On Friday I wrote four articles and then ran around collecting items for a 2-day hike in the Highlands. My friend is going on the Chartres Pilgrimage, and I promised to help her train. Besides, there is nothing like spending the weekend in the countryside after a week at my desk.
The weather forecast in Braemar was for rain, though, and after getting my beloved 2-man tent out of the closet, I wondered how I was going to feel carrying it for 20 miles. Since my principal New Year's Resolution was "Our Health First", I left it behind and trusted to either 1. my friend bringing a tent or 2. a mutual decision not to camp in pouring rain but to return to my friend's house instead.
B.A., by the way, had already left for a retreat in Pluscarden Abbey.
Soon after I got on the train, I felt all stress and frustration slip away because trains are magic. I read an entertaining self-help book (Positively Primal) and crunched corn nuts all the way to Cupar, where my friend picked me up and took me to her farmhouse, where we had herbal tea before going to bed.
Then my phone buzzed and a text told me, in British, that a hospitalised friend wasn't going to recover and was going home to die. And then I discovered that although I could get texts in the countryside, I couldn't send them.
There passed a terrible hour in which I roamed the house trying to find a signal and then finally called both B.A. and my sick friend's spouse on the landline, leaving messages and waking poor B.A., who phoned the landline back. Then there was nothing to do but cry, pray the rosary, and try to get some sleep.
The next morning my healthy friend and I discussed whether or not we should give up the whole plan and go to Edinburgh or go on a day's walk, the camping plan now being abandoned because of the forecast. My sick friend's spouse called, and as a result of that conversation, my healthy friend and I determined we could, at least, go on a day's walk and then go to Edinburgh on Sunday morning.
And I was very glad we did go on our walk, for there are few places on earth (I gather after a childhood of reading National Geographic magazine) more beautiful yet still comfortable to walk in than the Scottish Highlands, and few better ways to unwind. The fresh damp air smells of pine trees, and the trails wind past low green mountains wreathed with mist. The nasty urban world of decadence and decay no longer exists; the only people around are also walkers or, astonishingly, doughty cyclists. The forecast had exaggerated the rain, too, so instead of the downpour we were expecting, we had dry periods, Scotch mist and mild drizzle. Even better, the biting midges had not yet arrived.
We walked for three hours and then sat down off the trail in a flat green place partly protected by trees to have tea and coffee. Two middle-aged Dutch hikers came along to ask us about a nearby both, and I invited them to have a cup of tea. So we all sat around and drank tea (or coffee), and my friend asked them about pilgrimages in the Netherland and eventually gave them Miraculous Medals as the younger one tried to remember the English for "spiritual but not religious."
The Dutch hikers were terribly moral about the environment, having come the the UK by ferry instead of plane. They always spend their entire two week annual holiday walking in the Highlands before going to Edinburgh to eat at delicious restaurants. While they were clearly not religious and probably ordinary contemporary PC Western Europeans, I could at least comfort myself that we probably seemed wonderfully exotic and had provided them not only with tea, biscuits and Miraculous Medals, but also an amusing anecdote. They had also broken bread with a real-life Scot (my friend) which, let me tell you, is not a daily matter for foreigners in Scotland.
We had an elderly black lab with us, too, who, although a bit arthritic, frisked about and brought us sticks he hoped we would throw. Although I imagine two women are safe enough walking in the Highlands, having a big dog made me feel even more confident, and if we had camped, I would have felt perfectly secure under his protection.
Anyway, it was marvellous. We prayed all fifteen decades of the rosary for my sick friend, the mysteries spaced out--Joyful and Sorrowful on our way through the hills and Glorious on the way back. My French Scout hat, which makes me painfully self-conscious in the city, kept off the rain beautifully and my old hiking boots, with new gel insoles from the Boots in Blairgowrie, were still up to the task. At one point on the way back we walked along the River Dee and admired a black sheep among the white on the other side, hills in the background, and I marvelled at the beauty of the scene. I sincerely wondered why I don't go walking in the Highlands more often.
The answer, of course, is that when the weather is really good and calls Scots out-of-doors, the midges are waiting to bite them. They start biting in early June and don't stop until the end of September, and really they are horrible. I prefer to cower in the south and walk in the Borders, where midges are few and far between.
Eventually, when we were very tired and sore, but not yet exhausted or blistered, we reached the car again. We did some preventative stretches and drove away in high good humour back to Braemar. There we went to the Flying Stag pub, which was packed, and after being refused by a regretful waitress, my friend charmed a waiter into finding us a table and keeping the kitchen open a little later. To our delight we were seated in leather armchairs by a window and were soon tucking into fish-and-chips and a Highland-beef-with-marrow hamburger, which we washed down with a half-pint of IPA (my driving friend) and TWO half-pints of bitter (your correspondent) while the dog charmed the other patrons.
We had reached the Flying Stag before sunset, which in Braemar was about 9:30 PM, and thus it was still light when we ate, but it was dark when we got on the road. The highway south was rather exciting for, although there were few cars, there were many deer and rabbits scampering across it. But despite these alarms, I fell asleep after Coupar Angus and woke up only at the farm. It was midnight.
The next morning we walked through the countryside for another two hours, saying 15 more decades for my sick friend, and then we drove to Edinburgh for Mass. After communion I popped into the Church hall to turn off the lights and the hot water machine and affix a "No Tea Today" sign, as the only trained tea person around was me*. When Mass was over, my kind friend drove me to Waitrose where I bought roses for my sick friend and a moussaka for my friend's spouse, and then I took the bus and found my sick friend entertaining friends and, despite late-onset diabetes, eating sweets.
"At this point, you should do what you want," I said, meaning "eat what you want."
"Yes, that's what I think," said my sick friend.
*There is the most awful row if there is as much as a crumb left behind after the Trad Mass has its Cup of Tea of Peace, so I felt that this decision, though it would disappoint at least a dozen people, including cookie-loving children, was the right one.
Showing posts with label Life in the UK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life in the UK. Show all posts
Monday, 20 May 2019
Saturday, 19 January 2019
A Winter Walk
One of the nice things about living near Edinburgh is that it doesn't take us very long to get out into the countryside. There are all kinds of river walks and disused railway lines that have been turned into bicycle and walking trails.
Today B.A. and I went for a long country walk, ending up in the town of Dalkeith. Unfortunately, I spent the first two miles or so having a meltdown about double-taxation. We are hoping to pay off the mortgage early and invest for retirement with my salary, but so far my salary seems to be subject to the taxes of two countries, plus National Insurance contributions for them both.
My meltdown was caused by B.A.'s tax statement, which said that both he AND his employer had contributed to the National Insurance, the combined sum being larger than his taxes. As my North American employer, obviously, doesn't contribute to the British NI, how much NI am I going to have to pay?
It makes me frightened and angry and sure something must be wrong. Canada and the UK have a tax treaty, apparently to prevent people like me from being taxed twice. I got an (expensive) accountant to cope with the UK tax laws, and now I think I'll have to get a (guaranteed less expensive) tax firm in Canada to wrestle my money back from Revenue Canada.
Meanwhile B.A. swears up and down that the UK National Pension will not disappear when we are old and that being a pensioner is not the same thing as being on "benefits" (i.e. welfare). "We're paying into the system, and it's our money," he says.
B.A. clearly has never tried to draw on unemployment insurance, which I used to believe was "our money". I have, in Canada, and it was an utterly humiliating experience. I also worked in a Canadian welfare office, and I probably signed a confidentiality agreement*, so all I'll say about that is that you never, ever, ever, want to be dependent on The State for food, warmth, and a roof over your head.
Meanwhile, ending up in a nursing home can also be very unpleasant, not only because of neglect but also because of this.
Anyway, B.A. begged me to stop ruining our country walk with catastrophic thinking, so I turned off that part of my brain. Naturally I wish I hadn't stopped caring about money when I went to theology school, but regrets don't reduce taxes.
It was cold, but the countryside was nevertheless green and beautiful, for this is Scotland after all, and eventually I cheered up. We reached Dalkeith (chipped but charming to Canadian eyes) and looked around for somewhere to get bacon rolls. Greasy spoons being absent from the High Street, we investigated the in-store cafe of Morrisons, which is a national cut-price grocery chain. Result! Morrisons was serving breakfast items (like bacon rolls) until 3 PM.
We got our bacon rolls, a pot of tea, and a mug of cappuccino for the low, low price of £7.60 ($13 Canadian), which might not strike you as a low, low price, but this is the UK. And the amusing thing, when we looked around, was the large number of couples also amiably munching on breakfast items and drinking from mugs. Many were old, but some were middle-aged, and it struck us that this could be the Saturday afternoon "dating" venue of choice for the married denizens of Dalkeith.
I didn't think it was a particularly tasty bacon roll, but I did enjoy the idea that married couples can contentedly eat out as cheaply as possible whereas dating people have to stick to sophisticated joints, so as not to look cheap, or indeed like the sort of boring people who will end up eating bacon rolls in Morrisons.
(Incidentally, the next-door-neighbours, who are long-term renters, are loudly singing pop songs again. It must be Saturday night.)
Anyway, as B.A. says, we have at least another 20 years of employment before us, so I should not worry about being taxed into poverty or sexually assaulted in a U.K. nursing home before I am inevitably euthanised. Also I admit that getting the old-age pension from the government cannot really be like collecting Canadian unemployment insurance benefits because nobody chivvies the elderly to go back to work ASAP.
Bus fare home was £3.40 (£5.80 Canadian).
*Update: Worst memories from working in welfare office:
5. A male cop supervising cheque day told me that one of our clients, a pleasant woman, used to be a "crack whore."
4. A man I knew was on trial for murder that day showed up at my window. (Manager: "So why do you need a break now?")
3. Realising that the shell of a woman at my window was the mother of a famous murder victim.
2. A formerly employed, formerly solvent woman, now very ill, saying over the phone, "But that was my nest-egg" after learning that as a dependent on the state she wasn't allowed to keep it.
1. A female cop screaming at a lunatic to "apologise to these ladies" for his bad language when we had the situation well at hand, thank you very much.
We dealt with homeless people, mentally ill people and actual crooks all the time, but the only client who upset me as much as those two cops was the killer. (He was acquitted--to the shock of almost all involved--minutes before he arrived at my window.)
Update 2. The killer suddenly died a year to the day of his acquittal, I have just discovered.
