Phew!
Friday night, at the end of another long week.
Daily living is one of those things it’s at times hard to blog about. We get up, work out, we do a little quiet reading after breakfast. We launch into the cold/rain/slush, we gratefully come back in to read and study and eat, and all the while we talk and knit and read and sometimes watch the occasional bit of TV or a movie, and then we read and fall asleep, and do it all over again the next day.
Winter is like that. There is either a monotony or a comforting sameness, depending on one’s mood. Right now, it’s a comforting sameness. The color of the sky rarely varies. Water falls, or tiny snowflakes spiral upward. Wind howls. Clouds scud. Winter: it is what it is.
Looking forward to Van’s visiting us next month has sent us to various websites, looking for things to do in a Scots winter. There’s plenty unsurprisingly, and a lot of things that are a fair bit cheaper than they are in drier weather. As well as getting around to more of the wonderful FREE museums, we’re looking forward to hiking around looking for snowdrops, taking tea at the historic Willow Tea Room, hopping the train to Edinburgh and maybe take in the Isle of Skye, if it’s not altogether too blowy out.
Van has very kindly offered to bring us any and everything from the U.S., but we’ve surprised ourselves by, for the most part, turning down his offer of being our mule service. We don’t really miss anything specific that he can bring. Unless he can lasso the sun, the temperate Bay Area climate, its wonderful people and technology or our entire church and family and our townhouse, really, we don’t need much.
Except, of course PINTO BEANS.
We have guests coming in April, and they already know to leave room in their luggage for that!
Hell, it has been said, is other people. T. would like to now go on record as amending that to “other people in the Gartnavel Hospital Eye Casualty on a Monday.” The hour and a half wait with three clinics running, and the waiting rooms stuffed with very bored people was not the best way to spend a day. The taxi driver told her she’d gotten off easily, two and a half hours later… “Oh, I’ve dropped people off at half-eight, and picked them up again at half-six,” he said quite seriously. “Never let them give you an appointment on Monday or Wednesday.”
People have asked us repeatedly about the medical care in Scotland, and in its staunch defense we will say there are very kind, overworked and haggard doctors and pharmacy techs, who do their best to be professional and helpful. The technology in Scotland is at least fifteen years behind what we have in California (especially in ophthalmology – that was a little frightening), but they believe in taking care of their people, even if they scare them half-to-death to do so. (You should have heard the ad for meningitis prevention and treatment we heard on the radio the other night. Yikes.) We haven’t had an emergency to test out our view of the Scottish medical system, but we can only assume that the hour-and-a-half wait doesn’t exist in a real emergency. Here’s hoping we only have to whine about the wait to see the (FREE! Say it with me now F-R-E-E) ophthalmologist. (And by 2011 they’re phasing out having prescriptions cost anything at all. In April, prescription prices drop a pound eight-five and already they only cost about $60 for three months worth of any drug.) Coming from the world of “hospitals charge what the market will bear,” we find that amazing.
Just the other day we were thinking there hadn’t been any fireworks or parades or late night singing and dancing from the neighbors for two weeks now. Never fear, we were told. Burns Night is coming January 25. We have received our invitations to several Burns suppers and a even to a céilidh after one of them, and we are considering going to Spain instead. No, just kidding, but Burns night ’tis the season for the haggis… and we’ve already been told that “Oh, you’ve just got to try it!” Um, no. But thanks all the same…
The new semester’s schedule is much better than last semester, as D. is home all day on Monday, and most of the day on Wednesday and Friday. Tuesdays and Thursdays are much shorter now that he’s given up on the Philosophy Dept. after-hours class discussions at the pub. When the day both begins and ends in darkness, it’s just outright annoying to have to spend more time away from home than necessary. Despite a couple of the professors last semester making noises about the pub thing being almost compulsory, D. has gotten a bit less pliable this time around, now he’s gotten his feet wet and knows a few pertinent facts about the department. He’s already looking toward next year’s program.
T. hasn’t been exactly idle, as she’s been taking advantage of the urge to go absolutely nowhere, and getting down to work. Her first novel will hit bookshelves this June, but just this week she sold her second one, and is pretty cheerful, if not a bit nervous. Negotiating for things like audio rights and discussing release dates (June 2009! Very quick, in the book-world) and planning summer PR travel have occupied her for a bit. Since she isn’t that fond of air travel, it’s going to be… interesting to figure it all out, but it will be a treat to be back in the United States no matter how we get there or have to get around.
The wind is howling, the potato leek soup is on the “hob.”
Phew. Friday night, at the end of another long week. Thank God, indeed.
– D & T
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in today’s paper were Burns’ celebrations being planned as well as a mention of vegetarian haggis!!! Should I track down the recipe, you’ll be getting a copy!! (there must be descendants of clans around here because there seem to be the same holidays/celebrations here that you are experiencing there)
Glad you are home with warm soup. The book being published sounds exciting! Will you be coming anywhere near San Francisco on book tour? Would be a treat to meet.
Your name in print is very exciting! Keep stocking the soups, winter is not done yet.
Elle, my parents live about a half hour from SF — so I definitely will make it that direction! Eventually I want to do a book event at Copperfields in Santa Rosa… we’ll definitely let you know when we hit the North Bay!
Whenever anyone asks me if I’ve had haggis, I always lie and say yes. I hate lying except for in extreme situations and I figure the haggis thing IS one. You can’t diss haggis in Scotland: it just isn’t done. So you just lie politely and tell people it doesn’t agree with you.
I know — I’m ashamed. But I’ll continue to do it anyway.
We’re almost done with January! February is short, and pretty soon — snow drops!
I still can’t remember where I know Van. You talk about him so much, and it rings a bell. Please remind me sometime.