Hobbits In Rivendell

Our friend JoNelle, who lives in upstate New York, told us she was scraping ice of the windows of her car by the fifteenth of September. It only made sense that we had our first frost last week in this little burg. It didn’t require scraping from anything, and it rained the following night, but it was a little kick in the backside that said “the year is ending! Hurry! Hurry!” Suddenly all the things we’ve been thinking we’ll get to “eventually” have a flavor and feeling of urgency.

It’s almost November – and we had so many things we thought we’d be done with by now! For one thing, on paper, D. is supposed to march at the University’s December commencement, but of course that isn’t happening. We are instead tying up loose ends – settling with the Council after receiving our paperwork from the University, “officially” submitting the dissertation/thesis after receiving paperwork from the University; filling out the last of our paperwork for the visa extensions after we’ve gotten an appointment with the University… (sensing a theme here?) The Home Office faithfully promises that we’ll get our passports and new visas back in a month, but we’ll believe all claims when we see them. Meanwhile, no holiday plans in place yet, but we’ll let those of us who are interested know something as soon as we do.

Meanwhile, we continue to learn new things!

And now it’s time for Drew’s Phrase Du Jour:

(You laugh, but occasionally Drew actually writes these up on the whiteboard at D’s work. He’s here to edify, people.)

The phrase D. heard was: I’m going to grass you up as the clype.
Translation: I’m going to rat you out as the snitch.
Clype: To inform on. A person who informs on others. A grass. A yopper. (Of course you know what a yopper is. It’s a clype or a grass. Didna I just tell ya?)

A fine Ayrshire phrase D. learned recently was “Gadsa boak.”
Gadsa: a portmanteau which means “gives us a”
Boak: a Scots vernacular word meaning dry heaves or vomiting.
Thus, gadsa boak means “you make me sick.” (In Glasgow parlance, gadsa might be replaced with “giesa.”) This phrase is often shortened to “gads.”
You are now duly edified.

What are we going to do when we no longer have these Vernacular Translation moments? Although, the fact is, anywhere we go outside of our home state, there are words and phrases which briefly bemuse us, and there are tons of people cheerfully mangling and rehashing English and its compatriot languages all around the world. It will probably never end.

Meanwhile, the wheel of life continues to turn. Congratulations to Thor & Helga who have had brought forth their firstborn, and to our friend Jules, who looks to be three minutes away from an event such as this. Autumn babies are great, because they give you a perfect excuse to stay home and bundle up and have quiet visits from friends. Doesn’t that sound great? – good food, friends dropping by, music, a warm house? We love autumn, and we’ll take any excuse for bundling up that we can get.

D. walks home of an evening, and smells the peat fires burning. It is cold and damp these days, but we are, so far, in good spirits. Lots of books and early bedtimes, and far too early of rising, for T., anyway, as she tries to get in an hour of exercise before the day begins, but our endorphins are happy, are moods are pretty good, we’ve got our sunlight lamps on, and we’re doing all right.

We’ll leave you with some of the beauty surrounding us these days:

And now it’s time for another episode of Separated By A Common Language, with our favorite Fifer, D’s coworker, Drew…

Drew helpfully supplied the two of us with a surprise this last week – Halloween “Lucky” Bags we could take with us to sing carols. Since we didn’t go, we didn’t frighten the good people of Glasgow with orange jack-o-lantern pops between our teeth whilst we hummed God Rest Ye, Merry, but we are nonetheless amused and touched that Drew’s trying to get us in the mood for the, er, season. Such as it is. As goes with any packaged food we eat, there’s a lot of squinting at the ingredients for animal bits, things T’s allergic to, and for general information, as in, “What the heck is this?”

Drew’s been delightfully helpful in this respect. When we noted that sherbet was listed on the items in the grab bag, we gave each other a puzzled glance, and poked through the hyper-colored lot. We didn’t see sherbet.

“So, what’s the stuff in the skull?” D. asked. “Well, that’s the sherbet, right there!”

“Not where I’m from,” D. explained. “Sherbet’s a frozen dessert, served in a cone or a bowl. You know, like a fruity ice cream.”

“Naw, that’s sorbet (and hear the pronunciation — SOR-bay). This here’s sherbet. You can snort it, you know.”

*crickets*

“Whoo, though — stings a fair bit, it does.”

o_0

Well, that explains a lot about our Drew.

