The Days of Wind and Rosehips

We have had a week of what T. wistfully calls suede weather, which is weather which is actually both cool and dry, with appropriately atmospheric looking cloud formations, nippy winds, and leaves sailing by. Perfect September weather. A perfect time to zip into something suede, or even faux suede – a nice camel-colored jacket, a pair of knee-high boots… Sadly, living here as we have for the past three years now, we don’t own any suede, not even the fake kind.

Suede in Scotland, unless you own a car and are quite adept at nipping between vehicle-and-building, makes little or no sense. If the water doesn’t stain it, the creeping damp in the closet will make it break out in some unsightly mold (unless it’s the fake kind. Mold seems not to eat microfiber). But for a brief moment this past week, we experienced a moment in autumn like other people do — cool, breezy, and dry.

And of course, the windy was what made the entire city start sneezing. Filth flung through the air has made us all of us walk around with red-rimmed eyes, runny noses, and the mother of all headaches. This household was greatly relieved when the rain started pounding down again at about two o’clock this morning. Suede is overrated.

One thing the wind did do, aside from blinding us with particles of the sandstone which make up Glasgow, was to provide enough particulate matter in the atmosphere to create some of the most amazing sunrises and sunsets. For once, we weren’t socked-in with fog, so could actually see the gradual pinkening of the light, the clouds limned with peach and magenta and that warm golden light which heralds the ascent and descent of the Daystar. (Yes. Purple prose. We could also say “It shure was purty.”) We’ve been getting up early and staying up late to catch these things — not too late, and not too early just yet, as sundown is at eight already, and sunrise is at six thirty-three, so we’ve yet fourteen hours of “light”, give or take a few fogbanks. We are, however, at that steepest point of the year, and darkness is encroaching rapidly.

This is probably our last winter here.

One might expect us to be wistful about this. Hah.

To fight the pull of hibernation, we’ve once again launched ourselves into the arts. The Glasgow City Chorus, which meets at another university, is the most colorful, friendly, slightly insane group of people we’ve met here so far — we’re already wishing we’d met them sooner. The director started the group in the mid-eighties, and he’s… a very good example of a Scotsman – by turns acerbic, amusing, and full of stories. The chorus have a rather frightening schedule of concerts, compared with the easy two-per-year we’ve been used to with the University, and we’ve waded right in to learning the Cherubini Requiem in C Minor, which is a gorgeous and under-appreciated piece. Much to T’s delight, we’re also doing the Faure Requiem for our November concert, which she did in high school, and for which she still has a battered score. (Although D. has no idea why she bothers with the score as she has it memorized, Latin and all.) We’ve been received with genuine friendliness, and the group, the bulk of which is made up of thirty-fortysomethings, looks like a good match for us – we must now be told whether or not we’re a good match for the director, who wants to listen to our individual voices, etc. etc. This sounds remarkably like an audition, which is a dirty word to T., but she is being dragged along by D. and another friend, so when the dust clears will probably belong to the group.

(We must note that the director is newly dubbed an MBE. We were told this in tones of awe… and then T. had to go look it up. D. already knew it meant Member of the British Empire. T. said, “But, wouldn’t all British people, just by circumstances of birth, be members of the British empire?” Our friend tried to explain that it was a chivalric order, the lowest in the rung of five or so which make up the knighted ranks in the United Kingdom, and T. nodded in all the right places, and then said, “Right. We’ll just call him ‘Nearly Knighted.'”

Not makin’ friends here, that girl.)

---

In the days before it became dry and cool, it was periodically dry and clear — thus precipitating once more the time of Great Gouts of Smoke in the Garden, aka Glasgow barbecuing, and rosehips.

The rosehips in question grow in Finneston, which has bits that are all right, and has bits which are, frankly, squicky. We, of course, know all the squicky bits because we had to walk through the dodgy neighborhoods with rank mattresses, unidentifiable (or what you wished you couldn’t identify) trash, vomit and Buckfast bottles strewn about — to get home. But, like that tree growing in Brooklyn, there are wild-ish roses in Finneston… and all summer long they are loaded with blooms. This time of year they always tempt us a teensy bit to harvest the haws or “hips” that are left behind.

We did say a teensy bit. Yes, while water washes away many things, it’s hard to talk yourself into the idea of eating something grown out of that … muck, no matter how good for the health rosehips might be. In any case, they’re not officially considered “ripe” until the first frost, and we’re not quite there yet.

In Alaska we had rosehips dried for tea; apparently they can be used like cranberries to make syrups and jellies and the fruit is baked in crumbles. Maybe we’ll find some grown someplace… cleaner. If not… well, they are filled with Vitamin C. Maybe that will make a difference.

Elsewhere, the United States are still sweltering, or being humidified, or being rained on — perhaps all of us are wishing for windy days and suede. Those days are coming… hang in there.