Today B.A. and I went for a long country walk, ending up in the town of Dalkeith. Unfortunately, I spent the first two miles or so having a meltdown about double-taxation. We are hoping to pay off the mortgage early and invest for retirement with my salary, but so far my salary seems to be subject to the taxes of two countries, plus National Insurance contributions for them both.
My meltdown was caused by B.A.'s tax statement, which said that both he AND his employer had contributed to the National Insurance, the combined sum being larger than his taxes. As my North American employer, obviously, doesn't contribute to the British NI, how much NI am I going to have to pay?
It makes me frightened and angry and sure something must be wrong. Canada and the UK have a tax treaty, apparently to prevent people like me from being taxed twice. I got an (expensive) accountant to cope with the UK tax laws, and now I think I'll have to get a (guaranteed less expensive) tax firm in Canada to wrestle my money back from Revenue Canada.
Meanwhile B.A. swears up and down that the UK National Pension will not disappear when we are old and that being a pensioner is not the same thing as being on "benefits" (i.e. welfare). "We're paying into the system, and it's our money," he says.
B.A. clearly has never tried to draw on unemployment insurance, which I used to believe was "our money". I have, in Canada, and it was an utterly humiliating experience. I also worked in a Canadian welfare office, and I probably signed a confidentiality agreement*, so all I'll say about that is that you never, ever, ever, want to be dependent on The State for food, warmth, and a roof over your head.
Meanwhile, ending up in a nursing home can also be very unpleasant, not only because of neglect but also because of this.
Anyway, B.A. begged me to stop ruining our country walk with catastrophic thinking, so I turned off that part of my brain. Naturally I wish I hadn't stopped caring about money when I went to theology school, but regrets don't reduce taxes.
It was cold, but the countryside was nevertheless green and beautiful, for this is Scotland after all, and eventually I cheered up. We reached Dalkeith (chipped but charming to Canadian eyes) and looked around for somewhere to get bacon rolls. Greasy spoons being absent from the High Street, we investigated the in-store cafe of Morrisons, which is a national cut-price grocery chain. Result! Morrisons was serving breakfast items (like bacon rolls) until 3 PM.
We got our bacon rolls, a pot of tea, and a mug of cappuccino for the low, low price of £7.60 ($13 Canadian), which might not strike you as a low, low price, but this is the UK. And the amusing thing, when we looked around, was the large number of couples also amiably munching on breakfast items and drinking from mugs. Many were old, but some were middle-aged, and it struck us that this could be the Saturday afternoon "dating" venue of choice for the married denizens of Dalkeith.
I didn't think it was a particularly tasty bacon roll, but I did enjoy the idea that married couples can contentedly eat out as cheaply as possible whereas dating people have to stick to sophisticated joints, so as not to look cheap, or indeed like the sort of boring people who will end up eating bacon rolls in Morrisons.
(Incidentally, the next-door-neighbours, who are long-term renters, are loudly singing pop songs again. It must be Saturday night.)
Anyway, as B.A. says, we have at least another 20 years of employment before us, so I should not worry about being taxed into poverty or sexually assaulted in a U.K. nursing home before I am inevitably euthanised. Also I admit that getting the old-age pension from the government cannot really be like collecting Canadian unemployment insurance benefits because nobody chivvies the elderly to go back to work ASAP.
Bus fare home was £3.40 (£5.80 Canadian).
*Update: Worst memories from working in welfare office:
5. A male cop supervising cheque day told me that one of our clients, a pleasant woman, used to be a "crack whore."
4. A man I knew was on trial for murder that day showed up at my window. (Manager: "So why do you need a break now?")
3. Realising that the shell of a woman at my window was the mother of a famous murder victim.
2. A formerly employed, formerly solvent woman, now very ill, saying over the phone, "But that was my nest-egg" after learning that as a dependent on the state she wasn't allowed to keep it.
1. A female cop screaming at a lunatic to "apologise to these ladies" for his bad language when we had the situation well at hand, thank you very much.
We dealt with homeless people, mentally ill people and actual crooks all the time, but the only client who upset me as much as those two cops was the killer. (He was acquitted--to the shock of almost all involved--minutes before he arrived at my window.)
Update 2. The killer suddenly died a year to the day of his acquittal, I have just discovered.
Sunday, 23 December 2018
Trim the Hearth and Set the Table!
I don't remember what I wrote earlier this week, but I turned in three stories on Thursday and two stories on Friday, and then I danced a little Friday-at-7:15-PM jig and rushed off to the kitchen to make 3 dozen pierogi.
It is the Fourth Sunday in Advent, and your humble correspondent has been preparing for Christmas as much as I can, given my full-time job. I turned to Facebook to ask job-working mothers how on earth they do it, and they said (in sum) that they do what they can when they can do it. One suggested prioritising, e.g. writing Christmas cards instead of vacuuming.
I didn't feel I could give up vacuuming, and I prioritised pierogi over getting to the post office, so the Christmas cards didn't go out until yesterday. However (and more importantly), the big parcel of presents for my family in Canada has arrived intact. That was at the very top of my To-Do list, once B.A. and I discovered we wouldn't be going to Canada for Christmas ourselves.
We are going to our friends' place in the countryside of Fife for Christmas Lunch. But tomorrow we are having a Polish Wigilia (Christmas Vigil) supper, and I have enjoyed myself immensely making as many Wigilia dishes as I can ahead of time.
No matter which region in Poland you are from (and as PPS's Pretend Mother, I culturally appropriate from Lwów), pierogis are crucial at Christmas time. They are tricky to make. Because I haven't made them in awhile, I asked my Polish tutor to come over and give me a refresher course. Frankly, the best advice I can give any non-Pole about pierogi making is to get a nice Polish woman to come over and make them for you. Even if she is only 20, she will have had 15 years experience in making pierogis with her grandmother aka My Babcia.
"This reminds me of making pierogi with My Babcia," enthused 20-something Anna on Thursday morning at 9:45ish, and then I thought about my own Scottish-Canadian grandmother off and on all day, even though I strongly doubt she ever ate a pieróg in her life, much less made one.
I was going to write a step-by-step guide to making pierogi, but I am too sleepy. Instead I recommend that you find a good tutorial on YouTube. Anna's favourite recipe is here, and it is a good one. (Paste it into Google Translate.) It made the easiest-to-handle pierogi dough I've ever met. Meanwhile, I will pass along some of Anna's tips, which were:
1. Don't put too much filling in the middle.
2. Wet the edges of every pieróg circle with warm water, using your finger.
3. Mash down the edges with a fork, and then flip over and mash the edges down with a fork again.
As a result of Anna's recipe and good advice, none of my uszki (soup pierogi) and only two of my pierogi leaked in the boiling water. I have made pierogi with cheese and potatoes and pierogi with mushroom and cabbage. They are now in the freezer. In addition to these, I have made kompot (stewed fruit) and kompot (juice from the stewed fruit) and kutia, which is a poppyseed pudding eaten from Warsaw to Moscow, I imagine, and in the households of those who were booted out of Eastern Poland when the borders changed in 1945. I have also made two sweet little jam jars of herring salads, and at a certain point I realised that even though I promised B.A. I would not make the traditional twelve dishes for Wigilia, I am probably going to do it by accident.
So I confessed to B.A. and he said he didn't mind if I made all 12 as long as I didn't make myself miserable. And I won't be miserable, especially as he is going to make the salmon dish.
I have already made the cake to go into my British-Canadian trifle... and this is where I realise I probably sound a bit mad. But you have to understand that my mother makes hundreds of cookies of a dozen different kinds every Christmas before she makes all our traditional Christmas Day foodstuffs. Both my mother and I (and probably my youngest sister) both really enjoy Christmas baking, and it was a moment of great disappointment when I realised I just do not have the time to bake any more cookies before Christmas Day. Weep, weep.
As for the tree... Every year we put off getting the tree until the 23rd or so because, traditionalists to the bone, we don't like decorating for Christmas before Christmas Eve. Because Scots start buying their trees on December 1, there has always been a risk that B.A. and I wouldn't be able to find a tree on the 23rd. Today was that day. However, I said a prayer and lo: there were two small trees-in-pots in Aldi for £4.99. So now we have a small tree-in-pot, and apparently B.A. is going to decorate it tomorrow.
I will now respond to a few comments. Work has been so busy, I really haven't had the time to read comments, let alone write on the blog.
Saturday, 15 December 2018
Always wanting more
I read this Atlantic piece with amusement. It concerns a study into a correlation between money and happiness, and the researcher became quite depressed as he realised that even the super-rich think they would be "perfectly" happy only if they had double or triple the amount of money they already have.
The researcher seems to have missed the forest for the trees, for what seems to make the super-rich he studies at least temporarily happier is winning high-states poker games or besting each other at charitable donations. Well, winning is always nice. I get quite excited when I win a free Lotto ticket or--yippee!--£25. That covers almost a quarter of our gambling budget for the year, and I mark it down in the Household Accounts as "Entertainment."
I think the secret of happiness is not to chase the emotion but to enjoy it fully whenever it comes. I am not actually sure what Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird of Happiness" is about, but if his point is that it flutters hither and thither and lands on your hand occasionally, then yeah. That makes sense.
While writing my annual Christmas piece for LSN, I was filled with gloom.
B.A. and I are going to have a perfectly nice Christmas, I hasten to say. We're going to give a little Polish supper for Wigilia, and then we're going to Midnight Mass as usual. When we get home, I will roll up my Sacred Family Christmas Chelsea Bun and leave it to rise. On Christmas morning, I will bake the Sacred Family Christmas Chelsea Bun, and then B.A. and I will wash half of it down with coffee while opening our presents. Then we will find some sort of transport to Christmas III Mass, and after that we will go to the countryside, my Sacred Family Christmas Trifle wrapped in ice-cube filled dish towels, to stay with a friendly Catholic family for a few days. There will be a Christmas feast. It will be all very British Trad Catholic and jolly.
But this was the second Christmas we were planning to spend in Canada with family, and we can't. That is, we chose to follow B.A's oncologist's advice, to safeguard B.A.'s health. That doesn't sound as bad. Also, as Christmas-observing Christians all know, "Jesus"--not family-- "is the Reason for the Season."
Not all Christians observe Christmas, by the way. I am thinking primarily of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, of which I am fond because of our friend Calvinist Cath. The Wee Frees, as they are jocularly called, observe Sundays with great staunchness, vigour and trouble to themselves, but they don't celebrate any of the feasts of the Roman Calendar because they don't believe God asked anyone to do so. I think this lacks historical consciousness, but as this is an aside, I won't get into that.
