Springtime’s Toys

When the sun shines, people shed their clothing as quickly as possible. We walked down to the optometrist on Monday and passed a wrought iron fence capped with bright hooded jackets, as the nursery across the road took advantage of the iron boundaries of the park and the sunshine. Before the rain started up again, Glasgow briefly removed coats and brought out playthings.

The park on our crescent has been filled with families taking advantage of what we thought was fire pit — which is apparently a barbecue pit wherein one places a disposable barbecue thingy, complete with charcoal. Even on breezy days, mothers sit patiently on benches and stairs, wrapped in fleece, while their little ones rip through the greenery, wearing capes and brandishing thin twiggy swords.

In the evenings, we love to watch the little blondes (Scandos, our friend L. called them, which we must assume means they are of Scots-Scandinavian stock) on our crescent play Harry Potter — at least we’re pretty sure that’s what they’re playing, since one of the games comes with costumes — two dressing gowns (not bathrobes, these are zip-up-the-front things with ruffles at the neck — and one is worn by one of the boys) and a black hooded cape.

In the circle above us, where the über wealthy — and likely their servants — used to live, the park is a little bit creepy; immaculately raked, not a leaf out of place, gated and thus always empty, as are many of the great houses up there as well, their windows lifeless eyes blinded with security service signs. We found the rocking horse in the window of a house nearby to give an appropriately D.H. Lawrence-ish feel to the whole thing — somewhere there’s a child who rides that thing like mad, and a house that whispers, “There must be more money…!”

Since it’s begun to rain again, the children across the street have brought out their dollhouse. But mostly, they stand in the window, glaring up at the sky. Puir wee’uns (which is pronounced “weans.” Never mind how it’s spelled).

We had a running count of how many gloves we found all winter long. For some reason, gloves and earrings are the usual victims of bundling up in a hurry. When one is pulling down a hat, shouldering a bag and running for one’s bus or train, things go flying. D., much to his disgust, has managed to lose one of his good leather gloves. The people who have lost the sodden knits and fancy fur-trimmed gloves and regretful, but the woman missing the massive rhinestone hoop earring we found is probably downright annoyed — imagine how silly she must have felt to arrive home and realize she’d been on the bus for a half hour wearing only one!

The victim of springtime hurry seems to be mostly children. We’ve seen more umbrellas abandoned in twisted heaps, broken in the mercurial spring winds, but strangely, the more typical on-the-sidewalk find these days are…toys. We see small bags and dolls and balls all over. It might just be that we live more in the path of children these days, but it’s a little disconcerting to think of some little person bewailing the loss of their little treasures. T. amuses herself imagining that the dolls are MI6 operatives who’ve escaped from captivity, but that’s only the medication talking…

Boiler Update: What? You hate to ask, you say? Yeah, well, so do we, but here’s the skinny: the last time the technician came by, the water had gone off right after a.m. showers, so T. waited for him to show up (his usual arrival is about 2:45 p.m.) and told him exactly what, exactly when, and exactly how the whole thing had happened. Much to her disgust, within a half hour had the boiler “set to rights,” but it’s not entirely right if it keeps going off, she reasoned. She asked questions. He rubbed his chin. “This thing is making me look bad,” he sighed. And then, she did that Scary American thing that makes all the workmen who come over sidle away quietly. She asked him to teach her to fix it herself.

He shoved his hands in his coverall pockets. He frowned. He sighed, and then finally, finally, he showed her — three times — the switch that disconnects the boiler from the mains. “I canna have a dead tenant on my hands,” he said fervently. “Don’t ever forget to disconnect it from the mains, or how can I go to America when I’ve killed one of their own?” (He’s planning a vacation to Las Vegas.) (T. did not feel it necessary to point out that no one in Las Vegas could care less what happens to her.)

T. admits that she probably was a little too eager and gung ho, and that when he started stuttering, wedged into the boiler closet with her peering over her shoulder as she was (and yes, she is as tall as he is, and felt she was twice as heavy and her shoulders were wider) she should have backed off. But no matter how nervous it made the little man, it’s worth it to us to be able, when the boiler quits — which it does every time hot water turns on too forcefully or turns off too abruptly — to push a screwdriver against a tiny gray button that nestles between two blue wires, and make it restart. After, of course, throwing the main switch and cutting off the power. Of course.

It’s been kind of a tough week. Between the boiler and the busyness, there’s been other stupid stuff, like the fridge repairman coming in, laying his hands on a glass bottle in the 52°F fridge and saying haughtily, “It feels cold enough to me.” And D. is just realizing that academia is sometimes a brutal, petty little ivory tower, where those who play politics and power games cheerfully run over everyone else with their agendas. For all of you who warned D. about that, he thanks you sincerely, and apologizes for not quite understanding what you were talking about. Now he knows… and he’s not putting up with it.

Bonne Weekend!

– D & T

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