Victory!

For those who have ever participated in a pub quiz, you know sometimes those things are HARD.

If you watch QI on BBC America, you know that Stephen Fry asks random, weird questions for no points at all, and while the randomness of the questions may be similar, there are teams at a quiz, and you strive for the glory of your mates and your place in the ‘hood. Or something like that.

Well, the Hobbits, who are generally useless at things like this, despite having two heads stuffed with minutiae, were on a winning — okay, within a half point of — team! We were invited to attend The West End Festival Literary Quiz at Partick Library on behalf of the Langside Book Group, our friend AB’s book club. The quiz was tough. We covered books and authors from the countries of India, Spain/Portugal, China, America, and Scotland. Guess which ones we were most helpful on? Um, yeah. Yay for Anne Tyler, Amy Tan, Pearl S. Buck, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and knowing the names of all the girls from Little Women, and who wrote The Little Princess. Good old children’s lit to the rescue; T. mopped up that section. She was fairly useless at India, but D. turned out to be surprisingly competent in supplying replies for some of the rest. We had a 38-years-in-the-trenches librarian on our team, and she was fifty-eight shades of impressive. She continues to kick herself for losing us a point and a half, but without her, we wouldn’t have even come close.

More fun than just flexing our wee brains over tea and tiny cakes was the fact that we got prizes!!! Did we need more books? No. Did we covet them anyway, especially with their commemorative World Book Night 2011 covers? Well, yes! A book of the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi a new book by Christopher Brookmyre — a local gent, apparently — a wee cake of a notepad with pencil from Costa Coffee (purveyors of REALLY big mugs of anything) and eraser from the Aye, Write! Bank of Scotland Book Festival, a Glasgow: Scotland With Style pin they HAD to have dragged out of the vaults somewhere*, and a lovely Waterstones book bag completed our stash. We were as ridiculously gleeful that we had conquered the other teams to receive all of this.

The West End Festival is usually good for the spectacle of the Festival Parade, for fun coffee talks, and a concert or two, and we’re pleased to have participated. And (mostly) won.

T. plans to proudly display her “Scotland With Style” pin right along next to her “Yoga Kills” pin. They both make the same amount of sense.

The Dance

*This post is a slightly modified version of an essay on T’s blog

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

This weekend we attended the epic wedding of friend Axel and were the on-the-spot photographers, as our gift to him. It was an epic wedding because a.) it’s Scotland, and people here party like it’s 1999 pretty much every night, b.) Axel is Romanian, and the Romanians party like it’s… 1989 (when Communism fell) as often as possible, and c.) it lasted for two days, and many, many, many sweaty, midge-biting (at the outdoor bbq) hours.

T is an introvert, socially backwards in some ways, and sometimes weirdly shy – so there were parts of the whole thing which made her break out in a sweat, including waltzing into the bride’s dressing room and photographing she and the groom’s sister getting ready (We teased Axel a long time about his imaginary girlfriend, because we’d never met her – so, “Um, yeah, hi. Don’t mind me, I’m just here to photograph you while some random chick puts lipstick on you. Just ignore me, thanks,” was T’s introduction.). D. was the quietest photographer on record, and also was too shy to be as bossy as he needed to be, but with a camera in front of his face, he is fairly impervious, and got some amazing, excellent shots (most of which we cannot share, because they are not ours. But! We will share some innocuous ones soon).

There were moments which were beautifully surreal, which included the sung Greek orthodox service with the cantor and the priest singing lovely duets, and the mystical looking gold-leafed icons, and the marching around the altar three times, and the crowns – the bride and groom are crowned in an orthodox service, which, along with the sugared wafers they got to eat was pretty great. (NB: The sugar represents the sweetness of marriage; some use sugared almonds for this symbolism. The crowns represent their new authority as a couple, since marriage gives them their own wee “kingdom.” The crowns also stand for the crowns of martyrs (!!) as the sacrifices of marriage are many. ::cough::) The cake was adorable – a stack of suitcases for all the bride and groom’s travels over their long distance, Minnesota-Scotland Skype dating; the Romanian gents, resplendent in their kilts, were too cute – they wore them well. But the moments we loved the best were the dancing.

