By Alessandro Carosi

Christmas day means nothing to me ,it’s only a day like an other and except when I was a kid where I was looking for excited for the coming in town of that fat man dressing red to bring me gifts now I care about this celebration as much I could care to watch a football match ,absolutely nothing.

I believe that Christmas was a way to control people at the time of religions lordships and now a tool from multinationals to push people to spend more money ,I’m sorry I will not play the game ,gifts exchange ,excitement over a human made up celebration ,chit chat about upcoming holidays ,please no more.

So I was going to enjoy my me time hiking somewhere and then home reading or writing ,best scenario ,bottle of wine ,movies and a good long sleep but this time plans changed ,a friend living in London wanted to spend his Christmas holiday in Edinburgh and asked me to tour guiding him around the city and organize something for the 25th ,all right why not ,doesn’t matter what the period was but was a good reason to have some fun ,in the meantime someone else asked me earlier that month to go to her hometown for fat red man day ,right timing ,we could all meet up ,she suggested to come to pick us up with her car and then driving around the countryside and visit St. Andrews ,till now I never left Edinburgh so I found it a great idea ,what is the best way to spend money ? travelling ,like someone said ,travel is the only thing that cost money that will enrich you ,so true.

I was excited like when I was a kid waiting to unwrapped my gifts but this time was for the upcoming day trip ,my friend arrived with a car I didn’t think could be still alive ,20 years old ,creaking everywhere ,dirty ,I didn’t expect a Ferrari but something safer ,as usual I repeated to myself ,if the time arrived I will die anyway so no point to be worry ,I jumped into the car heading to the Scottish countryside and St. Andrews the golf’s motherland.

Time to play some music but the car stereo was old as the car ,how the hell it worked ,I completely forgot I’m fully absorbed in the twentieth century ,old fashioned bluetooth with a cassette ,a cable connected to it and to the other end a plug to connect to a Mp3 player or Ipod ,wouldn’t be surprised if she would have a walkie talkie instead.

My Italian friend was the DJ playing some Traditional Irish and Scottish music ,my Japanese friend driving and explaining about the surrounding scenarios unfolding in front of us ,me listening lost in dreams from the past and the future ,The countryside around Edinburgh has a lonely beauty ,green lands for miles with just few threes popping up now and then ,the dark weather giving to all a surreal atmosphere ,it all reminded me about an old movie where the main character inspired one of the most famous Italian comics ,Dilan Dog.

Cemetery Man

Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) is the cemetery caretaker in the small Italian town of Buffalora. He lives in a ramshackle house on the premises, constantly surrounded by death, with only his mentally handicapped assistant Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro) for company. Young punks in town spread gossip that Dellamorte is impotent. His hobbies are reading outdated telephone directories, in which he crosses out the names of the deceased, and trying to assemble a puzzle shaped like a human skull. Gnaghi, whose interests include spaghetti and television, can speak only one word: “Gna.”

The Latin inscription over the Buffalora Cemetery gate reads RESURRECTURIS (“For those who will rise again”), and indeed, Dellamorte has had his hands full of late. Some people rise from their graves on the seventh night following their death, reanimated and ready to assault the living. Dellamorte destroys these creatures, who he calls “Returners”, before they overrun the town. Buffalora’s mayor (Stefano Masciarelli) is so fixated on his campaigning that he seems unable even to hear Dellamorte’s pleas for an investigation. In any event, being an outcast in the village and almost illiterate, Dellamorte doesn’t want to lose the job. He opens up to his only friend, Franco, a municipal clerk, but doesn’t file the paperwork necessary to get assistance: “It’s easier just to shoot them.”

At a funeral, Dellamorte falls hard and fast in love, with the unnamed young widow (Anna Falchi) of a rich, elderly man. The widow only begins to show an interest when Dellamorte tells her about the ossuary, which she adores. While consummating their relationship by her husband’s grave, the husband returns, attacks, and bites her. She seems to die from the bite, but the coroner claims it was a heart attack. Fearing the worst, Dellamorte stays near her corpse, and shoots her when she rises.

Gnaghi becomes infatuated with the mayor’s capricious daughter, Valentina (Fabiana Formica). This would seem to end tragically when she is decapitated in a motorcycle accident. Instead, Gnaghi digs up her reanimated head, and an innocent romance begins. The young widow also rises again, causing Dellamorte to believe that she was not really a zombie when he first shot her, in which case it was he who killed her. He plummets into a depression and is visited by the leering figure of Death, who tells him to “Stop killing the dead”, asking him why he doesn’t shoot the living instead.

Dellamorte encounters two more unnamed women, also played by Falchi. He goes to outrageous ends to be with the first of these, an assistant to the new mayor: when the object of his affection says she is terrified of sexual penetration, Dellamorte pretends that the rumour about his impotence is correct, and visits a doctor to have his penis removed. The doctor talks him out of it, giving him an injection for temporary impotence instead. Meanwhile, the woman has been raped by her employer, and then fallen in love with her rapist, discarding both her phobia and the cemetery man.