Right. So although we are going to have a lovely Christmas, complete with two feasts (three if you count the Bun binge) and two Masses--possible three, if we go to Mass on the 26th, too, as the Poles think we are supposed to--I am still sad that we will not be in Canada with my family. And I must say that is rather ironic to be a pro-life, pro-baby, pro-family crusader when I've never been pregnant, never had a baby, and see members of my family three times a year max.
The general idea of pro-family activism is that happiness comes not from money and career but from loving (I mean loving, not having sex with) people, accepting their love in return, and putting up with them in and out of season while striving to make it easier for them to put up with you. That is actually sound, in a sense, although it is important to concentrate on the family and friends you HAVE instead of the ones you don't. And a good chunk of that happiness might have developed from the sense of a duty done because loving does not always mean liking, especially if you come from a broken home.
Meanwhile, the Stoics would argue that happiness comes from developing satisfaction with whatever life brings. You can't control what life brings, but you can control your reactions to what life brings. If you are sad you don't have children, it is worth remembering that there are many people who have children but are utterly miserable all the same. Children are not a magic happiness wand.
And I really have no cause to complain about my lot. I have a kind husband who is in work, and his brain tumours have stopped growing and may be disintegrating. I have an interesting job which brings me into contact with many interesting people but still leaves me enough time for housework, language study, and culinary projects. We own (!) our own home. My parents and siblings and their children are all still alive and (D.V.) I will see them all in February.
That's enough.
The researcher seems to have missed the forest for the trees, for what seems to make the super-rich he studies at least temporarily happier is winning high-states poker games or besting each other at charitable donations. Well, winning is always nice. I get quite excited when I win a free Lotto ticket or--yippee!--£25. That covers almost a quarter of our gambling budget for the year, and I mark it down in the Household Accounts as "Entertainment."
I think the secret of happiness is not to chase the emotion but to enjoy it fully whenever it comes. I am not actually sure what Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird of Happiness" is about, but if his point is that it flutters hither and thither and lands on your hand occasionally, then yeah. That makes sense.
While writing my annual Christmas piece for LSN, I was filled with gloom.
B.A. and I are going to have a perfectly nice Christmas, I hasten to say. We're going to give a little Polish supper for Wigilia, and then we're going to Midnight Mass as usual. When we get home, I will roll up my Sacred Family Christmas Chelsea Bun and leave it to rise. On Christmas morning, I will bake the Sacred Family Christmas Chelsea Bun, and then B.A. and I will wash half of it down with coffee while opening our presents. Then we will find some sort of transport to Christmas III Mass, and after that we will go to the countryside, my Sacred Family Christmas Trifle wrapped in ice-cube filled dish towels, to stay with a friendly Catholic family for a few days. There will be a Christmas feast. It will be all very British Trad Catholic and jolly.
But this was the second Christmas we were planning to spend in Canada with family, and we can't. That is, we chose to follow B.A's oncologist's advice, to safeguard B.A.'s health. That doesn't sound as bad. Also, as Christmas-observing Christians all know, "Jesus"--not family-- "is the Reason for the Season."
Not all Christians observe Christmas, by the way. I am thinking primarily of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, of which I am fond because of our friend Calvinist Cath. The Wee Frees, as they are jocularly called, observe Sundays with great staunchness, vigour and trouble to themselves, but they don't celebrate any of the feasts of the Roman Calendar because they don't believe God asked anyone to do so. I think this lacks historical consciousness, but as this is an aside, I won't get into that.
Right. So although we are going to have a lovely Christmas, complete with two feasts (three if you count the Bun binge) and two Masses--possible three, if we go to Mass on the 26th, too, as the Poles think we are supposed to--I am still sad that we will not be in Canada with my family. And I must say that is rather ironic to be a pro-life, pro-baby, pro-family crusader when I've never been pregnant, never had a baby, and see members of my family three times a year max.
The general idea of pro-family activism is that happiness comes not from money and career but from loving (I mean loving, not having sex with) people, accepting their love in return, and putting up with them in and out of season while striving to make it easier for them to put up with you. That is actually sound, in a sense, although it is important to concentrate on the family and friends you HAVE instead of the ones you don't. And a good chunk of that happiness might have developed from the sense of a duty done because loving does not always mean liking, especially if you come from a broken home.
Meanwhile, the Stoics would argue that happiness comes from developing satisfaction with whatever life brings. You can't control what life brings, but you can control your reactions to what life brings. If you are sad you don't have children, it is worth remembering that there are many people who have children but are utterly miserable all the same. Children are not a magic happiness wand.
And I really have no cause to complain about my lot. I have a kind husband who is in work, and his brain tumours have stopped growing and may be disintegrating. I have an interesting job which brings me into contact with many interesting people but still leaves me enough time for housework, language study, and culinary projects. We own (!) our own home. My parents and siblings and their children are all still alive and (D.V.) I will see them all in February.
That's enough.
Sunday, 2 December 2018
Advent 1
It's Advent, so I am in the mood for purple. I have ordered a purple tablecloth and purple candles. I have even recoloured my blog, as you can see.
The music was extra-splendid at the Edinburgh Missa Cantata this morning. There was lots of singing in which the humble people in the pews were allowed to take part. We had the Advent Prose ("Rorate caeli"), the Hymn of the Advent Office ("Conditor alme siderum") and the Advent hymn to Our Lady ("Alma redemptoris mater").
Is "Christe, redemptor omnium" for Advent, Christmas or Epiphany? Whichever one it is, I hope we get Monteverdi's this year.
I love Advent music. When B.A. and I got home from Mass, I found a long album of Advent carols on youtube and began to wrap Christmas presents. Wrapping presents on December 2 is my all-time record for earliness. It's partly because I have to send the parcel to Canada sooner rather than later, and it's partly because I feel badly I didn't make the Christmas cake two-to-four weeks ago. I was hoping B.A. would be allowed to travel to Canada, and I didn't want to jinx it by making the cake. Thus, there will be no proper Christmas cake this year. I will bake every traditional thing else.
Although the homily had nothing to do with martyrdom, I worried a lot about Audrey's assisted suicide. I read Lord of the World: I know what happens next. What happens next is that Catholics are called cruel for standing in the way of easy, painless deaths and not allowing them in our hospitals. Then, just as I had to turn down offers of IVF almost every time I talked to doctors about my chances of having a baby, many of us are likely to be offered "medically assisted death" when we are at our weakest, most painful ebb.
And that made me think about that lady in the Catholic religious articles shop in the US--and if you don't know the story, please don't look for it, for it is the most ghastly, grotesque, and horrid American atrocity story I've read in months, if not years. To make a horrible story short, a brave Catholic wife-and-mother looked down the barrel of a gun and decided she'd rather be shot than do what the gunman told her to do. I hope and pray I would have her guts.
But it might be even harder to say no to a caring nurse with the merciful needle than to a villain with a gun, which led me to my next thought: how does one train oneself to say no to the needle?
I suppose the way forward may be to not only to fast periodically so as to actually feel hungry as pain but to confront other kinds of pain, like getting up at 5 AM, doing one too many pushups every day, or learning how to do one's own outrageously complicated taxes.
St. Ignatius of Loyola was very down on the idea of his Society overdoing it on penances, but it strikes me that penance might be a kind of training and as long as you don't do yourself a damage, it may bear fruit later.
I have almost finished reading Peter Kwasniewski's Tradition & Sanity: Conversations & Dialogues of a Postconciliar Exile, so keep an eye out for my review. It should appear this week.
Thursday, 29 November 2018
Won't Be Home for Christmas but...
"Normally the patient sits in that seat," said the doctor, or words to that effect, to me.
Yes, Benedict Ambrose and I were back at the hospital. This time we were there to hear the results of his most recent scan, the one that followed six weeks of radiotherapy to stop the resurgent tumour which, to add insult to injury, had brought along two friends.
Fortunately it was my "retreat day" from work, so I simply brought along Peter Kwasniewski's Tradition & Sanity with me to the waiting room. I was at Mass dark and early at 8 AM, and afterwards our priest loaned me Michael Davies' Liturgical Revolution Volume II, so B.A. read that.
I always go the hospital with B.A. to hear medical pronouncements because too often he doesn't come home afterwards: it's back to the ward with him. The news is usually bad although, come to think of it, this is better than whichever doctor saying B.A. is fine when I know he is NOT fine.
When B.A.'s name was called, we gathered our coats and books and sped off to the consulting room, where I chose the seat closest to the oncologist's desk as it was pushed farther back. However, it turned out to be the wrong choice, and I had a sense that the doctor was faintly surprised that I was in the office at all, which shows that she does not appreciate the implications of the Catholic marriage bond--or she is unaware that B.A. spent months of his cancer adventure delirious, increasingly blind and unable to remember much or ask important questions.
The news was good. The "tumour buds", which had rapidly doubled in size after being detected, have stopped growing. This is a great mercy, for apparently the radiotherapy was so aggressive, the doctor would not have done it a second time. One of the tumour buds looks like it is "necrotising," too--a word doctors use instead of dying. Die, tumour buds, die--but without taking my husband with you, thanks.
We looked at the latest interesting high-tech x-rays of the inside of B.A.'s head, which are almost amusing because some show his tongue, teeth and jaw, too. B.A. says he doesn't identify with these images; they seem completely apart from him. On one x-ray/computer image was a dark horseshoe shape representing where the oncologists had radiated B.A.'s brain, as close to his brain stem as possible without actually touching it.
B.A.'s tumours, by the way, are technically "benign" even though, left untreated, they would kill him. The problem is that they are basically on the worst, trickiest and most sensitive part of his brain. Normally this kind of brain tumour doesn't appear there. And normally this kind of brain tumour appears in five-year-olds. The probability of B.A. ever being in this situation was low, but here he is.
Slightly off-setting this misfortune is the fact that his neurosurgeon is a paediatrics neurosurgeon and so was probably one of the few people in the world who could have done the operation he did without leaving B.A. badly damaged---although famously I think the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima had something to do with that, too. And although the subsequent radiotherapy robbed B.A. of the ability to hear music properly, that turned out to be only temporary. Thank God for that.
After making an appointment for B.A. to come in for another scan in a few months, the doctor asked if we had any more questions. B.A. politely said "No," thus proving the importance of my being there.
"Can he go to Canada in [four] weeks?" I asked. "For Christmas? It's an eight hour flight."
Actually, it's more of a seven hour flight, but I was thinking of snowstorms and airplanes circling around Lester B. Pearson airport for ages, waiting for their turn to land.
The doctor looked perturbed.