Like many of you reading this blog (Hi, Adventists, Muslim ladies, Pentecostal folks, and Southern Baptists!), we were raised not dancing. The Hobbits, during their Bad Movie Nights, have never yet sat through (okay: suffered through) FOOTLOOSE*, that angsty 80’s dance film, but we’re told our lives run a parallel to the theme – churchy folk Just Didn’t Do That, because dance Led To Lust And Other Things. The only differences we see are a.) we’re not angsty 80’s boys, and b.) we figure we’re too physically awkward to worry about dancing anyway. (True or not, that’s our conclusion, and we’re sticking to it.)

The not dancing, though, takes something away from a person. We’re talking actual dances with steps, not what the “kids” these days call grinding or freak dancing or whatever – please. Real dance. To not dance — as families, as cross-generations, as human people — is to miss a pair of middle-aged women attempting the Virginia Reel and ending up in a breathless giggling tangle – or to miss being the groom quick-stepping his mother around the floor and singing with her some silly ABBA song, and to miss first-date couples and grandparents and shy Scots boys paired with shyer Romanian girls attempting cèilidh dancing for the first time, trying desperately to remember which way to step, hop, clap, and twirl. To not dance would be to miss all the suddenly unselfconsciously delighted Romanians of all ages — resplendent in their kilts, oh, yes — who ran shouting out onto the floor, arms raised, at the first strains of their traditional music. To not dance is perhaps to miss the turning of the world.

It was joy in action, celebration embodied. And we both felt crippled that we couldn’t stand up and join in. (Technically, we could have, but we weren’t really guests. And, T. begs you remember the descriptor “socially backwards and weirdly shy.” Thank you.)

English 102 in the undergrad years gave us William Carlos Williams’ The Dance, and T. recalls first looking up the painting. We still laugh at the words to the poem — Williams was so right about the round butts and heavy shanks — and this weekend we remembered again the circular phrases that remind us of the dances – running along, laughing, stepping and trying to keep up with the crazyfast Romanian circles, or the amusingly named “Dashing White Sergeant” or “Strip the Willow” or “The Pride of Erin Waltz” in the cèilidh – all stumbles and laughter, wild twirling and fumbles — learning grace with a slow, slow, quick, quick step. The laughing, the joy, the freely swinging hips, the stomping feet — all of those images swirled through our heads. So, these are our fantastic memories of someone else’s celebration – and a reminder to learn to uncripple ourselves and join the dance, metaphorically and literally.

The Dance

~ by William Carlos Williams~
In Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies, (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess


* Okay, here’s the scoop on Footloose, which we know is deeply unfair to hate without ever having seen. It’s T’s fault, totally, and let us tell you why: A#1 Reason She Hasn’t Seen It:) the music. Okay. It’s fun, catchy, whatever. But. T. had this Eeeeevil Aerobics teacher, pre-Zumba days, when people still did plain old aerobics. She made T. do this… well, it can only be called a chicken dance thing — complete with rapid, full-extension can-can kicks, arm flailing, and side hops — to the title song to this film.

A lot of hate going on, after that. A lot of hate…

User Registration

Awhile back we had a problem with spambots registering new accounts (hundreds of registrations a day), so we disabled new user registration for awhile. Registration is now opened up again. Apologies to those who wished to register (and comment) and were unable to do so.

This site requires that you create an account if you wish to comment. Your first comment will be moderated, as will any comments including more than 2 hyperlinks. This, also, is to cut down on the spammers. After you’ve proven yourself to be a human being, and one who is actually interested in this site as this site (rather than as a place to hawk your bogus pharmaceutical deals), you’ll be able to comment and have the comments come through immediately.

