Sunday 7 June 2009

What Does Home Mean to You?













From film festivals to football tournaments, comedy nights to carnivals, exhibitions, workshops, parties and much, much more, Refugee Week Scotland (15-21 June 2009) is an exciting programme of events happening across the country to celebrate diversity and raise awareness of refugee issues. This year the theme of Refugee Week is HOME. For many refugees and asylum seekers, a new home in Scotland means safety from persecution and a life without fear. But what does home mean to you?

For me home is…

Chilling Out: Sitting in the garden on a warm, sunny weekend with a few bottles of chilled cider, a good book and some belting Ska music on the IPod. Much as I love Edinburgh there's something chilling about escaping the thronging masses in Scotland's capital city and just sitting in solitude watching the world go by...

Family: Spending time with Jack and Hannah, my two loveable grandchildren aka the brats. Although I do fear for the world they are being brought up in, they are still at an innocent age and love and affection pour out at every opportunity...
A Bacon Roll and a Lie-In!: After a hard week at work, Saturday morning is bliss. The weekend lies ahead and having a bacon roll and a lie in lets you believe that, for a few hours at least, the world is a wondrous place...

Football on a Saturday: When the mighty Heart of Midlothian aren't playing at home, I enjoy sitting watching Jeff Stelling and the boys on Sky Sports News giving the nation the rolling football results on a Saturday afternoon. A simple pleasure, perhaps - but a pleasure nonetheless. Particularly when I'm waiting for my fixed odds coupon to come up (which it seldom does!) When Hearts are playing at Tynecastle and the game actually kicks off at 3.00pm on a Saturday, the pre-match atmosphere, weaving through crowds in Gorgie, the pre-match pint, the anticipation...sometimes this is better than the game itself! Okay - this is Hearts being at home but you get the jist.

The joys of home. What does home mean to you?

9 comments:

Lilly said...

Well having lived in Scotland for a some years and away from my homeland it became even more clear what Australia meant to me.

Living outdoors. Just spending a lot of our time outdoors without shoes. The beach. I missed the water terribly even though I am not a sun worshipper per se. The warm weather and blue skies. My family (naturally). Gum trees. Real football (um just joking). And salads and BBQs. Hard to eat salad when its snowing.

Nice thoughts - I cant wait for grandchildren one day. Now that could be a wait... good post Mike enjoy your solitude watching the world go by. I daresay that is one we all share.

Unknown said...

SKA MUSIC??? Just how deep are you really into your second or third childhood?

Strawberry Girl said...

Home means being able to put my feet up, or play with my kids. Eat what I feel like (cause' I bought it), listen to whatever music I want to, gardening, sleeping, dreaming. A place to be me for a while without having to try to impress anyone else. :D

Joanna Jenkins said...

Home is a pot roast in the oven, friends and family over for dinner and sitting around the dining room table for hours until all the dessert is gone. It's also pretty nice when everyone is gone too and it's peaceful :-)

Enjoy!

Refugee Week Scotland said...

Great post! That cider's looking very tempting...

Thanks once again for taking part.

Adullamite said...

SKA? Dearie me!

Home is....well untidy actually....send Mrs S round to clean up for me will you?

Mike Smith said...

Now I would have thought the grumpy old men - FishHawk and Adullamite - would have appreciated the delights of ska music...
Mrs S has run off with the bloke next door. I miss him so much...

Unknown said...

To be honest, I have actually liked some of the ska music that I have heard while gathering songs for my nephew to put on his MP3 player, but the thought of you donning a chartreuse-spiked mohawk hairpiece and banging your head against a wall got to me. For I would expect such behavior from Adullamite, but not you.

Caledonian Jim said...

I live in England - so home, being back in Edinburgh, means not having to listen to English hypocrisy.Like their worries over England football fans not being able to get to Wembley tonight to see the England v. Andorra match because of a threatened tube strike.

It’s a pity that this touching concern for football fans’ travel arrangements wasn’t in evidence in May 1981 when the Football Association, led by misguided anti-Scot Ted Croker, backed a racist strike by London transport workers who refused to take Scottish fans to Wembley. As it turned out, it didn’t matter, because 70,000 of us, me among them, still got there by hook or by crook, and were priviliged to see Scotland, under the inspired management of Mr Jock Stein, beat England 1-0.

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