"Have you booked your flights already?" she asked.
"No," we said. "We were waiting until we spoke to you."
That had been a good thing to do. To make a long consultation short, she thought it a very bad idea for B.A. to be on a long flight although if we had insisted she would have given him some sort of steroid to help him through it.
"No, no, no," I said, thinking of a disastrous flight to Pisa last year, so we don't know what this steroid would do, or why exactly it is a bad idea for B.A. to fly---quite apart from the cost of medical insurance for a cancer patient travelling to Canada, which is apparently astronomical.
Then B.A. remembered that we have already bought and paid for tickets to Poland in late January, but then the oncologist perked up and said that it was a good idea to start with a short flight. Therefore, we are still going to Poland although I am a bit frightened about it. If anything like what happened after we flew to Pisa happens in Poland, we are taking the train to Berlin in July. And now the Berlin trip is now even more about seeing family than it was about museums.
The oncologist advised us to go to the cancer patients' clubhouse for travelling insurance information for our European travels, so off we went to find it. We were met at the door by a kindly lady who showed us seats and offered tea and coffee and brought us cookies, a list of companies that insure cancer patients, and a schedule of cancer clubhouse activities. B.A. observed that it's my clubhouse, too, because I'm a Caregiver, to which I thought, "Dear God. I'm a Caregiver again."
A Caregiver (or "Carer") is the United Kingdom expression for a person--sometimes paid by the state--who does most of the in-home caring for a sick or disabled person. I think the expression is meant to encompass the vast variety of people who may fill this role. As a concept, it has positive and negative implications.
The positive aspect is that Caregivers are seen as a group of their own, and have their own clubs and advisers, who recognise how difficult being a Caregiver can be and that Caregivers need help and support. The negative aspect is that this reflects a breakdown in marriage and family. Once upon a time it was assumed that a wife took care of her sick husband, and vice versa, and parents took care of their disabled children, or children took care of their sick or disabled parents, and now it isn't.
But the implications regarding Broken Britain aside, I am grateful for the identity label and the resources available to Caregivers because, although obviously being the one with brain tumours is much worse, caring for a cancer patient can be frightfully annoying and difficult.
The most annoying part is being treated by hospital staff as if you don't belong beside your sick person. Believe me, just offering the sick person's spouse/'partner'/Caregiver a glass of water is an unusual act of kindness. Possibly the nurses don't do it very often because they're embarrassed when the spouse/'partner'/Caregiver bursts into tears of gratitude.
The most difficult parts are 1. second-guessing doctors and nurses--and I will never forget how starving B.A. was fasted a day longer than necessary because a nurse made a mistake, and I thought she had made a mistake, but she didn't--and 2. not knowing what to do when something goes wrong.
So although I am sad that we are not going to Canada for Christmas, I am glad that we are not going on a seven-hour flight. When we went to Italy in May 2017, we expected a relaxing holiday in which both of us would recover from the horrors of B.A.'s March diagnosis. The doctors had assured us that post-operative B.A. was fine. Fine to travel. Good to go. All was well. Nightmare over. Cheap flight to Pisa. Cheap train to Florence ...
And then when B.A. got off the train, he fell and could not get up. Somehow I carried him and all our luggage to a seat, but after that, I did not know what to do or what was going on and, God love us, we both preferred to believe the doctors couldn't possibly have been wrong and he just had "low blood sugar". Neither of us knew, then, what delirium looked like. Hint: not just someone raving on their pillow about a lost love. Most of the time B.A. was delirious, he spoke with complete conviction in an ordinary tone of voice. He passed basic cognitive damage tests with flying colours. He wandered off to central Edinburgh because he fancied a doughnut.
Well, anyway. No Toronto Christmas, but just remembering what happened in Florence (and then everything afterwards) has cheered me up a little. Better safe than that kind of sorry.
Update: I will say this again and again, but it is very shortsighted of the National Health Service not to recognise appropriately the role the sick person's primary caregiver plays in the healing of the patient. First of all, the caregiver has only ONE sick person in her care and so is an incredible resource. Second, the caregiver may be under so much stress, she is in danger of herself falling ill. If the caregiver falls ill, that can have a deleterious effect on the original patient. It will also add to the work of the NHS. Therefore, it is in everyone's interest to spend a half-minute a day acknowledging the primary caregiver, smiling at her or even offering her a glass of water.
Update 2: Given my readership, should acknowledge that our financial situation would be terrible if we were Americans or we lived in the United States without adequate health insurance. Speaking as a Canadian who lives in the UK and travels often to the Continent, I firmly believe in so-called "socialised medicine." There are a lot of things taxes shouldn't support, but cancer treatment is high on the list of things it should.
Update: I will say this again and again, but it is very shortsighted of the National Health Service not to recognise appropriately the role the sick person's primary caregiver plays in the healing of the patient. First of all, the caregiver has only ONE sick person in her care and so is an incredible resource. Second, the caregiver may be under so much stress, she is in danger of herself falling ill. If the caregiver falls ill, that can have a deleterious effect on the original patient. It will also add to the work of the NHS. Therefore, it is in everyone's interest to spend a half-minute a day acknowledging the primary caregiver, smiling at her or even offering her a glass of water.
Update 2: Given my readership, should acknowledge that our financial situation would be terrible if we were Americans or we lived in the United States without adequate health insurance. Speaking as a Canadian who lives in the UK and travels often to the Continent, I firmly believe in so-called "socialised medicine." There are a lot of things taxes shouldn't support, but cancer treatment is high on the list of things it should.
Tuesday, 20 November 2018
Dinner Party Reflections 2
I forgot, when I sat down at my keyboard this morning, that I meant to praise dinner parties as a great joy in life. Naturally I've done this before, but as it happens, the Stoics liked them, too. It wasn't for the food and drink, of course, that Stoics loved parties, but for the friendships.
The Anglo-Saxons thought of the after-life as an endless dinner in the celestial mead-hall, or so it seems in the Dream of the Rood. There is quite a lot of feasting in the works of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but eating alone is frowned upon---even dangerous, if you recall what happened to Edmund after pigging out on Turkish delight.
(By the way, real Turkish delight is much, much better than that dreck you tried at your local candy store.)
Sometimes Benedict Ambrose fusses about the work involved in cooking dinner for six to eight people, and sometimes I respond by saying that my mother cooked dinner for six to eight people for over twenty years. When B.A. is on his game, he doubts that these were three-to-four course dinners, which is pretty accurate, except at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
But my more profound point is that I ate supper around a table with other people until my third year at university, when I moved downtown. Therefore, every dinner was, to a certain extent, a dinner party. And if (for various reasons) you don't have children in the house, the best substitute is a regular number of dinner parties with adults of varying ages but relatively uniform interests.
My last dinner party involved six adults aged between 18 and 50-something, and we were all interested in traditional Catholic and Orthodox liturgies and music to a certain degree. We had something fun and liturgical to watch on my computer after pudding, and occasionally someone burst into song, which was never allowed at my family dinner table, although G.K. Chesterton valued singing at the dinner table very highly. Two of the guests were Polish, so occasionally I was asked for the English word to some homely object (cooking pot, which I knew) or concept (being disabled, which I didn't). I asked them to name some ancient Slavic tunes.
Very often at our dinner parties I miss out on great slices of dinner party chat, for I'm away back in the kitchen, washing up the soup bowls and dinner plates between courses so that I'm not up too late afterwards. However, this time, I stuck around from soup to nuts (or, this time, soup to violet creams) and enjoyed the merriment wholeheartedly.
The joy of dinner parties occurred to me while reading A Guide to the Good Life, perhaps prompted by an invitation to ponder what I enjoy most in my ordinary life. I would have to include also visits to and from my family, and travel to and through Italy and Poland, and the Traditional Latin Mass. Then coffee, good books, and successful conversations in foreign languages. Letter-writing, sending presents to children, and conversations with unusually intelligent and/or personable children, too.
I prefer sending gifts to children to giving them in person, for children are terribly honest. If your present is a dud, they will not be able to hide their disappointment. But if you send a present, it is usually their parents who respond, and they are always politely enthusiastic.
The Anglo-Saxons thought of the after-life as an endless dinner in the celestial mead-hall, or so it seems in the Dream of the Rood. There is quite a lot of feasting in the works of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but eating alone is frowned upon---even dangerous, if you recall what happened to Edmund after pigging out on Turkish delight.
(By the way, real Turkish delight is much, much better than that dreck you tried at your local candy store.)
Sometimes Benedict Ambrose fusses about the work involved in cooking dinner for six to eight people, and sometimes I respond by saying that my mother cooked dinner for six to eight people for over twenty years. When B.A. is on his game, he doubts that these were three-to-four course dinners, which is pretty accurate, except at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
But my more profound point is that I ate supper around a table with other people until my third year at university, when I moved downtown. Therefore, every dinner was, to a certain extent, a dinner party. And if (for various reasons) you don't have children in the house, the best substitute is a regular number of dinner parties with adults of varying ages but relatively uniform interests.
My last dinner party involved six adults aged between 18 and 50-something, and we were all interested in traditional Catholic and Orthodox liturgies and music to a certain degree. We had something fun and liturgical to watch on my computer after pudding, and occasionally someone burst into song, which was never allowed at my family dinner table, although G.K. Chesterton valued singing at the dinner table very highly. Two of the guests were Polish, so occasionally I was asked for the English word to some homely object (cooking pot, which I knew) or concept (being disabled, which I didn't). I asked them to name some ancient Slavic tunes.
Very often at our dinner parties I miss out on great slices of dinner party chat, for I'm away back in the kitchen, washing up the soup bowls and dinner plates between courses so that I'm not up too late afterwards. However, this time, I stuck around from soup to nuts (or, this time, soup to violet creams) and enjoyed the merriment wholeheartedly.
The joy of dinner parties occurred to me while reading A Guide to the Good Life, perhaps prompted by an invitation to ponder what I enjoy most in my ordinary life. I would have to include also visits to and from my family, and travel to and through Italy and Poland, and the Traditional Latin Mass. Then coffee, good books, and successful conversations in foreign languages. Letter-writing, sending presents to children, and conversations with unusually intelligent and/or personable children, too.
I prefer sending gifts to children to giving them in person, for children are terribly honest. If your present is a dud, they will not be able to hide their disappointment. But if you send a present, it is usually their parents who respond, and they are always politely enthusiastic.