-D & T

A Problem With the Playlist

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For those of you who happily listen to your music in “shuffle” mode, this post should mean very little. For those who listen through the albums in the order in which they came on the CD, and who have organized their playlists in a particular order of albums, this post may not mean anything unless you use music as I do. Yes. Music, for me, has a very distinct use: blocking out the external world so that I can focus.

Don’t get me wrong: I love music, and happily listen to the radio (although I do object when, say, we transition from Sibelius’ Finlandia to the theme song from The Big Valley, which happened just Wednesday afternoon). But when I’m at work, I need something which is consistent, and which I’ve listened to so many times that the next song isn’t any surprise. The music all needs to be of a fairly high energy – to get the fingers flying over the keyboard – and the albums must come in the same order, which my player kindly does by default. The order in which I place the albums is the order in which they’re played, and I typically array the music out from happy pop music (Lenka, the Cranberries), through darker pop music (10,000 Maniacs, Tori Amos, Sinead O’Connor), and then conclude with the hard stuff (Metallica and Paris, Sonic Jihad). Lenka just recently supplanted The Cranberries as the lead album, as she’s a new addition to our music collection.

I don’t always start at the beginning, and I usually don’t make it all the way through because I’ll have had a particular mood which suited me for that day’s work. Yesterday, however, I began with Metallica, carried through Paris … and got the shock of my life when everything rolled over to Lenka. It was truly, truly horrible. I actually had to pull out the headphones and tell T. about it, it was so startling, and then roll back the playlist to Pearl Jam (comes before Metallica). After a few times through Pearl Jam, I could work my way back, and reconsider Lenka, but it was tough.

Music gets into your brain, folks. Very far into your brain.

-D

Titbit or Tidbit?

Banana, Peanut Butter, Raisin, Apple

What does one eat when in a hurry? Why, a banana with peanut butter and raisins, and a sliced apple! This has to be one of our favorite snacks / afternoon meals, and has seen us through times of feeling particularly uncreative. Yes – even people who supposedly blog about food feel uncreative. Hence the current obsession with “wraps.” They’re easy, they can be held in one hand whilst using the other hand on the mouse (shameful, eating at the computer), and they take absolutely zero mental capacity: slather some hummus onto a tortilla, throw in some cucumber slices, some feta, and a veggie sausage, then … wrap. Done, takes 10 minutes to make enough for two or three people, and has the bonus aspect of being quite tasty.

Now, for today’s question: titbit or tidbit? We’ve seen it repeatedly, over here, as “titbit” … which not only seems like a misspelling, but somehow very, very wrong. We realized, though, that the word “tit” is just the name of a bird. So, a titbit would be a small bite of something tasty? Sure. Go ahead and think that, if it helps.


The draft thesis was submitted for end of year review and was apparently well received. We’ll see what comes back in writing, of course; and, of course, the school year has ended, so that written critique of the thesis is a bit long in coming. In any event, though, things are still on schedule for submission of the draft which is for the viva sometime in the next month or so, with the hopes that we can have the viva before September. That would get us free of Glasgow before it starts to really get nasty around here. Woo hoo!

Things are looking better on the health front, with all labs coming back fairly normal, and with my energy starting to come back. Who knows, perhaps we’ll even make it to our pool again some day. Thank you to all of you who have supported us both through this.

-D

Writing with the Gardeners

Meet the Stump Grinder. It is LOUD. It is loud despite listening to music with in-ear, noise-cancelling headphones.

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I have 48 hours to finish up whatever I can of the draft PhD thesis for submittal on Friday. Gardeners? You’re SO not helping.

They’ve begun with the lawn-mowers now. It’s after 6 p.m. We like our garden, true … but can’t the maintenance wait a couple of days?

