Category: Glasgow

As if to exemplify the language divide between the US and the UK, an “ambulance” is not “something to transport injured folk to the hospital.” No, here that may include “a paramedic on a motorcycle who just happens to show up when you need some help, but has no way of getting you to the hospital unless you want to hang off the back.”

In the UK, an “ambulance” can be anything from a full-blown emergency vehicle to a car (in case you have a medical appointment and don’t want to take the bus) to … a motorcycle. This is, apparently, in case you called for help and needed somebody to be able to weave through the immense traffic and provide a bit of first aid, perhaps a few drugs, whatever; you needed somebody now, so they’ll get there quick. They just won’t show up in a van which is able to get you to the hospital or anything.

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The world is different, here. How different? Well, let’s just say that it’s 9 p.m., it’s 11°C / 52°F outside, and our regularly-scheduled ice-cream truck has just gone by, playing its music to attract those who have found the day too warm. Yes, this is a warm day in Glasgow (it’ll be down to only just-below freezing tonight). That never stopped the ice-cream truck, though: it went all winter.

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Greetings!

It’s springtime in Glasgow, and between the renewed ash belches from Eyjafjallajökull and the usual eruptions of pollen, we’re a sneezing, sniffling mess. But all is well in our little burg, fortunately, and despite the pollen, we’re glad at least the tulips have finally at long last come into bloom.

We are both relieved to be free of deadlines at the moment, and are back to our usual pace of work. D. is wrestling with the software to break down his survey into readable, useful statistical information, and T. is busy realizing that after one wins an award, one’s opinion is sought by various publications, so is being kept busy writing essays and being interviewed and quoted (latest is in The Horn Book Magazine in conjunction with a rather …unique article about the connection between childrens’ book writers, animal characters, and vegetarianism. She occasionally snickers aloud when reading these things.).

We are having our usual spring bout of insomnia, as the light of the solstice rapidly approaches. The sun now goes down at almost 9 p.m., and rises at five-twenty. (By the end of the month, it will rise at five, and by June, we’ll be well into the four a.m. hour, and it will set well after ten. There is nothing like going to bed and then rising with twitting birds who feel a need to sing at three thirty a.m.) She is growing slightly concerned at the routine volcanic activity which is shutting down air traffic, and has advised her editor and coterie of attendants that her June flight to D.C. for the Coretta Scott King Award Brunch might be somehow compromised. (Sadly, it probably won’t be. But one can hope.) At any rate, summer plans continue apace. As well as D.C., we have been invited to a wedding in Ireland, a wedding in Scotland, and on a trip to Italy, as well as a four-day jaunt to further explore the Highlands. We are looking forward to myriad photographic opportunities – and while we probably won’t return to Italy this soon, we hope to try Spain in the fall.

This week, D. is “invigilating” away, as the myriad students who require word processors, silent rooms and pacing space take their individual finals, and the PhD students are called upon to oversee them. Aside from his invigilating duties, D. is avoiding campus, as there has been a scarlet fever outbreak, which started in the nursery, where staff children attend, and has apparently spread to a childless professor of D’s, who is home covered in spots and running a high fever. Since scarlet fever also weakens the heart, D. is definitely avoiding campus for T’s sake. While it seems sort of horrifying to us that scarlet fever even exists anymore as a disease, it’s apparently fairly common here among children, and doesn’t produce the debilitating 18th century plague effect any longer. A simple antibiotic clears it right up. (But still! Scarlet fever!!! T. feels she has read far too many 19th century novels to ever be blasé about it.)

Far from clearing up and all blue skies and flowers as is appropriate for May, it is still leaden and gray here, although rain has been at a minimum for a few days. The cool weather (the high today was 59°F/15°C, and dropping) is no deterrent to the number of short sleeves, open-toed sandals and shorts to be seen on Woodlands Rd. We wonder if the ash in the atmosphere is responsible for the coolness, but the Met Office promises faithfully that the endless winter and the cold, drippy Spring mean that it will be a fantastic summer.

We roll our eyes and carry on.

Greetings from Scotland,

D&T

First Bus have raised their rates again for a minimum fare: £1.25 for the minimum charge, and £3.75 for an “all day” ticket. That means that, for us, who usually only catch a bus because we’re going to the University, or downtown, it is now financially less advantageous to take a bus when two of us are going: a cab downtown, or to the University, also has a minimal fare: £2.50.

