Category: Glasgow

Well, it appears that the evil spirit lurking in our boiler has been dispelled: the latest in the long string of boiler repair people showed up yesterday, at 5 minutes ’til 5 p.m., restored power to the boiler … and it started. Won’t quit, won’t fail, no matter what T. tried. He mumbled something about there maybe being an electrical fault somewhere, and promised to come back next week to replace something or other, and that’s that. After going without central heat for 2 months, bathing at the gym … here we are, with heat and the ability to shower. Of course, it’s not nearly as cold as it’s been, but there’s still snow on the hills ’round Glasgow.

We hardly know what to do with ourselves. Honestly, we each got in the shower this morning and … were confused. We could luxuriate in the never-ending hot water, and not have to keep pressing the button to make the water come out! (The gym’s showers, while providing endless hot water, are of the type to turn off after 30 seconds, unless you keep pressing the button. Doing this while shampooing, with your elbow, leads to a bit of an intricate dance, as the pipes – both hot and cold – are right beneath your elbow!) We got over the awkwardness quite soon, but still: this is our first shower in this flat since December 4th!

Just as T. was writing that D. was to do no more cakes (except for that Stag Night cake, in July), D. was being talked into doing yet another cake with toys on top. This one’s for the birthday of one of his coworkers’ mum. She’s turning 70. And she loves lawn bowling. So: the cake requested is a lemon cake, square, shaped like a bowling green, and to have figures on it … lawn bowling. His coworker is going to go to the same toy store from which we got the pirate toys, and is so excited it’s not even funny. This excitement is the fun part about baking, really: that people love these creations, and they’re really so easy to make … well, that’s why he agrees to do them.

D. has finished a draft chapter of his PhD thesis and has until May to revise that chapter. That takes things up to about 30,000 words so far. He’s still trying to get people to take his survey, in particular he’s looking for Canadians (only 10 have participated), people in the British Isles other than those in Scotland (although they’re welcome, too, it’s just that he’s got more Scots than English, which is sort of unbalanced as there are like 20 times more English, not to mention the Welsh or the Irish!), and people in the US other than Californians (Again: they’ve had a stronger voice than any other state.). So, please consider taking the survey: http://hobbitsabroad.com/limesurvey/index.php?sid=47694 !

So, the other day I had to be on campus and had a few gaps between one thing and another. In cases like this, I usually just pop next door from my department and have a cup of coffee at the Postgraduate Research Club. It’s handy, it’s literally next door to my department (where I’m standing, to take these videos), and it keeps me out of the snow. But, it appears that the Postgraduate Research Club appears to be having some troubles: they’ve closed.

Rumor has it that they’re £50,000 in debt. This is despite being 1) the most expensive place to eat on campus, 2) charging £12 annual dues of every member, 3) being busy ALL of the time, and 4) paying NO RENT. I suspect some foul play. More than that, though, I don’t have a place to hang out on campus any longer, and certainly nowhere so convenient!

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The snow has come and gone, but it’s still cold in Glasgow. We’re still without central heating, but did invest in a new space-heater, so at least T. is able to work without shivering. There has been some movement by the flat owner: we now have the number of the person who’s supposed to be doing the repairs, and will work through it. Also: we’ve gotten our membership to the Arlington Baths, so have a good place to go exercise (and shower) in the mornings! Their steam room is coeducational in the mornings, so after a good swim, we’ll sit in the steam room until we’re totally warm, then shower, and come home. They provide towels, they wash our “bathing costumes” for us, and we’ll be keeping toiletry bags there, so we can literally just walk in off the street and do our thing, no need to carry a gym bag around.

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Today is a day for getting a second draft done on both my methodologies chapter and on a book review I’m doing. It’s also a day for enjoying not obsessing over that pirate cake any longer! Hope your Sunday is as enjoyable.

I’ve blogged about these guys before, but … really, there’s nothing I can really say about them except that I suppose it’s a good use of rock-climbing skills. Apparently, if you learn to rappel (“absail” is what they call it here), and aren’t really all that scared of heights, you can get a good job in Glasgow: washing windows on high-rise buildings.

About once a month, these guys come to the Skypark building, dangle down the side of the roof, and swing back and forth, washing a few panels of window with each swing. They’re equipped with a bucket, a squeegee, and some suction cups. That’s about it, really, except that when you encounter them for the first (and fifteenth) time, they’re quite amazing. They don’t really look into the buildings, but hang out (literally), chatting with their mates, as they slowly make their way down the building

And then they go do it again. And again. All day long.

It takes them probably about 4 days to work their way around the building, between the three or four of them. They work their way down, go up the elevator, and make probably around 4 passes before it’s time for lunch, or to knock off for the day. They do this no matter what the weather (I’ve seen them out there in the pouring rain), and they seem to enjoy themselves pretty much all of the time. Is it a thrill, to dangle down the side of the building? Do they get to peek into the offices along the way? They never seem to pay attention, even when I take their pictures. (These were from the lunch room.) They just keep on working their way down, washing, chatting, swinging across the face of the building until they anchor with a suction cup.

Sound like a fun job, to you out there? Like anybody you know would enjoy it? Send them to Glasgow: there’s apparently only one, single building here which is equipped to put out a platform, for washing the windows. And Glasgow is … dirty. These guys have a job for as long as they’d like, I think.