-D

WORDY Wednesday (As Opposed to Wordless)

Tom Kha Tofu with Udon

Springtime in a bowl, folks; a good Thai soup burnishes the stomach with warmth and makes you not mind the wind and the intermittent rain and hail. Plus, it’s stuffed chock full of veg. We started this soup with a pair of Thai bird chillies, a thick slice of galangal root (or you can use ginger), a half stalk of lemon grass and a handful of bruised makrut lime leaves (they’re sold as kaffir lime leaves. Kaffir is a racial slur in South Africa, so we say makrut… {ETYMOLOGICAL DIGRESSION #1} *Oddly kafir in Arabic, which is the words origin language, merely means infidel or unbeliever – which is an insult to a Muslim; no idea how it got so twisted with apartheid and such), and simmered them in three cups of water for about a half hour. We then added a can of coconut milk, a container of firm tofu which had been frozen and thawed (accidentally), roughly chopped onions, a cup of button mushrooms, a random amount of fresh green beans, broccolini, a sliced zucchini (or, if you’re from here, a courgette) and a couple of carrots we had sitting. A quick ten minutes, and we added some pre-cooked udon noodles, two tablespoons of mae ploy, which is a sweet pepper sauce, a tablespoon of soy sauce, and a dash of lemon juice. It. Was. Amazing. You’ll note that the veg was barely cooked, and the aromatics were left in — that’s always tricky. Note: don’t eat the lemon grass. It’s just not that tasty. If you’re concerned about your veg being too raw with such a short cooking time, you can always give a three minute blanch to everything except for the zucchini/courgette.

{ETYMOLOGICAL DIGRESSION #2 BEGINS HERE} Hey, by the way, we found out why the Scots use the French word for all of their veg like aubergine instead of eggplant and courgettes instead of zucchini, as Americans who lived with Italian immigrants do. It’s because the Scots are French. (Just don’t tell them.) A brief history lesson for you:

Henry the Eighth kinda hated Scotland, and figured they were überreligious annoyances, despite marrying off his sister Mags to King James IV in 1503. Realizing they were going to get messed about, the Scots cozied up to the French, and renewed an “auld” acquaintance. And it was old — it was from all the way in the 1200’s! In 1295, the Scots signed what is termed “The Auld Alliance” with the French, against the English. They’ve had bad cess between them for ages and ages and ages, apparently. History records that they were even on hand to fight with Joan D’Arc, were the doughty Scotsmen. Scottish mercenaries were paid in French wine, which was a pretty sweet deal to them. (Perhaps that was pre-whisky?)

Well, on to more recent times (Recent, hah! But, recall, the Battle of Bannockburn (Blàr Allt a’ Bhonnaich) is still discussed here in strong terms, and that was in 1314): in 1538, James Four married his son James Five to Mary, daughter of Claude de Lorraine, Duke of Guise, who was super rich and somewhat royal. They pushed their children, as one does, and encouraged their daughter to be queen when she was but four days old. The poor dear’s name was Mary, because they didn’t have a Baby Names book, and they went with what worked for her mother, apparently. (Oh, all right – her other name was Mary Queen of Scots, and she was either a beloved saint, or a vicious harpy, depending on who you ask around here.) Mary wed the eldest son of the king of France (aka the Dauphin), and the English went ballistic, because suddenly they realized that, Oh, ignoring Scotland is probably one of those Bad Ideas, and now they were going to gain a better organized set of enemies. They revived their feudal claims of ownership, and started Yet Another War, which ended up pitting Mary against her half-sister, Elizabeth, and you know how that ended. (What? YES, you do know how that ended. Oh, for shame! Go look it up right now.)

The point of all of this for our purposes is that the alliance between France and Scotland was never rescinded. They agreed, in that Auld Alliance, to a common language and a common purpose. Scots spoke Gaelic and French, as a matter of course… thus the inclusion of French words in Scottish conversation. Neat, huh? We learned all this at Stirling Castle our last visit.