Saturday, 10 November 2018
A Day Out in Edinburgh
At the end of another stressful week--albeit with the enjoyable company of my brother Quadrophonic--I decided to have a bit of a splurge. Originally my plan was to break down cardboard boxes, hoover and nail some pictures to the wall. Ah ha ha ha.
My alarm went at 6 AM, and at 6:16 AM, Quadrophonic and I hustled out into the darkness towards the train station. I bought a return ticket to Edinburgh (£3.30).
After a mad dash down Princes Street for the airport-bound tram, I said bon voyage to Quadrophonic and retraced my steps towards the railway station. What in Edinburgh is open at 6:50 AM, I wondered.
The Balmoral Hotel was the answer. I toddled in, glad to be wearing a tweed skirt suit, and asked if the brasserie were open yet. It was indeed. There a charming Continental waiter informed me that breakfast was £29 and kindly agreed to bring me a cappuccino instead.
So I sat at a chic brasserie table as light dawned on Edinburgh, writing a letter to a friend. The cappuccino cost £5, but it came with two cookies and the hotel was safe and warm. Then, since I was already there, I popped down to the spa to see if I could get a massage today to cope with my stress-damage. I could.
My next stop was the Brew Lab for some Hipster's Ruin (aka avocado toast). Feeling the urge to splurge I got the version with smoked salmon and dill (£6.95). To the barista's surprise, I did not order any coffee. I explained that I had already had two coffees this morning. She was surprised again, for I had entered the hallowed portals of the BL no later than 9 AM. (I made my first coffee this morning at 6:02 AM and drank it from a portable cup on the train.)
Then I went to the Central Library, where I spent a happy hour browsing and reading David Lodge's The Art of Fiction. Then I went next door to the Children's section, and spent half a happy hour reading Rosemary Sutcliffe's take on Beowulf (£0).
Next I thought I had better replace some opaque tights now riddles with holes so I went back to Princes Street and struggled against the crowds towards the House of Fraser department store. I was distracted from. my purpose, however, by the sight of Waterstone's Bookstore, where I would have bought one or two books on Stoicism, had B.A. not called my mobile at the psychological moment. So, despite spending a happy hour looking at all the gorgeous books for sale in Waterstone's, I spend exactly £0 there.
To my surprise, the House of Fraser was having a 50% off sale as it is closing. There didn't seem to be any tights for sale, so I went out again. Thoughts of Beowulf lingering in my mind, I went to Oddbins around the corner to see if they had any mead. They didn't. (£0.)
I directed my steps through Charlotte Square and down Rose Street to Debenham's department store, and the route to opaque tights was so complicated, the limited selection of colours was a great disappointment. So again I spent £0, and ended up on Princes Street instead of back on Rose Street, so I never passed my favourite shoe shop Rogerson's Fine Footwear, where I probably would have bought new black loafers. This means I continued to spend £0.
When I got to Frederick Street I resisted Hotel Chocolat because I have come down for the first time in my life with eczema, and sugar may be to blame. But I did end up back on Rose Street. Although they do have coloured tights, I scurried past Primark. I hate Primark.
I do not hate TK Maxx, however, so I zipped across the street to have a look for tempting discounts. I almost bought £3 worth of pumpkin-spice coloured ribbed tights, but they were for women of heights up to 5'10" and I am but a wee shrimpie.
So I went to the MAC counter of Harvey Nichols and bought my annual tube of Russian Red lipstick and a matching lip pencil. If I have not learned the lessons of history, I will forget them in various pockets and lose and find them again for the next 8 months before irrevocable losing the pencil and then two months later losing the stick (£31.50, the humanity).
And then I toddle back to Princes Street and returned to the Balmoral Hotel where I had a £60 Swedish massage in the Spa, which included all the water and tea I could drink, the opportunity to lounge by the pool reading the Financial Times (truly), plus the comfy slippers to take home if I chose, and I did. Although £60 seems like a lot of money to spend all at once, I don't begrudge it, for I am a firm believer in the power of massage to cure stress-related ills, and if I got a raise, I would have one a month.
So if you have ever wondered what an actual resident of Scotland does on a day off in the beautiful and very well touristed city of Edinburgh, that's my answer. I point out, however, that this is not Edinburgh on £10 a day. For that I recommend having your coffee at Brew Lab with the Hipster's Ruin and then spending the afternoon in the library, the free art galleries, and window-shopping. But if you turn up at 6:50 AM, there is no hope for it: you either have to find a hospitable hotel or freeze in the railway station waiting room.
My alarm went at 6 AM, and at 6:16 AM, Quadrophonic and I hustled out into the darkness towards the train station. I bought a return ticket to Edinburgh (£3.30).
After a mad dash down Princes Street for the airport-bound tram, I said bon voyage to Quadrophonic and retraced my steps towards the railway station. What in Edinburgh is open at 6:50 AM, I wondered.
The Balmoral Hotel was the answer. I toddled in, glad to be wearing a tweed skirt suit, and asked if the brasserie were open yet. It was indeed. There a charming Continental waiter informed me that breakfast was £29 and kindly agreed to bring me a cappuccino instead.
So I sat at a chic brasserie table as light dawned on Edinburgh, writing a letter to a friend. The cappuccino cost £5, but it came with two cookies and the hotel was safe and warm. Then, since I was already there, I popped down to the spa to see if I could get a massage today to cope with my stress-damage. I could.
My next stop was the Brew Lab for some Hipster's Ruin (aka avocado toast). Feeling the urge to splurge I got the version with smoked salmon and dill (£6.95). To the barista's surprise, I did not order any coffee. I explained that I had already had two coffees this morning. She was surprised again, for I had entered the hallowed portals of the BL no later than 9 AM. (I made my first coffee this morning at 6:02 AM and drank it from a portable cup on the train.)
Then I went to the Central Library, where I spent a happy hour browsing and reading David Lodge's The Art of Fiction. Then I went next door to the Children's section, and spent half a happy hour reading Rosemary Sutcliffe's take on Beowulf (£0).
Next I thought I had better replace some opaque tights now riddles with holes so I went back to Princes Street and struggled against the crowds towards the House of Fraser department store. I was distracted from. my purpose, however, by the sight of Waterstone's Bookstore, where I would have bought one or two books on Stoicism, had B.A. not called my mobile at the psychological moment. So, despite spending a happy hour looking at all the gorgeous books for sale in Waterstone's, I spend exactly £0 there.
To my surprise, the House of Fraser was having a 50% off sale as it is closing. There didn't seem to be any tights for sale, so I went out again. Thoughts of Beowulf lingering in my mind, I went to Oddbins around the corner to see if they had any mead. They didn't. (£0.)
I directed my steps through Charlotte Square and down Rose Street to Debenham's department store, and the route to opaque tights was so complicated, the limited selection of colours was a great disappointment. So again I spent £0, and ended up on Princes Street instead of back on Rose Street, so I never passed my favourite shoe shop Rogerson's Fine Footwear, where I probably would have bought new black loafers. This means I continued to spend £0.
When I got to Frederick Street I resisted Hotel Chocolat because I have come down for the first time in my life with eczema, and sugar may be to blame. But I did end up back on Rose Street. Although they do have coloured tights, I scurried past Primark. I hate Primark.
I do not hate TK Maxx, however, so I zipped across the street to have a look for tempting discounts. I almost bought £3 worth of pumpkin-spice coloured ribbed tights, but they were for women of heights up to 5'10" and I am but a wee shrimpie.
So I went to the MAC counter of Harvey Nichols and bought my annual tube of Russian Red lipstick and a matching lip pencil. If I have not learned the lessons of history, I will forget them in various pockets and lose and find them again for the next 8 months before irrevocable losing the pencil and then two months later losing the stick (£31.50, the humanity).
And then I toddle back to Princes Street and returned to the Balmoral Hotel where I had a £60 Swedish massage in the Spa, which included all the water and tea I could drink, the opportunity to lounge by the pool reading the Financial Times (truly), plus the comfy slippers to take home if I chose, and I did. Although £60 seems like a lot of money to spend all at once, I don't begrudge it, for I am a firm believer in the power of massage to cure stress-related ills, and if I got a raise, I would have one a month.
So if you have ever wondered what an actual resident of Scotland does on a day off in the beautiful and very well touristed city of Edinburgh, that's my answer. I point out, however, that this is not Edinburgh on £10 a day. For that I recommend having your coffee at Brew Lab with the Hipster's Ruin and then spending the afternoon in the library, the free art galleries, and window-shopping. But if you turn up at 6:50 AM, there is no hope for it: you either have to find a hospitable hotel or freeze in the railway station waiting room.
Monday, 5 November 2018
Lake Awe and other sights
We are back from a weekend in the Highlands, grateful that there was no rain yesterday. Three people in a tin-roofed shack for three rainy days would not have been much of a getaway.
We were my brother Quadrophonic (so-called because he is a fourth child), my husband Benedict Ambrose and myself. B.A. and I had reserved all train tickets and a minute bothy we found on the AirB&B website. The bothy (hut) is the village of Taynuilt, which actually has a village Catholic church and a weekly Sunday Mass. This is never a guarantee in Scotland, so B.A. and I were stoked.
On Friday morning, carrying backpacks of descending sizes (mine was biggest), we walked to our local railway station, changed trains at Edinburgh, got to Glasgow ten minutes late for the Oban train, and so went to one of the Starbuckses on Glasgow's Buchanan Street and then to M&S to get some sandwiches. We caught the next Oban train and alighted two hours or so later in Taynuilt.
Taynuilt has a village hall, a post office, a grocery story (open until 10 PM!), a butcher's shop, a hairdresser, a teashop that is closed until November 22, a primary school, a Church of Scotland church and cemetery, the preserved remains of an 18th century ironworks, and a Catholic Church. That's about it---besides Loch Etive and some amazing views of mist-wreathed orange-and-green hills.
Once we had some biscuits and coffee in our new-to-us two room bothy (no shower), we went for a walk towards the surprisingly pretty Catholic Church and were amazed to discover there would be All Souls Mass at 7 PM. One forgets that Catholicism hung on in the Highlands even after the Lowlands went thoroughly Calvinist. Naturally we turned up again at 7PM, doubling the congregation. The priest had a lovely Scottish voice and a solid grasp of the doctrine of Purgatory, upon which he preached.
After that there was nothing whatsoever to do in Taynuilt except buy groceries, eat supper (made by B.A. on the two-burner hotplate), drink wine, warm ourselves by the wood stove and read our books or the internet. (B.A., who brought his computer, is officially addicted to Twitter.) My book was A Long Way Down by Nick Hornsby. I found it amongst the bothy's collection of paperbacks.