(Okay, kidding. He’s actually a lovely person – and a big kid, but single, girls, single!)

(Sadly, we are not kidding about that exchange. We’re hopeful he has put sherbet snorting in his past. His distant past…)

So, now we all know! The equivalent of Pixie Stix – in whatever container – is known as sherbet here. And, T. would like to remind those who wish to snort this substance that there are leagues of white-coated professionals who can help with that sort of thing. (Actually, T’s students used to snort Pixie Stix and powdered Kool-Aid, too. And she took it from them, and gave them Holy Heck about it in rather pithy sentences. Sugar and food coloring, directly to the brain? This is a good idea, how???)

Speaking of frozen desserts, we live in a neighborhood with so many weans that the ice cream van comes around regularly – twice a week like clockwork. Unlike when we lived in Glasgow, we believe that there’s actual ice cream involved – and possibly frozen meat! Yes, there are mobile butchers who drive around in vans with music, too, apparently. This leads us to wonder whether this is what was being sold in Maryhill, when our friend Jess’s housemate went running out for an ice cream and the driver told her he didn’t have any. Bovril and a side of beef, please, thanks…

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As always, the topic of “where are we going next?” is on our minds. We love it here, and have enjoyed our time, but it’s a bit ridiculous if just the idea of winter makes one need a long vacation! Meanwhile, the visa extension applications are almost away — this is indeed our very last winter here — huzzah. If anyone would like to provides us with the perfect job on a beach in San Diego, we’d be good with that…

In answering the question for ourselves what we’ve loved most about living abroad, we’ve discovered that for both of us, it has been the pace of life. We might complain (mightily) about how long it takes for things to get done (Yes, internet providers, we’re talking about YOU), but even with D’s school deadlines, and T’s constant workload, we’ve appreciated the lack of frantic days. People work their allotted 7.5 hours, and go home. Things close at 5 — because everyone has the right to go home and cuddle with their families or their stool in the pub (!). With no access to a personal vehicle, the number of spur-of-the-moment trips drops to virtually nil, and things are planned out in advance — not that this doesn’t leave room for impulse, but it’s of a different sort now. There are certainly inconveniences in a slower pace of living, but there are ways around them in case of absolute necessity. We’ve just enjoyed living without that necessity.

The question is whether or not we can find that pace elsewhere, in the U.S. or Canada,… or is the pace merely an artifact of how we our personalities have shifted while here? We’re trying to find out…

The wheel continues to turn – last week another of T’s girlfriends buried a spouse (it’s painful and strange to have friends in our age group with that loss), while another became engaged. Just yesterday, one of T’s classmates from grade school wrote to exclaim over the expectation of an additional – surprise! – family member in May. Life goes on, and Autumn draws on as well. No sign of a frost yet – thank God – but the days flow between the low forties and the mid fifties, and it’s consistently breezy – we’ve got scarves out, and gloves for walking in the nippy evenings. The sun rises sluggishly, and light is slow to find us. 0730 is beginning to look like 0DarkEarly, but we’re hanging in so far. And we truly hope that you are as well.

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Yep, we did redo the blog. We’re still fiddling with it, so this might not be its last incarnation. Pardon our dust.

As T’s friend Syl is wont to say in times of stress, in a very Pooh Bear reminiscent fashion, “Oh, dear.”

It’s not rare that we Hobbits find things here with which we disagree — the way the Council makes us sort the recycling, for instance, or the way our Tesco carries such flimsy bags. There are many things to kvetch over in the world, and on a particularly bad day, we do go on. Lately, we’ve wondered at the things our acquaintances take for granted, and wonder if we are not responding to things in a specifically American manner.

It is perhaps a cultural peculiarity of Americans that we like knowing who is in charge. If there’s an issue, we are, inevitably, the first people asking to see someone’s manager or supervisor, expecting that the higher one goes up the ladder, the more information — and hopefully intelligence — there will be. We like definite boundaries, knowing what we can and cannot do, and why… we’re big on the why.

We’ve been privileged to sing with choruses before which were backed by a chorus board, a music committee, and/or “choir captains” and section leaders. These people ably took responsibility for the smooth running of their section, the public’s perception of the chorus, and things like fundraising. Lest it seem like we’ve never experienced anything like choral organizations before, we have, which is what makes the following a bit strange.

