"Genuine objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity"

That, my friends, is the kind of thing that was drilled into me at Canadian theology school before I (and shortly thereafter my academic career) went South. It's a teaching of the late, great Fr. Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (1904 - 1984), and it contains an argument that things can really be known and there really is such a thing as THE truth. (By the mid-20th century, people were casting great doubt on this, and of course today there are ideologies presenting outright lies as "my truth.") 

According to Fr. Lonergan, the way to get to the truth is to examine your own mental processes. It's not navel gazing as much as stepping outside of your brain, for a moment, and asking yourself what you are experiencing, and what you think it is, and if you might be wrong about that. It's an incredibly useful exercise if you are prone to catastrophizing--as I currently am. 

Here is a sadly common train of thought for your poor cooped up correspondent:

"OMG, Revenue Canada has sent me another letter, and they think I owe them money, and I don't understand, and I pay taxes in the UK, and I'm going to end up in jail and lose EVERYTHIIIIING!"

or

"OMG, the investment platform doesn't like that I signed up with my maiden name when my married name is on the bank account. I'm going to lose EVERYTHIIIIIIIIING!"

or

"OMG, I didn't remember to cancel my free trial of Amazon Prime in time, and now I have lost almost NINE POUNNNNDS! HATE SELF! HATE SELF!"*

or

"OMG, I only got one article done today. I don't remember when I last got three done in a day. I'm going to be FIRRRRRED!"

This is obviously not unique to me, and I would not be surprised to find out that there is a genetic component, since in her last year at home my grandmother used to lie awake at night worrying. 

"What are you worrying about?" I asked.

"Everything!" said Grandma with a small sad giggle. 

Happily, Benedict Ambrose--who does not come from a "call a therapist" background--told me to call  a therapist. So I got a [Catholic, naturally] therapist, and he is very helpful, for he tells me that tax stuff and financial platforms sort themselves out and also that I probably have PTSD and need a long vacation. 

(Incidentally, there is also an accountant in Canada to whom I sent all the Revenue Canada paperwork who said what every frightened woman wants a man to say, i.e., "Don't worry about this. Leave this to me.")

Sometimes authentic subjectivity means you accept the view of people who really do care about you (either professionally or personally) that your reasoning process is sometimes (or often) quite faulty. And this is a good reason why you should, occasionally, ask proven-to-be-very-trustworthy people questions about yourself. It is just possible that they may know better than you do, since they see you from the other side of your eyeballs, if that makes sense. They are also more familiar with the up-to-date you than with the teenage you, which is when you may have taken onboard a lot of negative remarks (possibly justified but possibly not), which sank into your very marrow.

"Am I too hard on myself or too easy on myself?" I asked Benedict Ambrose, whose eyes bulged with concern at the naiveté of such a question. 

Recently I asked "What really makes me happy?", and I was surprised to hear that B.A. thinks I like being a guest better than being a hostess because when I am a hostess I get very distressed if the smallest thing goes wrong in the kitchen. (HATE SELF! HATE SELF!) 

I first learned the secret of asking the trusted person 14 years ago or so when I asked my dear friend Lily why I was still Single. Lily went away to think about it and then told me that it was because I wanted to marry someone more intelligent than me, and there were not actually a lot of men like that, so I was stuck. 

"Are you mad?" she quavered.

Naturally I was not at all cross, for that struck me as a highly flattering reason to still be Single. (And subsequent research has led me to understand even highly intelligent men are not as supremely interested in marrying highly intelligent women as vice versa.) I deeply intuited that she was quite right and subsequently married a fellow impractical, impecunious PhD-dropout. We lived happily ever after, despite brain tumours, PTSD, a catastrophic flood and other such recent disasters. 

However, you must be careful to limit these heavy questions about your precious self because otherwise you will bore and exasperate your loved ones. Asking someone to drop a truth bomb on you is rather a big deal for the truth bomber, who naturally doesn't want to blow up along with your faulty self-image. 

