Day (once the actual performance/ritual was over, people would sit around with drums and so on, quite often staying until sunrise), but now the event is ticketed (at the Council's insistence) and quite thoroughly stewarded.

Strangely enough, the income from ticketing the event goes almost entirely on insurance and paying off the various things the council insist we have (example: we pay the council for a professional clear up, but do a first cut ourselves anyway - and then later in the year another part of the council complains that the tidying wasn't done properly and goes strangely quiet when we point out they're talking about their own colleagues....

[akicif.livejournal.com]

No question. Still, the fireworks were pretty....