A strange world we live in, truly.

There are 2 words of the day, today: Numpty and Tumshie. Why? Well, because I was talking to somebody the other day, and found myself to be utterly delighted when they said, “…and you just know some numpty will come along and…”

I stopped them, and, grinning, said “numpty.” “Well, yeah, some numpty, meaning…” “No,” I said, “I totally understand the word – it’s just been probably two months since I’ve heard it, is all. I’ve missed it!”

Numpty and Tumshie (or tumshie-head, to use it fully, as in back in the days of old when the Scots didn’t have pumpkins to carve, so carved out tumshies for jack-o-lanterns; to be a tumshie-head is to be not simply a turnip-head, but to be one which has had its contents scooped out) are just two of the fabulous words we’ve learned, and learned to truly love.

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In more surreal Scottish news: You know we all obsess over the weather around here. The longer we’re here, the more the constant conversations about rain, cold, or wind make sense to us. When we first got here, it used to bewilder us, how people can go on about it excessively; we thought it was just dead boring.

Well, yeah. It is. But, it’s what we do ’round here. And now we have a new story to add to the pantheon: the Telegraph reported last Tuesday about a woman who’d stepped out on December 19th to pick up her Christmas turkey down in Inverness… and just got back on January 18th. Yes. A month out, because she lives on such a steep hill on the coast, and there was so much snow and ice and insanity that she could not get back. Her poor husband was down to emergency rations divided amongst himself and six Springer spaniels. He spent Christmas, New Year’s and his birthday alone for the first time in thirty-five years.

“Goodness, my dear, isn’t it cold lately?”

Since we’ve been back (12 days now), I’ve found it very difficult to adjust to this time zone, falling asleep at as early as 7 p.m.. I seem to have settled into a time zone all of my own, now, where I’m wide awake at 4 a.m. and absolutely fall out at 9 p.m. That’s only 7 hours of sleep, but my body just doesn’t seem to need it, nor want it.

I’m going to keep it this way. The absolute best time to get anything done in Glasgow, as far as studying, is after about 3:30 a.m., when all of the pub-goers have finished their stumbles home. The city is then absolutely silent until around 5 a.m., when the first delivery trucks begin to rumble by. That’s about the only noise there is until around 7 a.m., when the vehicle traffic picks up enough to be noticeable. That’s the ideal time for a shower cat-lick bath anyway (yes, our boiler’s still out; no, we have no heating or hot water; we are considering breaking the lease). So, getting up at 4 and working ’til 7 gives me 3 solid hours of writing, with peace, no demands, nothing else to do except get up for a cup of tea.

The truly wonderful thing about this is that I’m giving my best time to my studies, rather than trying to squeeze studying in at the end of the day, when I’m tired. In the morning, I don’t check email, I don’t look at blogs, I don’t tinker with photographs: I just write. It’s … fabulous.

So, this email came this morning:

Dear colleague /student
The University is endeavouring on a daily basis to keep its roads and pathways clear of snow and ice. However, along with much of the country, we have exhausted our supply of grit and salt and, despite all possible avenues being explored, we will not be supplied with more for at least two weeks.
Work will continue to clear as much snow and ice as possible; you may see Estates & Buildings staff spreading sand – this is designed to provide grip underfoot, but will not melt the ice. Users of the Campus should note that extreme care should be taken while walking or driving in the University estate during the prolonged period of extreme weather.
Yours sincerely
David Newall
Secretary of Court and Director of Administration

We’re pretty sure we know where our crampons are, but are going to visit REI this morning, to see if we can get a couple of cheap backup sets. Just in case.

In Glasgow, we couldn’t get over the fact that a hand sanitizer (you know: alcohol gel) is named Enliven. Why would anybody want to enliven their germs? Perhaps they were stretching, trying to make the point that you’d be healthier if you only killed off enough microbes?

In California, Enliven is a brand of beverage, sold in health-food stores. The connection, there, is clear: it’s to make you healthier, or at least it’s supposed to be good for you.

Well, all, the semester is winding down for us, here in Glasgow. Yep: you read that right. We have 3 weeks until school’s all done, and we can do some frantic packing and head back to California for the long break. 6 weeks of vacation, an escape from the cold and dark

(Glasgow is down to 8.5 hours of “daylight” now, and will get down to 7 by the time Christmas rolls around), and time to enjoy just having time to visit with friends and family … er … write without interruption. Yeah. Because, you know, they take lots of vacation in California. Right.

To wrap up the time at Glasgow, I finally got around to taking a picture of the “whale-bone” sculpture. What? Doesn’t it look like a pair of whale bones? No?

We’re wondering what to do with our orchids (which have sent up additional flowers!), and with our wee cacti, and the bromeliad. Who can we trust to keep them? Who would we like to traumatize after their death entrust with their care? Because, really, if they die … well, it won’t be pleasant, will it? These are the first orchids we’ve ever managed to keep alive! Hmm. We’ll think on it some more, but we’re afraid that they’re going to travel down to Largs, with Alex.

St. Andrew’s day is coming up, November 30. We may try to make a last effort at seeing something Scottish, the weekend before we leave. We don’t know, though. We’re really feeling the hibernation urge, and it’s not even grown terribly cold.