Meanwhile, it’s interesting that French words in American Vernacular English tend to be specialized. We have “loan words” like ballet, bouillabaise, cabernet, cachet, chaise longue, champagne, chic, cognac, corsage, faux pas, nom de plume, quiche, rouge, roulet, sachet, salon, saloon, sang froid, and savoir faire — but if you’ll note, the words aren’t …common, really. While they’re well-known, they’re not easily used by most of the population; they’re all sort of upper crust-y kinds of words. (With the exception of more pedestrian French loan words like denim, garage and bigot – but the plain words from the French are few and far in between.) Conversely, Italian loan words are as common as — well, Italian Americans. Think of words like alto, arsenal, balcony, broccoli, cameo, casino, cupola, duo, fresco, fugue, ghetto, macaroni, madrigal, motto, piano, opera, prima donna, regatta, sequin, soprano, opera, stanza, stucco, studio, tempo, torso, umbrella, viola, violin, cappuccino, espresso, linguini, mafioso (mafia!), pasta, pizza, ravioli, spaghetti, spumante, and zucchini. These all (with the exception of spumante, possibly) are well-used and robust parts of the American language, and not special or fiddly words at all. We find that fascinating. Guess we Americans like our music and our moods and our food, eh?

{THUS ENDS OUR DIGRESSION}

For good or for ill, this tom kha taohu soup was the last really amazing, fresh-tasting, veglicious dish we made ’round these parts, and that was about, oh, two weeks ago. Since then, the Work Fairy has come and smacked us in the head with her pointy little wand. D’s dissertation deadline is looming, his work project deadline loomed, and T’s got an editorial letter at last and another manuscript revision ahead of her — plus her end-of-April freelance revision. Erg.

Our house looks like the scene of a crime. The piles of laundry – nicely separated, not yet put into the microscopic machine – have become ambulatory and are congregating in corners, plotting. The bathroom is routinely disinfected and the dishes get done — simply because we have a limited amount of them, and T. has Issues With Germs — but the vacuuming isn’t done and the dust is collecting in drifts, which is sort of hard to avoid this time of year. The occasional sunshine has at last provoked the trees into bloom — and the grass, trees, flowers and nasty Scotch broom manages to send commando pollen dust into any little crack or crevice on the wind, which blows and blows and blows. Allergies go hand-in-hand with the Spring, alas. But, we aren’t complaining. (We don’t have time).

Along with our regularly scheduled work, we’ve had extra rehearsal for our Spring concert, which is going to be awesome, by the way. It’s a Vaughn Williams/William Walton retrospective, which will be delightful for our English audience members, and a bit stressful for the rest of us, but things are coming together and we’re finally getting to where we can look forward to the orchestra bits of the piece. Aside from our single choir, which has been split into two parts singing away at different bits, the score calls for two flutes, a piccolo, two oboes, something called a cor anglais or a sax, three clarinets in B-flat an alto saxophone in E-flat, 2 bassoons, and a contrabassoon. We’ll have four horns in F: three trumpets, two tenor trombones, a bass trombone, a tuba; timpani, and three or four percussionists playing a side drum, a tenor drum, a triangle, a tambourine, castanets, a silvery shimmer of cymbals, a bass drum, a huge solemn-sounding gong, which is going to sound like the tolling of a bell, a xylophone, a glockenspiel, a wood block, slapsticks, and an anvil. (YES. An. ANVIL. As in, blacksmiths.) Finally, there will be two harps, a piano, an organ, and a full complement of strings.

We’re beginning to wonder how we’ll all fit on the stage.

Despite our amusing tone, we are both kind of out of our minds with stress, and it is beginning to show. We ask you to think of us from time to time, as we stagger through. Please keep in touch.

*RE: the etymological asides. Sorry! This has turned into the etymology blog today, and we’re not sure why! Oh, well. Just another sampling of the random things which cross our minds. Take care of yourselves.

In the ‘Hood

A surprising development is taking place in a nearby park. You may remember the site of this development from previous pictures… because it was once a vacant lot full of soggy couches and stained mattresses, all things which were burned in a huge bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night … but now is the site of a playground. A positive step, right?

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The playground has a gravel undersurface, covered by a waterproof barrier, a felt liner, and then …sand.

Hm.

Now, not being engineers or park designers, we may not have the right of it, but it seems a mistake to cover an entire playground in sand. It just rains here SO MUCH. We’re afraid the park builders have condemned the neighborhood park to damp, sandy sadness, rather than leaving it as it was: a happy, frolicksome place for the burning of mattresses, rubbish, and whatever else came to hand.

