Cookies, Pal?

We don’t know what they’re up to, but our water is back on, despite there being a gaping hole in the road….

Coming from California, we’re not used to hearing people called “pal” … at least, not outside of a gangster movie. One might expect in California for the ubiquitous “Dude” to be the norm, or maybe “Buddy,” but most of the time, Northern California strangers don’t refer to each other as… anything other than “sir” or “ma’am” or maybe “miss.” Maybe people from other areas of the U.S. wouldn’t find “pal” kind of sinister, but to us, it’s a word that has an edge of …almost sarcasm or challenge. (“You lookin’ at me, pal?”)

Here in Scotland, D. finds himself called “pal” by just about anybody who doesn’t know his name. “Thanks, pal” was this morning’s greeting, as D. opened the door for the postman. “There y’are, pal” is common when being handed a bag of groceries, or a coffee. It seems D. is everybody’s pal here. It’s … taken some getting used to. Or, should we say, taking some, because we still can’t say we’ve grown accustomed to the word.

On the other hand, T. gets called lamb, pet, doll, lovey, dove, or good gel by any number of grown and grizzled men, and while these terms make her feel like a small, roly-poly child with biteable cheeks and a sweetie in her pocket, at least there’s no sarcasm (theoretically – though she believes it’s inherent), and no echoes of gangster movies to go along with those more endearing terms.

Graham, who is Scottish, asks, So, you call scones – biscuits and biscuits – cookies. What do you call cookies then? Before we launch into this unfortunate linguistic wrangling, first, we have to say that we DO admit that occasionally we see packages here advertising cookies. We figure that those are… cookies, and not biscuits, so there must be a rule. The question is, what makes a cookie a cookie here? Is there a rule that makes a biscuit a biscuit? For instance, if two biscuits are stuck together with cream sandwiched in the middle like an Oreo, do they then graduate to become cookies?

To begin to answer the question, to those of us from our region of California, a cookie is a cookie is a … cookie. Because, unless you’re calling them by their specific descriptive name, that’s what they…are. (And let’s not even get into the whole “cake” vs. “bread” thing, as in, in the US, “banana bread” is still a bread, because it’s a quick-bread, even though it’s sweet, but here it would be a cake, because it’s sweet, never mind the baking method). To conclude: a cookie is just a COOKIE. Except when it’s a brownie. Which might also be fudge.

On another note, it’s supposedly going to be the coldest winter in 13 years, here in the UK. We’re kind of still waiting to see that (although the ice has been a bit disturbing). Because it’s been lighter, and less rainy, this winter seems … quite mild so far. Either we’re adjusting or the prognosticators have gotten this one wrong. Either or both would be good….

– D & T

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