On Saturday we awoke to rain. The orange and green hills were sodden and the sky was the colour of putty. I put on my wellies and went for a scenic walk before turning towards the village, where I bought eggs, pork sausages and eggs from the butcher shop. Then I continued to read Nick Hornsby until we set off in the drizzle to the train station. A perusal of a guide to local restaurants revealed that there was nothing within walking distance. Thus we traversed 11 miles by train to Oban and ate in a highly overrated pub--thanks for nothing, Trip Advisor--before trudging through the tireless rain to Oban Cathedral. We had ten minutes of Oban Cathedral with the lights on, but then a sacristan or priest turned the lights off, so then we sat in the dark and gloomy Cathedral, feeling rather too full of overrated pub grub--thanks for nothing, Trip Advisor.
Alas, that was it for Oban. Had it been sunny, I am sure we would have seen and done a lot more, but as the shops on the high street looked suspiciously like the shops in other Scottish towns, and as it was pouring, and as our bellies were none so happy, we got right back on the next train to Glasgow, alighting (naturally) at Taynuilt.
We had another evening by the wood stove with books and Twitter, and having finished A Long Way Down, I started Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. We had markedly less to eat for supper.
On Sunday we awoke to sun, which was nice. We had bacon and eggs and crumpets for breakfast and got it together soon enough to walk around the remains of the ironworks (mostly stone sheds) until the church bell summoned us to Mass. There were 30 or so people at Mass, which was rather heartening, and everyone but us sang the post-V2 hymns with edifying joy and devotion. The priest gave another solid homily, I thought, although upon what I cannot remember.
Then we bought some more groceries--the grocer is most definitely one of the world's workers--and got on a Glasgow-bound train to Loch Awe, where we were going to spend 2 hours looking at an amusing church built in all mediaeval periods, from Saxon to High Gothic, by an aristocratic Edwardian enthusiast. We ended up staying by Loch Awe until the 8:45 PM train, so beautiful was the loch, and so charming its hotels. As soon as B.A. and Quadrophonic laid eyes, not on the Victorian hotel right on the loch, but the modern glass-fronted inn down the road, they decided we would stay for supper.
Our Loch Awe visit can be divided into various sections: walking to the amusing St. Conan's Kirk; viewing the amusing St. Conan's Kirk (which is really great fun, and which of us would not build his or her own faux-mediaeval church if he or she could?); walking along the road looking for an off-road path; walking along an off-road path admiring the stupendous view of Loch Awe and its sublime hills and its ruined castle; clambering adventurously down the hill into a boggy back garden in which we inadvertently left boot holes; continuing down the road to the Victorian hotel for drinks by the fire; and then supper in the modern glass-fronted inn. The food was very good and kept us happy until 8:30 PM when we crossed the dark and empty road to await the Oban-bound train back to Taynuilt.
It was a splendid day. Needless to say, I enjoyed best sitting in a Victorian hotel (spacious oak panelled lounge, high ceilings, thick wall-to-wall tartan carpet) near the roaring fire reading Scottish Field while drinking coffee (and later Drambuie) after our hours in the open air and the inglorious squelch near the end. Benedict Ambrose and I were both in tweeds, so we matched the decor.
This morning we got up reluctantly between 7:40 (me, to make coffee) and 8 AM to pack, tidy up and catch the 9:20 AM train to Glasgow. We were home at about 2 PM, so the journey was shorter than the family trip from Montreal to Toronto, and less onerous, too, as it was enlivened by changes of train. Also, the view out the windows from Montreal to Toronto are very dull, and the view from Taynuilt to Glasgow involves some of the most glorious mountainsides and lakes in Britain. Between Glasgow and Edinburgh there are also some very pretty stretches of green hills and white sheep lolling about, and my father once said it was the most beautiful airport commute (there being few direct flights from Toronto to Edinburgh) he had ever seen.
We were my brother Quadrophonic (so-called because he is a fourth child), my husband Benedict Ambrose and myself. B.A. and I had reserved all train tickets and a minute bothy we found on the AirB&B website. The bothy (hut) is the village of Taynuilt, which actually has a village Catholic church and a weekly Sunday Mass. This is never a guarantee in Scotland, so B.A. and I were stoked.
On Friday morning, carrying backpacks of descending sizes (mine was biggest), we walked to our local railway station, changed trains at Edinburgh, got to Glasgow ten minutes late for the Oban train, and so went to one of the Starbuckses on Glasgow's Buchanan Street and then to M&S to get some sandwiches. We caught the next Oban train and alighted two hours or so later in Taynuilt.
Taynuilt has a village hall, a post office, a grocery story (open until 10 PM!), a butcher's shop, a hairdresser, a teashop that is closed until November 22, a primary school, a Church of Scotland church and cemetery, the preserved remains of an 18th century ironworks, and a Catholic Church. That's about it---besides Loch Etive and some amazing views of mist-wreathed orange-and-green hills.
Once we had some biscuits and coffee in our new-to-us two room bothy (no shower), we went for a walk towards the surprisingly pretty Catholic Church and were amazed to discover there would be All Souls Mass at 7 PM. One forgets that Catholicism hung on in the Highlands even after the Lowlands went thoroughly Calvinist. Naturally we turned up again at 7PM, doubling the congregation. The priest had a lovely Scottish voice and a solid grasp of the doctrine of Purgatory, upon which he preached.
After that there was nothing whatsoever to do in Taynuilt except buy groceries, eat supper (made by B.A. on the two-burner hotplate), drink wine, warm ourselves by the wood stove and read our books or the internet. (B.A., who brought his computer, is officially addicted to Twitter.) My book was A Long Way Down by Nick Hornsby. I found it amongst the bothy's collection of paperbacks.
On Saturday we awoke to rain. The orange and green hills were sodden and the sky was the colour of putty. I put on my wellies and went for a scenic walk before turning towards the village, where I bought eggs, pork sausages and eggs from the butcher shop. Then I continued to read Nick Hornsby until we set off in the drizzle to the train station. A perusal of a guide to local restaurants revealed that there was nothing within walking distance. Thus we traversed 11 miles by train to Oban and ate in a highly overrated pub--thanks for nothing, Trip Advisor--before trudging through the tireless rain to Oban Cathedral. We had ten minutes of Oban Cathedral with the lights on, but then a sacristan or priest turned the lights off, so then we sat in the dark and gloomy Cathedral, feeling rather too full of overrated pub grub--thanks for nothing, Trip Advisor.
Alas, that was it for Oban. Had it been sunny, I am sure we would have seen and done a lot more, but as the shops on the high street looked suspiciously like the shops in other Scottish towns, and as it was pouring, and as our bellies were none so happy, we got right back on the next train to Glasgow, alighting (naturally) at Taynuilt.
We had another evening by the wood stove with books and Twitter, and having finished A Long Way Down, I started Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. We had markedly less to eat for supper.
On Sunday we awoke to sun, which was nice. We had bacon and eggs and crumpets for breakfast and got it together soon enough to walk around the remains of the ironworks (mostly stone sheds) until the church bell summoned us to Mass. There were 30 or so people at Mass, which was rather heartening, and everyone but us sang the post-V2 hymns with edifying joy and devotion. The priest gave another solid homily, I thought, although upon what I cannot remember.
Then we bought some more groceries--the grocer is most definitely one of the world's workers--and got on a Glasgow-bound train to Loch Awe, where we were going to spend 2 hours looking at an amusing church built in all mediaeval periods, from Saxon to High Gothic, by an aristocratic Edwardian enthusiast. We ended up staying by Loch Awe until the 8:45 PM train, so beautiful was the loch, and so charming its hotels. As soon as B.A. and Quadrophonic laid eyes, not on the Victorian hotel right on the loch, but the modern glass-fronted inn down the road, they decided we would stay for supper.
Our Loch Awe visit can be divided into various sections: walking to the amusing St. Conan's Kirk; viewing the amusing St. Conan's Kirk (which is really great fun, and which of us would not build his or her own faux-mediaeval church if he or she could?); walking along the road looking for an off-road path; walking along an off-road path admiring the stupendous view of Loch Awe and its sublime hills and its ruined castle; clambering adventurously down the hill into a boggy back garden in which we inadvertently left boot holes; continuing down the road to the Victorian hotel for drinks by the fire; and then supper in the modern glass-fronted inn. The food was very good and kept us happy until 8:30 PM when we crossed the dark and empty road to await the Oban-bound train back to Taynuilt.
It was a splendid day. Needless to say, I enjoyed best sitting in a Victorian hotel (spacious oak panelled lounge, high ceilings, thick wall-to-wall tartan carpet) near the roaring fire reading Scottish Field while drinking coffee (and later Drambuie) after our hours in the open air and the inglorious squelch near the end. Benedict Ambrose and I were both in tweeds, so we matched the decor.
This morning we got up reluctantly between 7:40 (me, to make coffee) and 8 AM to pack, tidy up and catch the 9:20 AM train to Glasgow. We were home at about 2 PM, so the journey was shorter than the family trip from Montreal to Toronto, and less onerous, too, as it was enlivened by changes of train. Also, the view out the windows from Montreal to Toronto are very dull, and the view from Taynuilt to Glasgow involves some of the most glorious mountainsides and lakes in Britain. Between Glasgow and Edinburgh there are also some very pretty stretches of green hills and white sheep lolling about, and my father once said it was the most beautiful airport commute (there being few direct flights from Toronto to Edinburgh) he had ever seen.
Monday, 22 October 2018
The Excellence of Chickens
It is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone in Britain who can afford it should buy a little place in the country for the weekend repose and relaxation of his or her friends. Fortunately for us, we have such dutiful friends, and on Saturday after B.A. went to work, I went to the railway station where I missed my train by approximately 15 seconds.
Fortunately there was another train, so after a noisy cry (during which a foreign young man tried to comfort me, thus underscoring how very foreign he must have been), I got on it and went to my friend's little place in the country, which is half farmhouse and half Georgian grandeur.
To be precise, I went to the railway station nearest this Eden, and after my friend took me to her house, she remembered the dog food she had bought near the station, so she drove back to get it, leaving me in the chicken shed.
The chicken shed is a kind of large wooden box, about 7 feet high and 14 feet long and wide, with a plank outer door to the world and a chicken-wire inner door to the chickens, who live in one of two pens. Despite all this glorious space, there are only three of them. They are Rhode Island Reds and beautiful.
