Category: Glasgow

The world, as we see it in the morning. Do notice the pigeons, please (no, they are not rats – we zoomed in and made sure, because we were so freaked out at the thought).

-D

The wind is gently rattling the windows.

The rain is falling in misty sheets, sideways. We are being very bad today, as we are ensconced in pajamas, sipping tea, reading; post-bath and post-nap and very cozy. This is the weekend of the Glasgow Faire, which means few people are coherent enough to be at work today anyway, since there was a big celebration downtown and on the Green from late Friday onward. Traffic was choked around George Square as hundreds of people crowded in for a concert Saturday night, and rainbow flags swished and swirled in the damp air. It was definitely a party atmosphere, which is why we’re home doing nothing particularly party-like. We went to a wedding this weekend and it was a big enough party (Froth! Feathers! Fascinators!) for all our needs for quite some time. And now, we just want to veg, and enjoy being home. Eventually we’ll get up, look responsible, and clear up the mess in the living room, which has limped along under a load of half-finished books and blankets, a couple of screwdrivers and a pair of wirecutters, for some reason. Eventually we’ll get dressed, and maybe find some lunch. Eventually, we’ll put in some wash.

Eventually.

Years ago, when T. worked at summer camp (six long years of this, people, which makes her oddly less sanguine about the pitter-patter of little feet) her favorite time of year was Christmas in July. It was, of course, a conceit of great ridiculousness thought up by wily camp personnel desperate to give campers something else to look forward to in the long, heat-dense days of July. Christmas was the Other Big Thing in a year hemmed in by schoolwork and recess — after summer itself, of course. And July 25 was exactly six months away from the Other Big Thing.

The whole week beforehand, after swimming lessons and Nature class, the nefarious little elves would gather, and instead of resting quietly or writing letters home during rest period as they were told, they would make Christmas cards with copious amounts of glitter and nail polish and glue, and plot what gift to give whom, and which cabin should be ambushed with water balloons under cover of night. (This was the girls, of course. The boys were probably having water fights and origami frog races and deciding which cabin should be booby trapped with the balanced bucket prank and festooned with toilet paper. There was just a lot of pranking going around, much to the staff’s collusion.) There was much shoo-shooing and giggling and many shrewdly narrowed eyes. The counselor lay in her bunk and pretended to be completely insensate, as was appropriate. You could also pair these with some flowers for your girlfriend and there you have the perfect gift.

The day itself was always almost anticlimactic; there would be an especially silly flag raising and line call — elves racing by on horseback with a stolen bag of gifts or something like that — followed by a huge, special breakfast, complete with cinnamon buns and hot chocolate (first thing in the morning, because having that any later would mean we’d be sweating as we sipped), with a short service of lessons and carols in the morning, and then the usual Go-Karts and BMX riding and trail rides and art classes and swimming lessons — with the swim teacher wearing a Santa hat and making the kids dive for silver dollars on the bottom of the pool. The fun would continue throughout the day, and then at last, supper, with a visit from a suspiciously Camp Director looking Santa, and the breathlessly awaited gifts and games in a garishly decorated cafeteria. The day was always rounded out with s’mores at campfire and an outdoor movie, usually something like the original Hayley Mills/Disney The Parent Trap, which was amusing to the staff as well as the campers.

And then, late at night, when the campers were finally somewhat in bed, the staff would come around caroling, the one time of year when one can sing of sleepovers in barns, Infants in straw-lined mangers, shepherds on hills and a silent star, and have it make sense. (Really, can you imagine shepherds on the hills of Bethlehem in sub-zero climes? It snows in Bethlehem in December. Just sayin’.) From being a day filled with too much sugar and hysteria, the night tended softly toward the downright magical.

Fun memories, those.

The best thing about Christmas in July is that it is …anticipatory, yet completely offbeat and dare we say, weirdly juvenile. Which is why T. has decided we must do it this year. She has invited our friend C. along, with a garishly glittery card, to attend a supper and a movie – sadly not out of doors nor accompanied by a campfire; we’ll have to make do with candles — and is plotting the making of gifts and the settling on a menu of significant poshness. We must, of course, begin the day with hot chocolate and rolls (with orange zest and cardamom in the dough, of course), read T’s third favorite Christmas story, and then perhaps do something completely off the cuff — like go berrying at East Yonderton Farm, in Inchinnan, which provides a U-Pick of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. (This will have to do, since we have no swimming lessons available, and no horses.) We’ll enjoy stuffed mushrooms and a roasted veg bread pudding starter, some sort of roast beast, garlicky green beans and butternut squash, a salad with slivered almonds and something, and then, our dessert – something or other with berries.

(As you can see, the menu is a work in progress.)

We will force C. to play her recorder for her supper, because what else are friends for if not for force you to play the instruments you have in your house but allow to be covered by a thin layer of dust, and then we’ll settle in with our DVD of The Hogfather, an adaptation of the Pratchett novel which is not Death Takes a Holiday, exactly, but more Death Takes Over A Holiday, and we know C. is as weird as we are, and will enjoy it immensely.