What this means is that, each time we have to go somewhere, we must do some mental gymnastics. Are we going to go out together this evening? And, if so, will we be taking the bus? If we’re going to be making more than 3 trips anywhere together, the “all day” ticket is our option. If, though, we’re not going to be making more than 3 trips, then calling a car is the best option, financially. If one of us needs to make more than 3 trips (£3.75) but the other only needs to make 2 (£2.50) … we’re going to take the bus (this assuming that we’re going to 2 places together, but not the third, which is rather bonkers because we’d still need to get home, so when wouldn’t we be making more than 3 trips, but hey, sometimes somebody walks somewhere). But anytime we both need to take only 2 trips to someplace close by, we’re going to take a cab.

Yes, we could walk these distances – a half-mile at most. We don’t, though, unless the day is fabulously wonderful (rare) and we care to just wander about in Glasgow (even more rare). This varies, of course, if we’re going somewhere like Kelvingrove, where the trip is all through the park. Walking about the city, though, is a different story: it’s a strategic trip, to get somewhere in particular for a particular reason, and best dealt with by avoiding contact with the filth and muck by whatever means possible.

T. has finished her revision and is awaiting word from her editor. D. has a deadline of next Monday for his. We’ll be back to blogging more regularly soon. We promise. Life is just … frantic.

Because … well, since when does Sainsbury’s Roasted Potatoes With Goose Fat, Taste the Difference count as a “vegetable?” I mean … really?

Shopping in this country is mightily entertaining. Truly.

Wallace & Grommit are at The Science Center starting in April.

*continues quiet geekfest*

Gotta love the BBC for dragging up the best stories from back in the day… Did you know Glasgow had a vampire back in the 50’s? Okay, yeah, since that dreadful Twilight thing, everybody’s got a vampire these days, but imagine — pre-personal-computer, blue-collar, industrial Glasgow — all gray shadows and gritty blackened sandstone — and the word vampire on everyone’s lips… well, everyone between the ages of four and fourteen, that is.

According to the BBC the police reported about four hundred children, armed with stakes and steak knives, searching the Gorbals Cemetary one afternoon in 1954, for what they said was a seven foot tall vampire with iron teeth. The rumor had started on the playground at a local school, and by closing bell, it was a scene of mass hysteria. The vampire wasn’t just lurking, it had struck, and had taken away two little boys, and eaten them. (This despite the fact that all children were present and accounted for in the vicinity.)

It’s a little like the whole War of the Worlds thing, when in 1938 Orson Welles directed a presentation of the H.G. Wells short story on the radio. People — already jumpy about Hitler striding around spouting warmongering nonsense — panicked upon hearing about a Martian invasion, not realizing the faux news bulletins were part of the Halloween special of their usual radio show. They armed themselves and made ready to repel invaders from outer space… And a few years later, post-War Glaswegian children got ready to… kill something seven feet tall and iron toothed.

Mass hysteria is difficult to control — no one can ever remember who started a rumor, and because it can’t be disproved, it takes time to die down. It’s like the Telephone game — someone whispering something that distorts and morphs into an iron-toothed behemoth. Many a Glasgow parent was, in the end, begging the authorities to either produce the vampire’s lifeless body or some proof that the tale wasn’t true. And as Christians and McCarthyists and Communists all put in their two cents worth (imagine — all this sans the internet!) the whole thing got bigger, and bigger, and bigger…

‘Til someone came up with a suitable cause. It was the Americans. Their fault. Just like they were at the time polluting the world with that rock and roll, they were sending Tales from the Crypt into comic shops overseas, and that was scaring the poor children to death. The solution? Ban the comics, and all would be well. From the BBC: “The government responded to the clamour by introducing the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act 1955 which, for the first time, specifically banned the sale of magazines and comics portraying ‘incidents of a repulsive or horrible nature’ to minors.”

Yes. They banned the portrayal of horrible and repulsive things. And yet, there were still mirrors! And photographs! And TV news!

Oh, all right, we jest. Anyway. A British scholar is now disputing this claim, that it was American comics that started the scare — and we have to say we agree with her. We had many an acrimonious “discussion” when we arrived in this country, because a few of the people we met wanted to know how many guns we had, etc. etc. — giving strength to the stereotype that Americans are all violent, gun-happy nutjobs.

