Before the Year Starts

Greetings from the Frigid Rain Capital of Scotland. Okay, maybe not. But it is cold — like someone just turned down the thermostat on the whole nation, and it is raining. OF course.

We’ve gotten emails from quite a few of you, wondering what we’ve been up to. Well, we’ve been … relaxing, of course, sleeping in ’til noon and schlepping around in our jammies all day. No? Not believing that? Well …fine. You’re right. We said we’d have to ease into the whole idea of relaxation, and in actuality we’ve been using our free time to reorganize the furniture, sort and throw away about ten years worth of photographs we’ve been dragging around, and try to get ready for the new school year… in short: we’ve been doing everything that we put off while D. was writing his dissertation. It’s away now, so we can breathe a sigh of relief … for all of about 5 days. The first semester of the new year starts in about 1 week.*

Mentally, we’re in a good space. On September 4th, we celebrated realized we’d been here for a solid year, and that it was time to get ready to do the next three. Thus the tossing of pictures (we couldn’t bear to go through them before we left California), and the clearing out of files. School papers. Lesson plans. Old insurance paperwork. WHY did we cart all of this from the United States?! Because some of it was part of our identity, and the rest — well, we figured it might be necessary someday.

T’s lesson plans from 2001? Not likely…

*about: registration is on the 25th, there’s an “informal get-together” on October 1st … and school starts … at some point unknown to us as of yet.

When we went to our alleged “retreat” in the city of Largs – a town on the west coast of Scotland – sure, we stayed at a bed & breakfast. However, we flunked Vacation Behavior 101. We didn’t really do anything: we didn’t see The Castle, nor did we visit Cumbrae or ferry across to Milport to cycle about the place. No … we merely … visited the son of the owners of the B&B and … well, took a few pictures of the place. And went home. Yes. We’re boring. But hey — we’re sleeping through the night without waking to jot down some idea about Moral Philosophy. It’s been a year since we’ve been this fancy-free. Give us a break!

There are four things T has noticed that she can’t say without feeling… more than a mite foolish. Two of them she hasn’t attempted to say, she feels so dumb. But they’re things everyone here says:

1. Mates
2. Ye ken
3. Cheers
4. and Aye

There’s a chatty delivery guy who leaves packages (generally for the neighbors) and then talks… about everything. The weather. The chances of the Partick Thistles. The Olympics (although I suppose he’s stopped that now). And interspersed between his heavily brogued words he occasionally says, “Ye ken?” Which is, of course, “Do you understand?” (No. T. does not. But she nods well.)

Mates is one of those words which is chummy and friendly, and which makes T. think of Crocodile Dundee, or… a verb. And we’ll just move on. *cough*

And then there’s Cheers. “Cheers, mate,” or, “Cheers, thanks,” comes out easily for most people. T. always says, “But I’m not!” The naturally dour likely have trouble with a word like “cheers,” which is playful, and makes you think of toasts and celebrations.

Finally, there’s Aye. It’s not a British word, it’s a Scottish word, which means no one in their right mind, who doesn’t speak at least a little Gaelic, ought to be saying it. Period. It just sounds goofy when Americans try.

On another note: why is it that people Glasgow seem to be dumping mattresses this time of year? We don’t know, but we’re taking their pictures … and it’s not as if we’re even trying hard to find them!

– D & T

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