It may be the only Christmas celebration that we’ll have this year, thus it’s doubly important. Instead of our usual trip home, spending six weeks among family and friends, we’ve decided to save our shekels for the inevitable interview trips D. will have to make the nearer his graduation looms. Jobs – money – things to pay off school loans – these are the sorts of things which occupy our minds just now. Occasionally, T. wakes D. up in the middle of the night and asks, “Where are we going?” He has no real reply, and since he usually isn’t too deeply asleep anyway (the long daylight is still making REM sleep a fond and distant memory just now), just makes up something vague yet promising (He is very good at this.) which allows her to let go of her nightmares of penniless wandering and go back to plotting the next three novels, and eventually to sleep.

Where are we going? What are we doing? And what happened to summer? Some days it seems like it’s all rushing toward us rather rapidly. In less than a year — finishing up, the summation, another novel due, an oral defense — And then we remember: only the weather thinks it’s October. We still have plenty of time to finish things, wrap things up, do our last deeds in this place. And we’re going to celebrate every day as much as we can, until we have to get serious about the future.

So, Merry Christmas in July. Here’s to not knowing the future, but feeling it bloom heavy with mystery and promise. Here’s to the days of anticipation.

Before we left, we finally broke down and switched internet providers. British Telecom was charging us an arm and a leg, compared to Sky, plus they have this arcane “fair usage policy” which says that they punish you for a month if you’ve downloaded a lot in the previous month, no matter that you purchased the “unlimited” package.

Of course the new router arrived while we were in D.C., so I had to go down to the postal depot to pick it up, at 7 a.m. on Monday. Sky will not let you connect without their router, and unhelpfully told me that I could go to a friend’s house and see if I could find something on Google which would let me use my existing router. SIGH.

On the way to the postal depot, I shared my woes with the cab driver. He, also, shared his woes of dealing with his internet provider, which has a call center in “India or Pakistan.” His woes? They couldn’t understand him, and finally gave him the number of a call center in the UK.

Yes, indeedy: if you can understand the Glaswegian, you can understand anything.

-D

Probably the tales you hear from fellow residents are the best gauge of any city. Those anecdotes add heft and weight to one’s own suppositions, and sometimes provide startling conclusions to stories you’d already made up about the place where you live…

We have frequently mused over the fact that the ice cream trucks drive around here ALL year ’round, and generally at eight or nine at night, come winter — which to us was just mighty strange. Our friend K. said Glaswegian friends of hers mentioned that winter ice cream trucks were likely selling Bovril – the salty meat broth that’s been selling since the 1870’s — and smokes. Being snarky and living in a sort of borderline neighborhood at the time, we assumed that it was smokes they were selling, all right, just possibly a different variation of herb. Turns out, while we were being sarcastic, we were more right than we knew. Back in the 80’s, Glasgow indeed had ice cream vans selling drugs — which led to madness and mayhem. Glasgow had … Ice Cream Wars.

We have The War on Drugs in the U.S., which necessitates beagles sniffing our luggage in the SF airport; in Glasgow, they had a gelato garda mockingly called the Special Chimes Unit (instead of Special Crimes Unit) which consisted of the Strathclyde Police in patrol cars, following all the tinny-music-playing ice cream trucks around town, trying to catch them in the act of selling drugs and fencing stolen goods (and protecting them from rival ice cream vendors, who happened to be carrying shotguns).

That must have been a bottom-of-the-barrel assignment. Rookie: “What’s my job today, Chief?” Chief: “Well, go out to the squad car, roll down the window, and …listen…”

People actually laughed about this, at first. There were reports of the usual nonsense people get up to during drug wars, but most of it was vehicular-related – windshield bashing and van raids, and ramming and cursing and screaming and fistfights in the street, much of which is all in a day’s work in parts of Glasgow. And then in 1984 a young man was killed – along with four other members of his family, in a house fire allegedly set by rival ice cream men.

People in the city were incensed, of course, and screamed for justice. The police, under pressure, rounded up a whole bunch of people. The story concluded in 2004 – after twenty years of trials and accusations and protests and hunger strikes – in their zeal to arrest, the police picked up at least a couple who continued to insist on their innocence. You can read all the details in the BBC archives, if you’re of a mind to…

…but as time moves on, most people want to forget such ugly things about their city. Which is why, this afternoon, when an ice cream truck playing Yankee Doodle went ’round our crescent, people followed it, blowing their horns until it pulled over. Parked, it was mobbed by the kids who’d abandoned their games in the park. No police, and no frowning faces around the ice cream truck.

Just a little sugar on a muggy afternoon.

Twice, today, I’ve had the UK Data Protection Act quoted at me, to my disadvantage. I generally like the idea of data protection, but frequently find myself at a disadvantage because of it. Why should this be the case?