Here's another bit of advice about men, incidentally. Although men are definitely men, and should not be thought of as bigger, stronger, emotionally dumber women, men of your generation are not necessarily like men of your father's generation. In fact--astonishing thought--in some ways (if only one or two) YOU might be more like your dad than your husband is. When you figure this out and accept it, you may cut your husband more slack for not doing stuff you (however secretly) think is men's business, e.g. business.

"Look at you reading money blogs," said B.A.

"Arr," quoth I. 

*Happy ending to that story: I swiftly cancelled Amazon Prime and got back the almost £9.

UPDATE: Speaking of men, have you checked up on yours recently? I mean the brothers, nephews, grandsons, friends and colleagues. Whereas lockdowns are unpleasant for almost everyone, they seem to be particularly bad for the mental health of boys and men, young and old, and I saw one Facebook post--from a friend--that alerted me to the fact that some feminine sympathy was in order.

Two Days (Mostly) Off the Internet

I stayed off the internet Easter Sunday and Easter Monday, checking only social media on my phone once an evening to see if there were messages from family and work. I read a bit of a Polish textbook and a couple of Agatha Christies I hadn't read in some years. Benedict Ambrose and I went on a long walk in the countryside with friends. We ate hearty Easter foods, like roast lamb and chocolate cake studded with bright candy-coated chocolate eggs. We had gone to Easter Vigil and, to our amusement, our priest sent us emails asking us not to come to Easter morning Mass, too: the demand was outstripping the places on the reservation list.

The great thing about being off the internet was knowing, really knowing, that there wasn't really anything I could do about World News or the Stock Market and that my only real responsibility, besides being nice to be around, was active resting. On Saturday I felt that if I didn't report the profanation by police of a Polish Catholic Good Friday service in London, it would not be sufficiently well-known and I would have betrayed (1) fellow Catholics in Britain (2) Poles in general (3) my employers (4) their readers. When B.A. came into my office/our dining-room to tell me that CNA had just published something, I began to cry. Until that moment I had not been worried about being scooped by CNA or anyone. In fact, I was delighted when Spiked got something out first. But suddenly I felt that I Had FAILED.  In fact, my brain was just being utterly overloaded.   

One of my colleagues had assumed that I would easily understand the Polish priest's address to his congregation, but hearing recordings has always been very hard for me. Thus, I listened to that recording over and over, and over and over the celebrant said, "Quickly leave the church" while his congregation looked and sounded reluctant to do so, and I longed for him to tell them to stay and risk paying the stupid £200 each/each child. (Not a small sum in pricey Britain, I admit.) But the way recordings work for me is that the more often I listen to them, the more often words pop out. (The interesting thing about listening to my Polish tutor is that he uses words that normally I never hear but only see written down. ) The sounds inspire printed words to appear before my mind's eye. But it's a long process and a gazillion times more difficult than reading. What an utter relief when I discovered wPolityce had a transcript and the priests' actual names. 

Anyway, I needed two days of no responsibilities and no internet to remind me of them, and that's what I had, so I'm happy. I'm also happy that I was advised to take a whole 10 days off  and go away with B.A. somewhere soon so as to have a total break. As foreign travel is forbidden, we are going somewhere where I will have no opportunity to stress out over declensions, conjugations and forced train route diversions in Lower Silesia.  Beforehand, I will take the computer to the repair shop. Amusingly, the seaside (Firthside) town where we are going could be likened to a Dorothy repair shop. 

I suppose we all need to go to a repair shop eventually, and the state of our computers may say something about our own inner states. 

I don't recall going anywhere for "March Break" or "Spring Break" as a child or teenager, except for epic hikes through Toronto's Don Valley ravines behind my mother, who sometimes led this expedition with a baby on her back. We scrambled along river banks, climbed over fences, looked up at soaring bridges, thought about what the now-gelded river had done in 1954 during Hurricane Hazel and how Toronto had been revenged upon it. 

