Time-Out in Antonine’s Backyard

Now that we’ve alighted, briefly, in this rain-soaked corner of Scotland, we pause to reassess our lives:

RAIN-SOAKED. Well, yes. Rain. We do live in Scotland. Somehow, it seems part of us forgot this, and when we struggled up the hill from the parking garage for our last Choral Classics concert of the season, where were our coats, boots, and brollies? In a box, that’s where, headed for sunnier climes. As the gusting wind blew apart carefully styled hair and the rain dampened cardigan-clad bodies (no coats, scarves, hats. ::sigh::), we quietly despaired.

Good thing the church was so nice (we had a sit-down tea, complete with tea sets and little sandwiches), and the acoustics so grand (it was, by far, the best Classics concert we’ve given; even singing hymns in that sanctuary must be wonderful). The minister was, amusingly, from Texas, which we heard in his first twangy words, as he remarked that the weather “separated the men from the boys,” we thought, “Oh, yes, not a phrase one hears in Scotland much at all.” All in all, despite starting out so drenched and gloomy and windblown, it wasn’t a half-bad day after all.

The rain does mean that Scotland is giving us QUITE a send-off — it’s easier to have no regrets about leaving a place when it’s in the low forties and one is being lashed with freezing rain, is it not? It snowed in Aberdeen this week, but elsewhere –somewhere — Spring is happening, and with it come new thoughts and new places… and…

New words: no matter that we’re set to be leaving these shores in three weeks, there are still new and useful Ulster-Scots words coming up in conversation — skelf is the latest, which is a splinter. Not just any splinter, mind — these are the wee and nearly invisible sort which torture and annoy. (Wean is not a new word… but it might be a new pronunciation for you – think we’uns.)

And, lest you think the learning is going all one way, D’s coworker, Thing 1, asked a rather conversation stopping “what’s molasses?” the other day, whilst the two of them were discussing baking bread. This bemused D. for quite some time until he remembered that treacle is a cousin of our molasses, and what Thing 1 would be more familiar with. It’s not, of course, the same, but that’s neither here nor there…

And so, we spend our last few weeks here, exploring another tiny piece of Scotland. Kilsyth is wee – the whole town of the downtown is maybe about a mile across, and there are rows of houses on the hills. We truly are in Antonine’s backyard, as the Antonine Wall is little over a mile to the north of the town.

We’re staying in a stylish little place – a house which has sat empty on the market for eighteen months, which has been hastily equipped with necessities so we can live here – and even have a few friends over (sitting on the floor) for some last quiet farewell dinners. And the farewells keep coming – we’ve laid out a calendar and have tea meetings, lunches, brunches and suppers all the way to the weekend before we depart. T. is being fêted by her section the Tuesday after the concert, and is looking forward to hearing stories of what they’ll be getting up to this summer — which she’s dubbed “the Second Sessions.” The plan is for the second sopranos to be taking group voice lessons all summer (with wine and cheese, of course) in preparation for the coming choral season and the German tour. Some good times will be had, which she will be sad to miss.

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou

And as we prepare for that very last concert of the season, our director gave us the exciting news of a trip to Leipzig Germany, planned for 2013! We have been asked to go along as “augmenters,” the helpful choir “ringers” who show up for a couple of rehearsals and the performance, and who really must chug along through learning a piece on their own. In this case, it will be fairly simple, as the performance pieces for our trip are the Mendelhsson’s Elijah we’re preparing to perform next week, and the Rossini Petit Messe we performed last year — and we have our own scores for everything already. One always finds out the nitty-gritty about a person when one travels with them – we’ll certainly have all manner of things revealed about our fellow singers, mainly how quickly we’ll all be brushing up on our German! (For some of us [T] this is already a lost case.)

So, things are continuing to fall into place. Though we’ve not yet heard from the UKBA, the University has put rescinding our visa application into action, and we expect to hear from them any day now about the retrieval of our passports. For now, we are striving to wring the least bit of enjoyment out of every moment, and carve cool and misty memories of this place into our minds.