Traveling Monkbot Journeys to Dundee

Please follow my train of thought behind the above video.

I was going to post a picture of Desperate Dan, since Traveling Monkbot is pictured below with his statue in Dundee. However, in my search for just the right image, I came across this picture and realized there was a group called Lieutenant Pigeon who had recorded a song called "Desperate Dan." (There is also a band called Desperate Dan...but they weren't as much fun.)

So, I went to YouTube in search of Lieutenant Pigeon and came across the video above for their song "Good-bye," but no "Desperate Dan" video.

But it really wouldn't have mattered. Within the first 10 seconds of the above video...I was laughing hysterically and had absolutely no choice but to post it.

Anyway...on to what matters...

Monkbot Makes It to Dundee
Text by Rowan
Photos by Mind Doc

Dundee I: This photo shows Monkbot perched cheekily on the rolled up comic book belonging to local hero, Desperate Dan. Dundee, which sits on the banks of the river Tay, is the home of the D.C. Thomson publishing house, responsible for a myriad of high-profile comics in Scotland, and the UK. Dan first appeared in the Dandy comic in 1938. Although he is a tough son of the Wild West, his Cactusville landscape is thinly veiled as Dundee. The city of Dundee had this very large bronze tribute to Dan set up in the city square a few years back, as he has been the delight of generations of local comic readers. I am sending the link to the Dundee webcam, where you can see him in situ.



In this photo, Desperate Dan wears a deeply pissed expression, as he has noticed a small interloper having the temerity to hitch a ride on his latest issue, which he is speeding home to read, along with his lunch of cow pie. This contained a whole be-pastried cow with the horns left sticking out. Childhood memories return, of wishing for a slice of cow pie!



This photo shows Monkbot in the railway station, perched on the windowsill of the station bar, which offers "anti-freeze solutions" to frostbitten travellers stamping their numb toes on the platform. Those like myself, a bit suspicious of fellow-travellers who indulge in alcohol-fests during the daytime, hang around outside and take pictures of the bar's auspicious name. Perhaps Tay Tay himself will grace it with his presence, order a beer, and answer the time-honoured local greeting at this time of year, "Gie wiz a sang, laddie."



Here is Monkbot perched amongst the penguins outside the impressive City Churches building, which houses the lovely Steeple Church. There has been a church on the site since the Twelvth Century, and part of the original tower still exists.

Monkbot is jiggling along in the company of a string of bronze penguins, part of the extended metaphor of Dundee as the "City of Discovery." Famous polar explorer and scientist Captain Robert Falcon Scott had his ship "Discovery" built in Dundee, and it stands anchored in the harbour now, visited by tourists entranced by his tale of unfeasibly "gung-ho" British bravado and ill-fated "derring-do." This led to him freezing to death in a tent in an Antarctic snowstorm in 1904. He took ponies.. they sunk into the snow, and the guys hauled the sledges themselves...Brrr. No duck-down and microfibre for them, just hand-knitted balaclavas and ex-army parkas. The Norwegian rival Amundsen, who got to the South Pole first, and home safely, used Husky dogs. Hmmmm.

Anyways...the 1940s film, "Scott of the Antarctic" is one of my all-time faves. The composer Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote a breathtaking score, "Sinfonia Antarctica" to accompany it.

Will Traveling Monkbot make it back to the U.S.? Will he ever be the same since he's become a world traveler? Where is his next destination?

To be continued...

Seriously...y'all didn't think I was going let us leave Scotland without a little BCR, did ya?

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