Summers were different, for I was sent for a week or two to Girl Guide camp in somewhat wilder wilderness. And some years my family also went to a cottage by a lake for a week or two. This was sometimes in Ontario, and sometimes in the American Midwest, not far from our American relations. The beaches of the Ontario lakes were not particularly sandy, although I seem to recall the American beaches were. I had high expectations of beaches, thanks to comic books, so these beaches were a bit disappointing. (I must write about my new discovery of the Law of Low Expectations.) However, a beach is a beach, so there was swimming and looking at tadpoles. In addition, we were in the country, so sometimes there was getting candy at a country store (besides being frightened by snakes, stung by wasps, and checked for leeches). There was also sitting around for hours reading books and unfamiliar magazines (like Redbook) and playing such board games as Monopoly. There was badminton and writing letters and, in the USA, visiting relatives who might give us interesting presents--and I must say Aunt Jeanette covered herself with glory by giving me a wooly walrus one year. 

In the USA, there were exotic shops with unfamiliar brand names--and foodstuffs only seen on TV, but in both countries there was Junk Cereal. For one week (or were there two?) of the year, only at The Cottage (whichever cottage it was that year), we children were allowed the sugary, processed garbage so important to Saturday morning television advertising: Frosted Flakes, Sugar Corn Pops, Kellogg's Sugar Smacks, Fruit Loops and possibly Cocoa Puffs--although my mother may have drawn the line at Cocoa Puffs. (Or Count Chocula, as I now see Cocoa Puffs was in the Kellogg's Variety Pack.)

Although Junk Cereal was most definitely the sign that chaos and carnival now (temporarily) reigned and we were all on holiday, I was not totally dead to the beauties of nature. The most beautiful cottage in which we ever stayed was on the shores of Georgian Bay and had a wall that was almost entirely glass (I think) looking out at the water and the islands in the middle.* My family shared it with a Polish family--this is where it all gets exciting and amateur shrinks can take notes--consisting of my father's Polish work colleague, his Canadian wife, his very glamorous sister (who wore a BIKINI!!!!), his brother-in-law, and his nephew Paweł (whom we called Pavel, as ł was beyond the Canadians' ability to pronounce). This was the 1970s so goodness knows how and why Paweł and his parents were allowed to come to Canada on holiday. 

Paweł was a year younger than me, and was rather frustrated that I couldn't understand him. He was fond of me all the same, however, and was not only the first but the only boy to take any interest me for the next several years. I was very distressed later to discover that I was unlikely ever to see Paweł again and that he and his family lived in what we would consider grinding poverty (i.e. he lived in a Communist country). 

As a matter of fact, I did see Paweł again forty years later when it occurred to me to find him on Facebook. He had emigrated to Canada, was married and (with some reasonable accommodation for age) looked exactly the same.  

Thanks to the third person to order something from Papier in my name. Now I have enough credits to buy my next-to-next wellness journal, which is awesome, as it is a tad pricey. Fancy paper products are my financial achilles' heel--along with good coffee. If you are in the UK and also have a weakness for good stationary and beautiful notebooks--and would like to toss me some credits--just click here. 

*I rejoice that my brother Nulli's in-laws have a similar cottage, only on the shores of a lake in Quebec. The Canadian Dream.

Resurrexit Sicut Dixit!

 

Alleluja!

I'm going to send Easter greetings to my family, and then I'll be off the internet for a solid 2 days. It's been a hard-working Lent--and thanks to a police action against Catholics in London yesterday--I was working right up until mid-afternoon on Holy Saturday. 

However, we went to a beautiful Easter Vigil--beginning with the New Fire--and it was not disrupted by the state, and now it is time to rejoice, give thanks, and let world events pass us by. 

Happy Easter!

P.S. It's a mazurek.

The Dining-room

 

A blessed Good Friday to everyone. A bowl of hot cross bun dough is proving in the dining-room. Taking a tip from cookery genius Elizabeth David, I gave it a first proving overnight, so that the buns will be ready earlier today. David's advice is for bread, so I don't know what the end result will taste like. I'm hopeful. 

