October Stumbles In

T. was excited that it was, for a brief time, a non-torrential, dryish, sunnyish sliver of autumn. She was plotting for new boots and strange tights and all of those vaguely cool-weather inspired things. She was even talking about maybe taking a train when we’re home home — (or not, if the library book we found recently is any indication of how things are on the trains) when out of nowhere, on October 1, she was struck with the dreaded Days of Incandescence. Well, it would’ve been dreaded if she’d known to dread them. It started with waking up at 2:45 in the morning, sitting up, and wondering if something was burning. As it was just her throat, she sipped some water and tried to go back to sleep… to no avail. Five days of intense high fevers, sore throat and coughing rolled on from there.

The Days of Incandescence were abbreviated by sleeping on ice packs and taking lots of good homeopathic drugs, but at the height of incandescence, T. was introduced to Tylenol with codeine, Paracetamol, which she still says sounds like a cleaning product. She only hallucinated tiny black spiders dripping from her fingertips, but no one can determine if that was the incandescence or the drugs, so all is well. At least it wasn’t rats this time.

The point is, we’re not dead, despite the lack of visible activity in Hobbiton. To those of you back home who are recovering from various cycling accidents and weekends of revelry in Tahoe, we’re thinking of you, too. Be safe out there!

We haven’t done a Love You Like A Month of Sundays in ages… mainly because T. is a stickler for some bizarre sort of journalistic integrity that we’re not sure having a blog entails, but she’s a stickler nonetheless. She’s been trying to snap the perfect picture for each of her particular loves, but she’s not always been able to. Yet. So, this is not …official, let’s say, but we in Glasgow, we sure love what we call Fireworks Season, like a month of Sundays.

It starts in October, and meanders on through January. It can be for a Saint’s Day — but not usually, a national holiday, a bank holiday, a religious holiday. It can be for the dropping of a hat, it seems. But with all the wet and muck — and the fire doors — there’s not much chance of burning things down, so it’s time to shoot fireworks into the Stygian afternoon… or night… sky.

Yesterday’s Firework Fêtê was to honor Diwali. It’s the Hindu festival of lights that many South Asians celebrate, and it marks something like the last day of the year. It’s nice we have so many calendars going on — you can pretty well have “New Year” celebrations four times a year. Plenty of times to restart that diet! D. was in the bath, reading, and T. was lounged on the bed, reading (this is Homework Sunday for D., and T. is reading for the Cybils book award again this year) when we heard drums.

It took a minute for it to sink in — people bang on the bus stop as they walk by sometimes — but these drums had a distinctly metallic (and rhythmic) feel to them. And T. shrieked, “Parade!” and went to grab her camera, and D. sloshed water all over the floor and grabbed his.

As we snapped pictures, T. surveyed the stiltwalkers, jugglers, dancers and drummers with satisfaction and said, “There’re going to be fireworks tonight.” And she was right; there were two big shows (one the unofficial one in the parking lot of the Gurdwara) but we didn’t get good pictures. But still. Parades that start at 5 p.m.. Donkeys. Horses. People with white swirls painted on their sooty faces. And then throwing sparks and noise into the night, to make sure that even though it’s dark, we can all still find each other. Lovely.

Two dudes (despite the flowers in their hair and the earrings, those are dudes) and a girl (in orange), and a horse who really doesn’t want to cooperate. Wonder if the leather loincloth thingy and the unlaced red boots the horse-girl is wearing is part of the Diwali costuming or what.

The redhaired girl riding the horse with the feathers seems to have a circus-like air. Part carnival, part Hindu holiday, all Glasgow. Gotta love it.

We’ve never seen someone stiltwalk this fast or smoothly. This girl is GOOD. Took us awhile to realize she wasn’t just freakishly tall.

Blackface: it’s not just for Australia anymore. Okay, kidding. Since Diwali is a festival of lights, we’re not sure what’s up with the dark faces; if someone has a clue, let us know!

P. S. ~ It didn’t come clear until we’d looked at our pictures, but we noticed quite a few non South Asians in the parade. On the one hand, well, yeah, this is Scotland, but on the other hand, in San Francisco at the Lunar New Year parade, it’s made up of 99.999% Asian San Franciscans, and there’s got to be at least as many non-Asians in the city there as there are here. It’s always interesting to see how things are done differently from the U.S. to the U.K. The Glaswegians whose family and friends are South Asians join in the festivities and fill out the ranks, dancing, swirling their saris and generally mugging for pictures, whether they’re Hindu or not. As the parade went on, it got bigger, as people walking down the street joined in — and it would have been fun to canvas the group to find out if any of them knew what they were celebrating. One thing you can say for Glasgow: it is always ready to jump in and join a party.

– D & T

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.