Not to mention the …cats.

We hope they rethink this, and that the park is not going to be the grand kitty-litter palace it looks like it’s turning out to be. (Point of interest: T. played in a sand-filled park like this when she was a child. Her favorite pasttime was sifting through the sand and picking out the cigarette butts. Great game, eh, and it would really work well in Glasgow! C’mon! Everybody play!)

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Meanwhile, a little closer to home, there’s Lights! Camera! and indeed, Action! Yes, our wee street and crescent are in the middle of a film or TV show — we have no idea which. By nine a.m., the end of the road was filled with trailers and guys on cherry pickers with big HD cameras. T. did not recognize the camera as an HD, she was just peeved that a man seemed to be filming the house. So, she took a picture of HIM. Then she worried he’d taken a picture of her taking a picture of him…

The big lights went up with their diffusers, and apparently all kinds of drama went on. T… didn’t notice, as she was on her computer, and not hanging about windows all day. It took D. coming from work and saying, “Hey, look out the window!” for her to realize the film crew was still there.

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We have gained a greater appreciation of the rigors of being filmed. For one thing, it rained all day, and was windy, which would have made things uncomfortable the guys on the camera lifts. D., who actually walked home from work past the site, reports that he saw scaffolding inside holding more cameras, and someone painting a wall — the fumes from the light and heat must have been intense. And those lights are painfully bright – we had to close the kitchen blinds because every time we turned that direction, our eyes were automatically drawn — and then we were blinded. They were apparently filming daylight in the flat, and we had to laugh — when it is EVER that bright in Glasgow? Maybe the show is set in Australia. Hrm.

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They packed up around eight and stood around in the street for awhile afterward, but we still have no better idea of who they were or what the show might be. Suppose we could have asked. Maybe tomorrow, if they show up again.

Meanwhile, all’s quiet in the ‘hood. Except for the car alarms, the feral children shouting in the park, and the man in the slouch hat walking his ferret… Can you believe nobody’s filming?

-D & T

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Entertaining Angels

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Okay, maybe not angels — there were a few too many low-voiced snarky remarks (which, in public, provoked silent laughter and tears of mirth) and stuck-out tongues for that. But, we were well-entertained last week nonetheless with our guests, whom we’ll call D’Nic & McFlea – previously known as The Littles.

On one hand, once you’ve seen one stately home or castle, you’ve pretty much seen them all. (Yes, SOMEBODY is jaded from having lived in a castle-on-every-third-hill country for almost four years.) On the other — there’s nothing like showing off those castles and stately homes to someone new all over again. And it’s a lot of fun being the tour guides to someone’s first time international flight, first castle, and first time in Scotland. We have played midwife to the birth of a new identity for D’Nic & McFlea, that of traveler. We hope our tourists have developed a love for the wider world that sticks with them, and changes their thinking about who they are, and how far that they can go.

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One of McFlea’s funnier repeated comments was, “I expected it –” whatever “it” might have been — “to taste/look/smell/be like the ones at home!” Surprise! Scotland is a whole ‘nother country. It’s amazing how you can know something in your head, but not have it sink in, until you get where you’re going.

At this time, we’d like to give a big shout out to Northern California, especially the SF Bay Area, for taking the Scottish weather for a few days. Thanks Cali! Your days of wild rain, water spouts, high winds and sheer misery enabled us to have a lovely week of mild Spring weather, with temps in the low fifties, light morning fog and clouds. NC, should you feel a need to trade again, let us know! We’re open!