As a Good Friday penance, I will go out when the buns are baked and weed the lawn. Well, part of the lawn. But for now I want to think about dining, or rather dining rooms, especially the wonderful box of a room that was my childhood dining room. 

Someone told me recently that there are three altars in a marriage: the altar at church, the bed, and the table. When Lent began, Benedict Ambrose and I gave up our slothful habit of eating supper while watching a film. If you came from a family like mine, you may be shocked that we had fallen into such a habit. Alas. However, cheer up because every evening of Lent (save yesterday, when B.A. was at Mass and I was working), I cleared off the dining room table and we had a civilised, conversational supper, lately followed by a game of whist. 

Nowadays priests and psychologists suggest that families all sit down together for a communal meal at least once a week. When I was a child, my family had a communal meal at least once a day. Breakfasts for children of school age were in the kitchen, where my mother stuffed us with food: porridge (or, in hotter months, Cheerios), eggs, bacon or sausage, toast, orange juice. We positively rolled out the door (at exactly 8 AM) on our way to the school bus stop. However, she didn't eat with us, and my father was still comfortably in bed. 

Thus, the real communal meal, on weekdays, was supper--called dinner--always eaten in the dining-room. On weekends, there were two parents-and-children meals: brunch and dinner. I associate Saturday mornings with waffles and Sunday mornings with pancakes--the two things my father knew how to make--and brunch was eaten in the dining-room, too. Oooh---I just smelled coffee there. Waking up on a Saturday or Sunday, there was coffee in the air and my brother Nulli playing the piano. I think, however, that eventually Saturday brunch was abolished, thanks to a hectic schedule of ice hockey practise, ballet, etc. However, it still exists in our memories, which I image my mother hoped for. Should I ever find myself languishing in prison, I will keep my spirits up by taking refreshing holidays in the past. 

The dining room had been added to the house--which itself had once been a bungalow--by its former owner and, I think, creator. It was on the north-west corner of the house and had tall windows along the west and north sides. These were covered, at night, by thick woollen curtains of the most 1970s blue and orange tartan you ever saw. My mother made them, and when I discovered after I moved to Scotland that they were meant to be an approximation of the family tartan, I laughed heartily. 

I believe there was a blue wall-to-wall carpet, upon which many a pea or carrot square was dropped and into which they were trodden. In the middle of the room was a big shiny wooden dining room table, six smart wooden chairs, and usually a baby's high chair of painted wood. On the east wall of the dining room, there was a china cabinet with fancy plates and small glass ornaments. (I was rather more interested in the small glass ornaments at the time.) Above it was a long picture rail of some sort, on which stood a collection of fancy French mustard pots. There was also a doorless cupboard built into the wall on the south side, which held pewter tankards and christening mags. The whole dining room was lined with 1970s wood panelling, so it really was like a wooden box with windows. I think now it was a treasure box, for that is where all we children were civilised and educated with our parents' values and occasionally introduced to visiting scholars who were usually bearded but occasionally members of the Chinese Communist Party. 

I bring up the CCP members with glee because my parents thought it was amusing that these poor foreign students, survivors of the one-child policy, were probably for the first time in their lives sitting down to eat at a table with four or five children who were all siblings. Eventually one of them stayed in Canada and named his first child Canada Freedom. At any rate, eating with us may have been an education for them, too. If you really want to know a foreign place, sitting down for a family dinner is key. 

But actually what I remember best about the dining room is birthdays, birthday parties and birthday cake. This may be because the memories have been boosted by memories of photographs. That said, my strongest memories of the dining-room in the Historical House also involve parties. On the other extreme, I also remember surreptitiously feeding bits of "Spanish steak" to the cat because I loathed Spanish steak and did not know, in fact, that I could ever like beef until in my twenties I accidentally ordered filet mignon in a restaurant. So top points to my 20- and-30-something mother on cake, but not for beef. The cat may have disagreed, of course.