It was sunny, and as I stood among the chickens, who clucked and scratched away at the straw around my Wellington boots, I looked out through the open outer door at my friend's black lab sitting in the grass and beyond him (and a little to the left) at my friend's black-and-white cat sitting under a bush.
It was very, very peaceful.
After I fed the chickens, I went out both doors and around to their run and took the rock and the screen away from their pop-hole so they could enjoy grubbing around their orchard. They are enormously lucky hens in that their run contains at least one apple tree, so they can peck at apples or apple-eating bugs all they like. They also enjoy scratching at the earth while chuckling in a manner very soothing to the human ear.
And I thought that if you spend hours and hours every day in such worldly toils and cares as (for example) writing your 15th article about the McCarrick scandal, one excellent antidote is to spend some time with chickens, watching them peck and scratch in their tiny-brained way. Minus chickens, it might be almost as relaxing as to play with blocks with toddlers. Watching chickens all day might become as boring as I'm told it is to play with toddlers all day, but as a change from brainwork both are excellent.
Another excellent thing to do is go on long walks through the Scottish countryside with the hospitable friend, who is wearing bright rain jacket so neither of you is mistaken for a duck/grouse/deer and shot. You walk over hill and under dale and climb over fallen trees (or crawl under fallen trees) and fall in the mud and get deliciously tired before dark and sitting down to a splendid supper. Naturally before eating you put the screen and the rock in front of the pop-hole after having checked that the chickens are all now companionably roosting together in a great feathery squash.
Fortunately there was another train, so after a noisy cry (during which a foreign young man tried to comfort me, thus underscoring how very foreign he must have been), I got on it and went to my friend's little place in the country, which is half farmhouse and half Georgian grandeur.
To be precise, I went to the railway station nearest this Eden, and after my friend took me to her house, she remembered the dog food she had bought near the station, so she drove back to get it, leaving me in the chicken shed.
The chicken shed is a kind of large wooden box, about 7 feet high and 14 feet long and wide, with a plank outer door to the world and a chicken-wire inner door to the chickens, who live in one of two pens. Despite all this glorious space, there are only three of them. They are Rhode Island Reds and beautiful.
It was sunny, and as I stood among the chickens, who clucked and scratched away at the straw around my Wellington boots, I looked out through the open outer door at my friend's black lab sitting in the grass and beyond him (and a little to the left) at my friend's black-and-white cat sitting under a bush.
It was very, very peaceful.
After I fed the chickens, I went out both doors and around to their run and took the rock and the screen away from their pop-hole so they could enjoy grubbing around their orchard. They are enormously lucky hens in that their run contains at least one apple tree, so they can peck at apples or apple-eating bugs all they like. They also enjoy scratching at the earth while chuckling in a manner very soothing to the human ear.
And I thought that if you spend hours and hours every day in such worldly toils and cares as (for example) writing your 15th article about the McCarrick scandal, one excellent antidote is to spend some time with chickens, watching them peck and scratch in their tiny-brained way. Minus chickens, it might be almost as relaxing as to play with blocks with toddlers. Watching chickens all day might become as boring as I'm told it is to play with toddlers all day, but as a change from brainwork both are excellent.
Another excellent thing to do is go on long walks through the Scottish countryside with the hospitable friend, who is wearing bright rain jacket so neither of you is mistaken for a duck/grouse/deer and shot. You walk over hill and under dale and climb over fallen trees (or crawl under fallen trees) and fall in the mud and get deliciously tired before dark and sitting down to a splendid supper. Naturally before eating you put the screen and the rock in front of the pop-hole after having checked that the chickens are all now companionably roosting together in a great feathery squash.
Monday, 8 October 2018
Canadian Thanksgiving
Today I was terribly sad and homesick, and it was through gritted teeth that I asked myself what I could do today to make tomorrow better. One thing I did was to acknowledge that I, like so many others, have an internet addiction and should strive not to get on the web before or after office hours.
But I also posted a letter to two nice Scottish girls immured in a French convent school and spent £17 on groceries, which I slowly began to turn into Thanksgiving supper. Originally I was going to have Thanksgiving supper on Sunday night with two English-Scottish couples, but one couple was out of town and the other's plans have to be made greatly in advance because of the need for a babysitter. I was going to invite another couple for real Thanksgiving, tonight, but I thought B.A. would be too tired from work. So in the end, I shopped for two.
The secret to Thanksgiving for two is to stick to the basics. If your spouse does not come from a Thanksgiving-celebrating culture, this is quite easy. You tell him what the basics are, and he accepts this as Canadian (or, I imagine, American) law. In our case, this meant a turkey leg, gravy, curried carrots with honey and ginger, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. I also provided store-bought gnocchi as a fast take on potatoes.
I was quite surprised to find a turkey leg for sale among the poultry. I meant to buy guinea hens, but there being an enormous raw turkey leg, I bought it. I suppose it must once have been attached to a turkey crown, now sitting in the frozen foods department of some grocery store somewhere in the British Isles. Tesco has already starting stocking Christmas things. Hallowe'en is not strong enough a tradition hear to keep Christmas groceries at bay.
At any rate, I began to prepare Thanksgiving Dinner at 5 PM and it was ready at 8 PM, and it was eaten by 9 PM, with all the dishes washed and the leftovers sweetly stored in the fridge. I shall be delighted with my current self when my future self walks into a clean kitchen tomorrow morning.
Incidentally, I made my pumpkin pie crust with lard (not vegetable shortening), and it flaked beautifully. I used to be awful at making pastry, but now that I have been married for almost ten years, I am rather good at it. Like making friends, it takes time.
But I also posted a letter to two nice Scottish girls immured in a French convent school and spent £17 on groceries, which I slowly began to turn into Thanksgiving supper. Originally I was going to have Thanksgiving supper on Sunday night with two English-Scottish couples, but one couple was out of town and the other's plans have to be made greatly in advance because of the need for a babysitter. I was going to invite another couple for real Thanksgiving, tonight, but I thought B.A. would be too tired from work. So in the end, I shopped for two.
The secret to Thanksgiving for two is to stick to the basics. If your spouse does not come from a Thanksgiving-celebrating culture, this is quite easy. You tell him what the basics are, and he accepts this as Canadian (or, I imagine, American) law. In our case, this meant a turkey leg, gravy, curried carrots with honey and ginger, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. I also provided store-bought gnocchi as a fast take on potatoes.
I was quite surprised to find a turkey leg for sale among the poultry. I meant to buy guinea hens, but there being an enormous raw turkey leg, I bought it. I suppose it must once have been attached to a turkey crown, now sitting in the frozen foods department of some grocery store somewhere in the British Isles. Tesco has already starting stocking Christmas things. Hallowe'en is not strong enough a tradition hear to keep Christmas groceries at bay.
At any rate, I began to prepare Thanksgiving Dinner at 5 PM and it was ready at 8 PM, and it was eaten by 9 PM, with all the dishes washed and the leftovers sweetly stored in the fridge. I shall be delighted with my current self when my future self walks into a clean kitchen tomorrow morning.
Incidentally, I made my pumpkin pie crust with lard (not vegetable shortening), and it flaked beautifully. I used to be awful at making pastry, but now that I have been married for almost ten years, I am rather good at it. Like making friends, it takes time.
Friday, 5 October 2018
Making Women Friends Later in Life When You Don't Have Kids
Reader Booklover has asked how to have Catholic female friendships after thirty when all the Catholic females around have kids and you don't.
That's a very good question. Booklover is lonely, and I am not surprised because I was super-lonely when I was the only woman over 25 and under 55 amongst my husband's Trad Catholic friends in Edinburgh. Not only weren't there any more childless married ladies my age, there weren't any ladies my age at all. I would sit at the table at Men's Schola dinner parties and bear the brunt of their masculine humour, e.g. my supposed job on Salamander Street. DON'T ASK.
"We'll have to find you some other wifies, hen," said the Salamander Street jester, and eventually some other expat gals did end up at our parish. I was initially suspicious of each and every one of them--goodness knows why--but then they all became my friends. A married Scottish lady with two daughters also started coming, and after a few years, we became friends, too. She now has hens, so I'm going to visit her and them tomorrow.
Of my fellow foreigners, one was recently married, and two started out Single. Then one married a Trad and one married an N.O. type from the Cathedral. The one who arrived married had babies, but the others haven't despite my fervent prayers for us all . The baby-haver now lives abroad, but when she comes back, she abandons her children with their grandparents and we go out for delicious cocktails.
Of course, our Trad parish is a bit weird in that it is very heavy on single, nulliparous people and relatively light on married couples with children. Married couples with children are a relatively recent phenomenon at our parish but a very welcome one. Somehow my mother and I got swept along by a giant crowd of them this summer to the Botanical Gardens. There I played "Red Rover, Red Rover" until someone got hurt.
I don't remember what I talked about at this picnic; I mostly remember eating delicious things with my mother and wondering how to stop the "Red Rover" game before someone got hurt.
My social life with women improved a bit when I volunteered to help the Traddy Girl Guide troop. I enjoy talking to the Guides themselves, and if the mothers of the Guides talk about their daughters, it's a bit like gossiping at school only I tend to say things like "I think X and Y are so beau-oooo-tiful and smart" or "Z is really so clever at woodcraft."
The truth is I really wish I had clever, pretty daughters like so many women my age, and you really can't go wrong telling women how clever and pretty their daughters are. Actually, I don't mind listening to women talk about their children because I find the children interesting. What I don't like is when complete strangers ask me if I have any children because it always makes me sad to say "No."
I am not sure any of this is helpful. Oh dear.
With the exception of two Protestant friends, my life rotated in a very tiny circle around the Men's Schola and such Edinburgh or St Andrews Uni students (often Polish, usually male) considered clubbable enough for dinner parties until I started going to night school. Then I got to see a completely different sort of person once a week for years. At first it was awkward being around non-Catholics, but eventually I stopped being quite so paranoid.
After several years of night school, I developed a friendship with another childless woman, the daughter of a Polish WW 2 veteran, and we may even travel together to Poland together one day, which would be great fun. It takes awhile to develop friendships with actual Scots when you are a foreigner in Scotland, by the way, unless they are work colleagues or wives of your husband's university pals.
This is sounding too much like All About Me and not enough like Advice, so I will try a list of suggestions of what to do when all the women around are mothers and you are not.
1. Become a kind of helper to the mothers of older girls, like a Temporary Deputy Girl Guide Captain, which will give you something in common with them.
2. Try to cultivate friendships with mothers who have passed the stage of talking about nothing but their children, e.g. mothers of teenagers.