The first time today was on the phone with British Airlines. As it turns out, they’re having a “strike action,” so have canceled some flights and booked passengers onto other flights. Without making it clear to the passengers that this had been done. I found this out by checking the flight status of our guests, only to find out that their flight out of London, Heathrow had been canceled. So, I telephoned B.A. to ask whether they’d been booked onto another flight, or what would happen. B.A. informed me that they could not discuss this with me, as I was not the person on the flight, and that our guests would have been informed if their flight had been canceled, implying that our guests simply neglected to inform us of their flight plans. That would be rather silly, as we’re to meet them at the airport.

If the person at B.A. had been willing to speak with me, I could have booked them a flight out of London, Gatwick. Instead, our guests are trapped at Heathrow until 8 p.m. – a layover of nearly 7 hours. They found out when they arrived at Heathrow, at which point they telephone me and told me that the oh so helpful B.A. people couldn’t get them on an earlier flight from Gatwick. Oh, the service.

The second unfortunate use of the Data Protection Act was in speaking with the Royal (pain in the backside) Mail.

A few weeks go, I ordered a pair of wired keyboards, US key layout, to replace our wireless keyboards, one of which has given up the ghost, the other of which misses the occasional keypress (truly annoying, when you type in excess of 100 words per minute, as we both do). So where are these keyboards? Well, Royal (can’t find our house) Mail claims to have delivered them on the 2nd. Right. Sure. The fact that T. is home writing most every day, as am I?

The first person to speak with me insisted that there was nothing she could do for me – that I’d have to contact the person who shipped the package, and they could initiate a search for the item. To tell me anything about the package before it had been delivered would be a violation of the Data Protection Act. HUH? Apparently, the intended recipient of a package can’t ask the shipping company about why the package has not shown up! That would have to be done by the person who shipped the package. Otherwise … their … data … wouldn’t be … protected?! Right. Even though the Royal (can’t find our street) Mail claims to have delivered it. To us.

The second person (yes – I called back, having realized I was speaking with someone of less than stellar mental capacity) told me that, no, what the “delivered 02-June” status actually meant was that they’d taken the package out that day. They should have delivered it. But, for whatever reason, they didn’t … and that, “this was a disciplinary matter, and I need you to take down this case number.” Huh?

Ignoring the second person (but I sure hope that they get our package to us – and teach the postmen the difference between Court, Street, Lane, Terrace, and Crescent, all of which are within one block of each other in this mad city), the first person believed in the magic of citing the Data Protection Act. It works wonders, apparently. She got quite sniffy when I was not rocked back in awe by her invocation of Law.

Any port in a storm, I suppose: if you need an excuse for customer disservice, you can claim that you’re doing it for somebody’s data protection. Somehow I don’t think that either of these uses were what was intended.

-D

Anybody know how to stretch a felt hat? I love this thing, but it’s grown smaller, each time it’s gotten wet (which has been many times since coming to Scotland). I really would like to stretch it back out and wear it, because it’s a wonderful hat. As it is, though, it sits, not being worn, because it makes my head hurt.

Any ideas? I’ve tried getting it wet & putting things into it (a bag of rice was the last attempt), with no results. Next try will be those shoe-stretching things, I guess. I just can’t think what else to do.

-D

Some of the expressions of the Glaswegians are … well, odd. I’ve heard someone called “wee man” and “big man” … in the same conversation. Now, to me, “wee” and “big” are sort of opposites. Either something is “wee” or it’s “big,” but it cannot be both. The really strange thing was that, in the context of the conversation, it made sense. “How’s it going, wee man?” To this, our database administrator poured out his woes, detailing his long nights, lost weekends, and endless conversations with Microsoft. After that, something was said along the lines of, “oh, aye, well, you’ll sort it oot, big man.”

Now, the “wee man” I could understand: our man, here, doesn’t top 100 lbs / 45 kgs. He truly is wee. He’s a man who eyes my teacup with awe: he claims that, if he were to drink a full teacup, he wouldn’t be able to eat lunch. He only ever takes a half-full teacup.

The “big man,” though, I think … is something else entirely. It does beg the question, though, as to why it’s used so ambiguously. I’m never “wee man,” but am called “big man” by all sorts of people, most of whom I have never met before in my life. So. Right. “Big” and “wee” do not necessarily mean “big” and “small.” Or something.

To continue with the linguistic odyssey, there is, apparently, a neighborhood in Glasgow in which everybody calls everybody “pal.” As in, “thanks, pal,” or, “how’s it going, pal?” To our ears, “pal” is … well, something out of a 1930’s gangster movie, probably something spoken by Bogart, out of the corner of his mouth, around a cigarette, and with menace: “watch your back, pal, ’cause I’ll be watchin it too, see?”

To have a coworker ask, “how’s you, pal?” Well, that’s a bit odd. To have a delivery guy say, “thanks, pal?” That’s downright bizarre. It happens, though, and it’s … disconcerting.

We continue to be amazed at this land. One last thing: Glaswegians? They’re otherwise known as “weegies.” Again, with the “wee.”

-D

And now … now, we’re listening to BBC Radio 3. They’re currently playing Ravel’s Bolero, done on home-made instruments. We’re traumatized.