Curiously, I remember gifts from only one birthday dinner in that dining-room. These were very essential gifts, however, as they included a safe disguised as a book, a delicate coral-coloured rosary, and Prayer Book for Young Catholics by Fr. Robert Fox. Alas the safe and the rosary were soon broken, but Fox's book remained and as Fox was a crypto-trad (and as were, I now realise, my favourite parish priests), I was also a crypto-trad without knowing it. I was also a crypto-trad without practising it, as Family Rosary was not a thing in our house, presumably because my mother was a 1969 convert and the rosary was right out of fashion. However, another influential gift I received at some point was Fr. Lovasik's Heroines of God, so I was thoroughly indoctrinated and discovering the TLM was like returning to the barely-grasped, but essentially family, home of one's infancy.  

I can't remember what Good Friday meals were like then, which is probably a good thing. But that might not be fair, for I do recall hot cross buns from the supermarket, toasted with butter. I did not at the time like the candied fruit, but I did (for some odd reason) like the crunchy flour-and-water cross on top. 

Well, the buns have finished proving for the third time, so I must go turn on the oven. I was about to say that it is sad that I am not making memories for children myself, but this would have been foolish, for presumably our younger relations and friends will remember at least a few of my presents and jokes, and my writing students will no doubt recall my more colourful remarks. I hope one day my Polish Godling will be sent to me for English immersion in the summers, and then I will ply her with good Scottish cooking, so she can tell her own children that it is not true what they say about the British. 

"Vegetables aren't cheap"

Yesterday I totalled up how much we spent in March, and I tutted and sighed when I counted up how many times we really went to Tesco. In my fond imaginings, I thought we had gone only twice a week. However, it was more like three times a week, plus three forays into Waitrose. There was also a spontaneous trip to Lidl and a pop into Aldi. Also in my fond imaginings, we were spending only £40 a week on groceries.

Alas, alas!

"Vegetables aren't cheap," said B.A. in the slightly irritated voice of a man who thinks he is being blamed. 

I blame Berocca. No more Berocca, nasty expensive stuff. After Easter Sunday, I am putting the tubes at the back of the shelf to await October.  To be fair, cheese is also expensive, and as we had gone vegetarian for 5 days of the week, I did not stint. 

Finance blogs--especially FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) blogs--are great fun to read, and I always find the annual tally of the bravest and most transparent fascinating.  I am not so brave and transparent, so I'm showing you only food costs. For comparison and extra amusement, I will expose January and February, too. 

To keep North American readers from being shocked out of their minds, I should mention that the UK is one of the most expensive countries in Europe, and Edinburgh is the most expensive city in Scotland. Food just costs more here. 

For more fun, I have used a currency converter.  

January 2021

Groceries: £455.47  ($789.06 Canadian; $628.38 US )

Eating Out: £112.65 ($195.16 CAD;155.17 US)  

Total: £568.12

February 2021

Groceries £299.70 ($519.21 CAD; $412.82 US)

Eating Out: £45.15 ($78.22 CAD; $62.19 US)

Total: £344.85

March 2021

Groceries (including 3 month supply of Berocca)    £308.75 ($534.88 CAD; $425.85 US)

Eating Out: £25.30 ($43.83 CAD; $34.85 US)

Total: £334.05

Now I feel rather pleased, for we knocked over £223 off our food-and-toiletries costs just by paying attention--and, of course, observing Lent. 

At the same time I am rather appalled at how much food costs here. For example, that March £25.30/$43.83/$34.85 = 2 cappuccini & 2 French pastries; two Scottish pastries; and two ice-cream cones. How much is a top-quality ice-cream cone in Toronto?  

That said, we are talking top-quality ice-cream here. The French pastries were also top-quality--and beyond my skill set. The Scottish pastries were well within my skill set, however (see photo above), which is why there were so few of them in March. In short, the budget for our Sunday treat in Stockbridge went from £12 to £0 when we brought coffee in a thermos and homemade cake or pie in plastic tubs instead. 