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Ah, tourism: curious food (some of us are still bewildered at the scoop of shredded cheese-mayonnaise… stuff that was plopped next to our baked potatoes on Monday), naff – or tasty, depending on who you are – orange drinks (“It’s Made in Scotland from Girders”™), and fast-talking guides. McFlea was fun to watch as she peered intently at the castle tour guides. She has informed us that a Scottish burr is completely understandable if one simply watches the speaker’s mouth. Lip-reading! Who’d have thought! We did not try out her newly learned skills on any taxi drivers or random Glaswegians, as we’re not sure that it would have held up satisfactorily (and what happens if people mumble?). Still, we were pleased that she understood a lot more than any of our previous guests. It might be something to do with age, in some cases – ::cough:: – and the fact that others who visited were also polyglots who were accustomed to letting unknown languages simply flow past them like music. Either way, impressive work, McFlea! (Surprisingly, D’Nic even understood more than we expected, but he just shrugged when we asked him how. He’s got SKILZ, man. Mad skilz.)

D’Nic is one of those …um, quiet types, who apparently has a lot of amusing thoughts on his own and doesn’t say them – until later. He kept us smiling, and one night did a dreadfully accurate impersonation of a shopkeeper who kept calling T. “madam,” much to T’s disgust. With his teensy phone camera – on which he managed to take a number of surprisingly good photographs – he was always wandering off, engaged in capturing the memories. He enjoyed the castles well enough, but he really enjoyed the food — although where he puts it all, truly, no one knows — and getting active.

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On our last day, we went out to Braehead to visit Xscape, which is the teen wonderland of the area. It’s a huge indoor mall thing with laser tag, rock walls, video games, an indoor snow ski facility, and tons of junk food restaurants and a few stores. Of course, we only booked the day to go because it was clouding up, and we thought it would rain. Wouldn’t you know it, we had a gloriously gorgeous, sunny day that we spend indoors instead of cycling around Great Cumbrae and bugging our friend Axel. Oh, well, it was still great fun to watch the duo take their 90 minute ski lesson, watch D’Nic swarm up the climbing walls, and take a death-defying 18 meter/50 foot leap from the ceiling – complete with manly scream – and observe them shooting up aliens or whatever in the laser tag room. A good time was definitely had by all, and we can see the draw of Xscape for kids – and older “kids” – sick of the long, dark, inactive days of winter. The place is all neon and 90’s pop music and bright, flashing lights. Definitely fun once in awhile.

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They were with us and gone so quickly that we’re mainly left with the memory – like the aftertaste of a really good bite of food. It’s difficult for us to visit home – we go back and try to fit visiting around people’s work schedules, their children, and their other responsibilities. We flit around like nervous hummingbirds, finding it hard to settle in guest beds and are relegated to …visitors, where once we were family. It’s a strange and uncomfortable place to be at times. We find that having people visit US means that we actually see them and get time to interact, play board games, slouch around and watch dumb movies, and generally do all of those mundane activities that are not an event, but … make up a life. This was such a successful visit that we can’t wait to organize the paperwork and marshal the funds to do it again.

…of course, in a different house next time, and in a different country.

And now, the Serious Time sets in. D’s required to turn in a full-draft of his dissertation by 15th of June at the latest; he’s going to make every effort to turn in by the first deadline of May 30 6th (arrrgh, one month!). That means a bit of structured time during the week and on the weekends – we have to set aside play time and social time and work time. T. hopes to finish re-revising her science fiction attempt by the end of April, so that she can turn it in to a freelance editor she’s engaged in May, and then she, too, has to settle in for a long bout of revision for her book due on in Spring 2012, as well as finishing up another project she’s hoping to turn in to her editor by October (fingers crossed).

In the midst of all of this is the inevitable job-hunting and collecting boxes to pack and move…

             =====>BUT.

The sun has remembered to shine again, the nights are warmer, the birds are raucous, and there’s every chance that we have, once again, survived the Big Cold Dark, thank God.

Charing Cross 521

It might even be safe to say Happy Spring.

Until the next snow, then.

Ice Cream? Really?

Lynedoch Crescent D 381

“Yes, that IS an Ice Cream van you hear.”

It snowed in Glasgow today.

And … a half-hour later, it came by again.

Either something is 1) very wrong with the ice-cream van drivers, 2) very wrong with Glaswegians, or 3) the ice cream vans are selling something other than ice cream.

-D & T