Despite the fact that few people carry guns in the UK, except for fox-hunting Lairds and such, we do find that there could be vast reasons for the amorphous fears of Glaswegian kids to burst into full-blown paranoia and panic:

1. Blackened, Gothic buildings. They’re all over the place, and they must have looked even spookier back in the fifties, with more soot, less urban redevelopment and fewer street lights (and the ones in existence were all of the sodium-vapor sort, which are all orange and creepy)!
2. Massive funerary presence, and the constant reminder of the fallen: This city is War Memorial Central — every church, every castle is filled with graves, smoke-stained old flags, plaques and statuary honoring the dead. We had our visit to The Necropolis cut short, since it was pouring, but that’s not the only huge cemetery in this city — just the most famous. It might have preyed on the minds of the impressionable just a bit.
3. Scottish and Hebridean Folklore – where does the tale of Jenny GreenTeeth come from? Not the U.S. We have that headless horseman guy, who …rides around with no head — big deal. Jenny Greenteeth drowns people. Bain sidhe? Those screamers are not from our side of the pond. Kelpies? Brownies? Wulvers, which are apparently the Shetland isles version of werewolves –? All from here. And hello? Loch Ness, anyone? All of these entities were part of general local folklore — and before TV would have been quite, quite scary.
4. Religion – Now, this is one we didn’t think of — but prominent Glaswegian writer Louise Welsh reports that some of the hymns that the children sang for school at that time mentioned God smiting their enemies with …iron teeth. And obviously, God is over seven feet tall. This is an absolutely horrifying idea; we’d really love to hear that school song!! Apparently, Welsh believes the words are from the book of Daniel… Inspiring way to start a school day, to be sure.

This whole thing strikes us as quite amusing, and a good excuse to find a book of Scottish tales. Since it’s snowing again, and we have twenty-five mile per hour winds and the temps in the negatives (and the Met office says to expect that it will stay this way until THURSDAY), it sounds like a good idea to huddle up in bed with tea and a tray and a good book.

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By the way, that ring of salt thing was apparently an ad for some movie; D. snapped a picture of the poster because he was sure it had something to do with slugs…

So, the city of Glasgow is renovating the Stewart Memorial Fountain. We noticed the project the other morning as we were out for a bit of a walkabout, just wandering to check out the state of the flowers in the park, and popping in for a brief visit to the Kelvingrove Museum.

Some of the fountain’s sculpture had grown tired over the years, so they’re grafting new bits on, replacing other figures entirely, and getting it back into shape. It’s a good thing … but … well, some of the creatures are a might strange, in fresh sandstone.

This “owl” and … this … pelican? Albatross? Well … they struck us as quite the interesting creatures, not least of which because it looks like the pelican is carrying a flame-thrower beneath its wing. And the owl? Well, when’s the last time somebody took a real, close look at one? I mean, OK, they’ve got … eye-tufts. But … they don’t really have daisies around their eyeballs, and their beaks, while a bit diminutive compared to the rest of the raptors, are not hidden beneath their feathers, waiting to pop out like a switchblade in order to eat. Perhaps these pieces will look better when they’ve aged for another hundred years.

The museum, as always, was spectacular. We chose a good day for it, stretching our indoor time by having tea and scones until the rain departed. The play of light and shadow outdoors was wonderful for photography, despite having to walk through a bit of muck to get there.

And one day we really will have to check out a set of lawn-bowling equipment (for free, thank you Glasgow City Council for promoting “exercise”) and spend a morning trying to … do whatever it is that’s done while lawn-bowling. That’s what this whole thing’s about, isn’t it? Learning about the culture? Right. Perhaps we’ll subject our next house-guests to the experience. After we’ve figured out what the rules are, that is.

Things are flowering, despite the fact that there’s new snow on the hills, and today’s temperatures were barely above freezing (below, with the wind-chill). And Easter is around the corner. Whatever happened to Spring?

Yes, we’ve been busy, and have been neglecting the blog world. T. is still working on her revision, D. his end-of-year revision, and we’ve been fairly faithful about getting to the pool in the mornings. We took the day off yesterday & went with the International Family group to New Lanark World Heritage Site, but more on that later, as we’ve both got more work to do this evening (including baking bread, as our flour has finally arrived from where it had been held hostage by the next door neighbor – have we mentioned that we hate the Royal Mail and / or Parcel Force?).

As always, there are more pictures than words, up at Flickr (including a few more of this lovely magpie). The pictures of New Lanark (pronounced LAN-urk) are uploading now, after many hours of editing and cropping, so now it’s to the kitchen with at least one of us. Hope you’re all having a good weekend!