His grip on reality slipping, Dellamorte heads into town at night with his revolver, shooting the young men who have made fun of him for years due to his rumored impotence. He meets a third manifestation of the woman he loves, but upon finding out that she is a prostitute, he kills her and two other women by setting their house on fire with a room heater. His friend Franco (Anton Alexander) is accused of these murders after killing his wife and child, and attempts suicide the same night by drinking a bottle of iodine. Dellamorte goes to visit his friend in the hospital, to find out why Franco stole his murders. Sitting by the hospital bed, he casually murders a nun, a nurse, and a doctor. Franco doesn’t even recognize him, so even these acts fail to change Dellamorte’s situation. He screams out a confession, but is ignored.

Gnaghi and Dellamorte pack up the car, and head for the Buffalora city limits and the mountains beyond. Gnaghi’s head is injured when Dellamorte slams on the brakes. They get out of the vehicle and walk to the edge of the road, where it drops into a chasm. Gnaghi begins to seize, and collapses to the ground. Dellamorte, realizing that the rest of the world doesn’t exist and fearing that his assistant is dead or dying, loads a gun with two dum-dum bullets to finish them both off. Gnaghi wakes up and drops Dellamorte’s gun off the cliff. He then asks to be taken home, speaking clearly. Dellamorte replies: “Gna.”

The first stop was to South Queensferry my favourite part of Edinburgh where the mist enfolded the village and forth bridge gave it a ghostly atmosphere

we walked around showing to my friend the town and then in desperate need of coffee we got in this nice restaurant by the sea ,since when I work in Machina Espresso and improving my palate to recognise flavours becoming really hard to drink bad coffee and that ones was really awful but all I needed was caffeine ,at least the view was amazing.

Full of energy we got back into the car heading to our final destination before Christmas dinner ,St. Andrews the motherland of golf.

Happy like kids singing like crazy we drove for half n hour to arrive at destination with a shy sun coming out of the clouds rewarding us to have behaved properly.

Honestly I was impressed by the beauty of the city with the oldest golf course in the world welcoming you before get into town ,looking around you could breath history anywhere

St Andrews (Latin: S. Andrea(s); Scots: Saunt Aundraes;^[ Scottish Gaelic: Cill Rìmhinn) is a town on the east coast of Fife in Scotland, 10 miles (16 km) southeast of Dundee and 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Edinburgh. St Andrews has a recorded population of 16,800 in 2011, making it Fife’s fourth largest settlement and 45th most populous settlement in Scotland.

The town is home to the University of St Andrews, the third oldest university in the English-speaking world and the oldest in Scotland.According to some rankings, it is ranked as the third best university in the United Kingdom, behind Oxbridge. The University is an integral part of the burgh and during term time students make up approximately one third of the town’s population.

The town is named after Saint Andrew the Apostle. There has been an important church in St Andrews since at least the 747 AD when it was mentioned in the Annals of Tigernach, and a bishopric since at least the 11th century. The settlement grew to the west of St Andrews cathedral with the southern side of the Scores to the north and the Kinness burn to the south. The burgh soon became the ecclesiastical capital of Scotland, a position which was held until the Scottish Reformation. The famous cathedral, the largest in Scotland, now lies in ruins.

St Andrews is also known worldwide as the “home of golf“. This is in part because The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, founded in 1754, which until 2004 exercised legislative authority over the game worldwide (except in the United States and Mexico). It is also because the famous St Andrews Links (acquired by the town in 1894) are the most frequent venue for The Open Championship, the oldest of golf‘s four major championships. Visitors travel to St Andrews in great numbers for several courses ranked amongst the finest in the world, as well as for the sandy beaches.

The Martyrs Memorial, erected to the honour of Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, and other martyrs of the Reformation epoch, stands at the west end of the Scores on a cliff overlooking the sea.

The civil parish has a population of 18,421 (in 2011).

The town also contains numerous museums, a botanic garden and an aquarium.

The streets was empty with only few brave tourists facing the cold

the northern sea calm and peaceful at the sunset gave me a serene feeling

looking at the ruins of the castle and the cathedral made me think about life back then ,how life could be in this village far away from everything

I still living in UK ,London is only 8 hours by bus but for some reason Scotland seems far away from everything ,isolated ,like Buffalora this country feels like is the only one in the world ,there is something here I can’t understand ,feelings can partially grasp it ,my soul knows but haven’t communicated to my mind yet ,everything here seems unreal ,seems like a movie set ,A movie set for the soul.

We spent the last few minutes of daylight admiring the sea with the sun slowly going to sleep to leave space to the moon ,we got back to the car and this time I was the DJ ,I was feeling a bit emotional so I played something that would nourish the soul but the rest of the group wasn’t happy about they wanted something energizing so I changed the playlist ,a song came along giving me a memory of a past girl met in New Zealand ,where she is now ? last time we met was in Cambridge ,I hope wherever she is ,she is happy.

At finally we arrived to my Japanese friend’s home in Kirkcaldy ready for something less spiritual and more mainstream for a Christmas day ,eating and drinking ,the day we just had was wonderful and probably the best Christmas I ever had.