Since we joined our chorus, we’ve had a question about two of our fellow members. We’ve been told individually that, “Oh, so-and-so is on the board.” We weren’t surprised to have a board – we have a chorus of over two hundred members, and there is money flowing in and out, and decisions to be made. We did wonder when we would see statements (as we as members pay dues, and thus some accounting of our income and expenses is expected), or some kind of minutes from the Board as to their movements, unless the board meetings are closed. We never have received any information on the board, nor have we been asked to put anything to a vote, so we didn’t think that the board actually did anything.

And then this past week, in the culmination of a truly nasty imbroglio of hearsay, hurt feelings, excruciating confrontation, and racist remarks*, one of our members was escorted out of the building – by these two fellow board-attending-members-who-haven’t-been-defined-as-anything-but-board-members – and asked not to return.

Um. We’d like to see their supervisors, please.

Perhaps it is another American cultural peculiarity to demand a specific accounting of what position and powers leadership holds over individuals. Nowhere in our chorus paperwork, which we were given upon joining, with all of The Rules clearly posted therein, were the names of these choral members written out — not as board members, not as henchpersons, not as anything. And yet. It seems that very lack of definition allows for maximum exploitation of their non-position. They seem to move and act and speak as though they can do… anything.

We’ve been involved with internecine politics in a chorus situation before — and in the end, we withdrew from that chorus, and make serious promises to ourselves to never, ever again be so involved with that type of musical group. The current undercurrent of ugliness within the chorus is making us uneasy, and the razor-blade politics are certainly one thing we won’t miss when we go. It’s a bit sad that the bloom is off the rose, and we are troubled that the choral experience that we had put on a pedestal as “most excellent” has fallen. Boo.

(Ironically, we also know it’s an American gene that prompts us to DO SOMETHING about everything. We know it’s a cultural disconnect and something we don’t quite get, which allows this group to go on as is (or else major group dysfunction, like group hysteria) but we’re working hard to learn to leave well-enough alone… it’s not our business, this time.)

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It’s just been a tough week – the discovery of the sudden death of a friend at the age of 38 coupled with people fussing and fighting and generally craptastic weather has taken its toll. On a happier note, the music we are doing is beautiful. We are learning Mendelssohn’s Elijah for June in the lovely Wellington Church, and are enjoying it immensely. One of D’s coworkers, the redoubtable ‘Drew, has given us Halloween bags, complete with masks and candy (and T. thrilled to the discovery of a candy bracelet like she had when she was wee) so we are in the proper spirit for the October caroling at Dobbie’s. Frankly, we think we should have candy canes, peppermint pigs and Indian corn… just to be sure and really confuse the season. (And the shoppers.)

Fortunately, our next concert is November 6th, and then our next caroling gig isn’t until the second or third week of November… since the UK has no Thanksgiving, the Christmas season well and truly starts after St. Andrews’s Day, which is November 30, so even the 19th is a bit early, but we’re calling it a warm-up, and we’ll be in an Edinburgh garden center, perhaps standing near Christmas trees, to give us that air of believability. (That would be amusing.) Then it’s on with our two Christmas shows — two performances of the Broadway Musicals show on the 11th, and a single performance at the Royal Concert Hall of our Christmas Cracker the following weekend, and then we’ll start working on our March and June performance pieces in earnest. We’ve already started trying to learn the Polish for the Szymanowski Stabat Mater — and it’s no picnic, as there are multiple consonant blends which make a sound utterly unlike what they appear they ought to be. At least the Berlioz Te Deum is in plain old Latin.

The weather is not quite so frightful as it was this time last year; it’s a bit dull and dreich, but the cold remains mild thus far — and we’re thankful for that! Though the Collective Conventional Wisdom of the Cab Driver seems to lean toward snow in late November “just like last year,” they mostly posit that the weather is much windier and more unsettled than it was last year, and that “it’s going to be terrible.”

However, the weather is never as bad as it was when they were children. Ever.

Our cab drivers make us smile; their grumpy melancholy makes our temperaments seem downright cheery.

And on that note…!

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NB: The racist remarks in question were not made by the leadership of the chorus, but by other members who mentioned that someone had been “rather Spanish” in the confrontation. Ironically (or rather, typically, because racists tend to be vastly uninformed as well as just irritatingly ignorant), the chorister in question is Italian.