3. Try to cultivate friendships with mothers who lived for rock'n'roll before their children were born. Hint: this may be the woman who says "Sometimes I wish I could go back to being 22 for just a week, you know?"
4. Accept the fact that most women your age or older who do not have children are probably not good Catholics and make friendships with them based on shared interests, like foreign language class or love of books.
5. Also accept that fact that women are simply not going to play as big a role in your life right now as they did before you were married. Yes, this is rotten and, no, a husband does not make an adequate substitute. Keep a few women's phone numbers on hand for emergency wailing sessions.
6. Read books by splendid Catholic women you wish you could go out for cocktails with, like Rumer Godden or Anna Haycroft (Alice Thomas Ellis).
7. See your very best BFFs in the world, who are probably college pals, when you can. I have two. One is a non-Catholic with no children on Toronto's Queen Street West and one is Catholic with four children just off Toronto's Roncesvalles. I see them once a year. I go to their houses and sit on their sofas and sit calmly as the hurricanes of their daily lives roar around me.
8. Befriend older Catholic women as they appear in your lives.
9. Join a network of Catholics that is much bigger than your immediate Catholic world, for the chances of meeting other Catholic women without children will thus rise.
The women in (or who regularly come to) the UK I know well enough and like enough to have over for a cup of coffee range in age from 17 to 72. They are American, Australian, English, Scottish, French, Polish, Balkan, Bulgarian, Estonian and Italian. Some are Catholics, some are Protestants, and some are simply Communists, let's face it. Two are cloistered nuns so, in fact, they can never come for coffee. Of those with children, one is pregnant with her first, three have two children each, and nice new one has seven strikingly beautiful children under 13. Of those without, at least three are over 60.
Interestingly, only three of all these excellent women has had a cup of tea or coffee or hot buttered apple cider with rum in the new flat so far. This, however, has a lot to do with the slow progress of our move, B.A.'s health, and my full-time job.
That's a very good question. Booklover is lonely, and I am not surprised because I was super-lonely when I was the only woman over 25 and under 55 amongst my husband's Trad Catholic friends in Edinburgh. Not only weren't there any more childless married ladies my age, there weren't any ladies my age at all. I would sit at the table at Men's Schola dinner parties and bear the brunt of their masculine humour, e.g. my supposed job on Salamander Street. DON'T ASK.
"We'll have to find you some other wifies, hen," said the Salamander Street jester, and eventually some other expat gals did end up at our parish. I was initially suspicious of each and every one of them--goodness knows why--but then they all became my friends. A married Scottish lady with two daughters also started coming, and after a few years, we became friends, too. She now has hens, so I'm going to visit her and them tomorrow.
Of my fellow foreigners, one was recently married, and two started out Single. Then one married a Trad and one married an N.O. type from the Cathedral. The one who arrived married had babies, but the others haven't despite my fervent prayers for us all . The baby-haver now lives abroad, but when she comes back, she abandons her children with their grandparents and we go out for delicious cocktails.
Of course, our Trad parish is a bit weird in that it is very heavy on single, nulliparous people and relatively light on married couples with children. Married couples with children are a relatively recent phenomenon at our parish but a very welcome one. Somehow my mother and I got swept along by a giant crowd of them this summer to the Botanical Gardens. There I played "Red Rover, Red Rover" until someone got hurt.
I don't remember what I talked about at this picnic; I mostly remember eating delicious things with my mother and wondering how to stop the "Red Rover" game before someone got hurt.
My social life with women improved a bit when I volunteered to help the Traddy Girl Guide troop. I enjoy talking to the Guides themselves, and if the mothers of the Guides talk about their daughters, it's a bit like gossiping at school only I tend to say things like "I think X and Y are so beau-oooo-tiful and smart" or "Z is really so clever at woodcraft."
The truth is I really wish I had clever, pretty daughters like so many women my age, and you really can't go wrong telling women how clever and pretty their daughters are. Actually, I don't mind listening to women talk about their children because I find the children interesting. What I don't like is when complete strangers ask me if I have any children because it always makes me sad to say "No."
I am not sure any of this is helpful. Oh dear.
With the exception of two Protestant friends, my life rotated in a very tiny circle around the Men's Schola and such Edinburgh or St Andrews Uni students (often Polish, usually male) considered clubbable enough for dinner parties until I started going to night school. Then I got to see a completely different sort of person once a week for years. At first it was awkward being around non-Catholics, but eventually I stopped being quite so paranoid.
After several years of night school, I developed a friendship with another childless woman, the daughter of a Polish WW 2 veteran, and we may even travel together to Poland together one day, which would be great fun. It takes awhile to develop friendships with actual Scots when you are a foreigner in Scotland, by the way, unless they are work colleagues or wives of your husband's university pals.
This is sounding too much like All About Me and not enough like Advice, so I will try a list of suggestions of what to do when all the women around are mothers and you are not.
1. Become a kind of helper to the mothers of older girls, like a Temporary Deputy Girl Guide Captain, which will give you something in common with them.
2. Try to cultivate friendships with mothers who have passed the stage of talking about nothing but their children, e.g. mothers of teenagers.
3. Try to cultivate friendships with mothers who lived for rock'n'roll before their children were born. Hint: this may be the woman who says "Sometimes I wish I could go back to being 22 for just a week, you know?"
4. Accept the fact that most women your age or older who do not have children are probably not good Catholics and make friendships with them based on shared interests, like foreign language class or love of books.
5. Also accept that fact that women are simply not going to play as big a role in your life right now as they did before you were married. Yes, this is rotten and, no, a husband does not make an adequate substitute. Keep a few women's phone numbers on hand for emergency wailing sessions.
6. Read books by splendid Catholic women you wish you could go out for cocktails with, like Rumer Godden or Anna Haycroft (Alice Thomas Ellis).
7. See your very best BFFs in the world, who are probably college pals, when you can. I have two. One is a non-Catholic with no children on Toronto's Queen Street West and one is Catholic with four children just off Toronto's Roncesvalles. I see them once a year. I go to their houses and sit on their sofas and sit calmly as the hurricanes of their daily lives roar around me.
8. Befriend older Catholic women as they appear in your lives.
9. Join a network of Catholics that is much bigger than your immediate Catholic world, for the chances of meeting other Catholic women without children will thus rise.
The women in (or who regularly come to) the UK I know well enough and like enough to have over for a cup of coffee range in age from 17 to 72. They are American, Australian, English, Scottish, French, Polish, Balkan, Bulgarian, Estonian and Italian. Some are Catholics, some are Protestants, and some are simply Communists, let's face it. Two are cloistered nuns so, in fact, they can never come for coffee. Of those with children, one is pregnant with her first, three have two children each, and nice new one has seven strikingly beautiful children under 13. Of those without, at least three are over 60.
Interestingly, only three of all these excellent women has had a cup of tea or coffee or hot buttered apple cider with rum in the new flat so far. This, however, has a lot to do with the slow progress of our move, B.A.'s health, and my full-time job.
Wednesday, 12 September 2018
A Brief Foray into British Politics
"They're used to being second class citizens," she said. "Like Catholics here."
Catholics, second class citizens in the UK? I was genuinely startled. For over a year, and definitely for the past three weeks, my waking thoughts have been dominated by Catholic news. Not a single one of my co-workers is British, and the majority of our readers are Americans. And---very important---I stopped watching television in early June and haven't been to a cocktail party in over a year. Thus I forgot how alien faithful Catholicism is in contemporary Britain--or, that is to say, the pop culture/media/educational part.
The garden helps this forgetfulness. Today I held the ladder steady while B.A. trimmed the hedge tops. We decorously went into Next Door's garden to trim from that side and to throw back over the fence our untidy branches. Back on our side, we filled the brown plastic garden bin with holly and beech cuttings. I planted snowdrops and collected windfallen apples. It's hard to care about the chatterati when there's a whole world of trees out there.
When I started looking for stories, I found one about professional anarchists setting up outside a Catholic MP's London house and shouting at his children. It seems to me that public discourse has hit a new low when an elderly man thinks it is morally acceptable to tell a six-year-old boy that his father is a horrible person and loads of people hate him.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is, of course, occasionally grilled for being a Roman Catholic and believing things that adherents to the current ruling religion--Sex--thinks he shouldn't believe. Fortunately for him and, indeed, British Roman Catholics, he handles these televised inquisitions with dignity and courage, and many British people who hate him because he is rich, went to Eton College, has six children or belongs to the Conservative party nevertheless respect him for not waffling, stammering and sweating over his beliefs, like poor Tim Ferron.
Being rich, the father of six (with the same wife even), and belonging to the Conservative party are no bar to becoming Prime Minister, but being a faithful Roman Catholic probably is, so in that sense (and that sense alone) Rees-Mogg is arguably a second-class citizen.
But he has frequently said that he does not wish to be Prime Minister, and it seems unlikely that his party wants him as their leader although, truth be told, an awful lot of young Tories would adore having him as one. For one thing, he's the sort of near-extinct English gentleman that foreigners think of when we think of "English gentlemen", and thus reminds Young Fogeys of the Good Old Days when their great-grandfathers were young and the Sun Never Set On The British Empire.
Sadly, the last time I heard Rees-Mogg being rubbished in public, it was in a Catholic charity shop in Edinburgh's Stockbridge neighbourhood (I thought*). Yes, there I was in St. Columba's, looking for something specific, and the two old wifies on duty, who may or may not have been Catholic themselves, were entertaining themselves by saying things like "He thinks he's so grand" and "And he wants to be the Prime Minister, tsk tsk" and "No wonder we want to leave the Union."
It did not occur to me to defend the good name (and apparent lack of ambition) of Mr Rees-Mogg, for it would have made for a very awkward silence and "If you dinnae like it, why don't you go back where you came from?" hanging invisible and unsaid but tangible in the air. Besides, Scots-in-general do not like the Conservative Party, and that seems to trump any other consideration--except reminding both the Labour Party and the Scots Nats that the electorate is boss.
An amusing aside: Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the (now apparently anti-Jewish) Labour Party, enjoyed a short but sudden uptick of popularity in which young people sang "Oh! Je-re-my Corrrr-byn" to a White Stripes riff. Unfortunately, it's an ear worm, and Benedict Ambrose fell into the habit of singing it. I objected to this, so asked him to substitute a more appropriate name. This is why, should you drop by at the right moment, you might hear one or the other of us absentmindedly singing "Oh! Ja-cob Rees-Mo-ogg."
*B.A. says St. Columba's isn't Catholic.
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