Benedict Ambrose, being a contemporary Scot, is torn between love of eating out and love of saving money--and I must admit, I am too. I propose a compromise in which when we eat out we eat only those things that we could not have made at home just as well for a lot less money.  

FULL DISCLOSURE: This doesn't include my coffee subscription, which I will cancel when lockdown is over, saving us £2.95 a month. I have a weakness for good coffee. It is a thing. 

UPDATE: Thank you to whoever ordered something from Papier in my name. You have saved me 10% on my July to September wellness journal.  (I also have a weakness for good notebooks.)

STOP PRESS: Average food costs for two people in Toronto in 2020 were apparently $533.95 CA/month. Ah ha ha! (We spent $579.47 CA in March, which is not that far out.) Only $251.95 on Toronto groceries, though--but $282 on Toronto eating out & take out. Not that I'm judging. No. 

ANOTHER UPDATE: Our homeowner costs are a fraction of what the average Toronto homeowner pays. "O City, City!" 

Measurement is management

I read a lot of bad and sad news for work, which makes me unhappy. To cope, I have been keeping a "wellness journal"; I bought a personalised one from a quality paper company. It has pre-printed pages where you can fill in the date, your "intention for the day",  your hours of sleep, your meals, your water intake, your activities, your "self-care," your mood, your daily successes, your thoughts, and what you are currently grateful for. 

In the back there is graph paper, as in a bullet journal. I use it to record my hours of language study and time out of doors. 

I kept diaries until l began to blog (and even after that I kept travel journals), so this combination of tracking and writing suits me well. Writing down everything I eat seems to make me eat less, and the fun of filling in the water symbols makes me drink more. I definitely spend more time outdoors, now that I deliberately think about it. 

The journal certainly came in handy when writing my "Lenten Menus" post, as the original plans and the reality diverged so much, it was hard to make sense of the sheaf of paper in the kitchen. 

The very word "wellness" smacks of the mindfulness movement, but I think mindfulness is perfectly compatible with Christianity--as is good health. Mindfulness, Christianity, and good health all seem necessary to me for writing about, say, a priest who calls the cops on a pregnant lady in a back pew far from the rest of the congregation because she is not wearing a mask. For some reason, that low-grade pettiness depressed me more that the outright evil of clerical sex abuse. Maybe it was like the final snowflake that causes the avalanche. 

Fortunately, a delicious bowl of Ottolengi's "Tomato, Chickpea and Bread Soup" followed by a card game (which I won) cheered me right up. I finished my seventh glass of water and coloured in the symbol in my wellness journal, logged the soup and wrote down the things I was grateful for. There was already a note that I had planted "Pauline," spouse of Paul the Blackcurrant Bush.  

If you are feeling depressed, dehydrated, sluggish, fat, and overwhelmed, I definitely recommend a wellness journal. Here's a British list of recommended ones, and here is an American one.  

I also have a battered notebook in which I track our monthly spending, record our mortgage overpayments, and mention such helpful events as getting a lower phone rate after threatening to change providers. Financial bloggers often write about running one's household as if it were a business, which I think is sound to a certain extent. 

It makes more sense to do that in a household of adults. I don't think it would be good for children to think that they were financial liabilities. Of course, they could be reassured that, in fact, their presence reduces income tax and (depending on the state) brings other financial goodies, and--indeed--their happiness and security is the reason for running a tight household ship in the first place. 

I think children should know how much things cost, even if parents don't want them to know how much they earn. Growing up, I was blissfully unaware of how much ordinary things (like the electricity) cost my parents, and I think that was a pity because I just took it for granted. I also think it was a pity that I did not know that fancy clothes and cars and such things did not represent real wealth but just high spending. My classmates made fun of my clothes (a solid argument for school uniforms), and only now does it occur to me their clothes may have been bought on credit. 

I longed for snazzy clothes---how surprised (and disappointed) I would be to know that when I was paid enough to (almost) afford it, I would not have a closet of designer clothes but instead rely on my good old indestructable denim maxiskirt of maximum traddery. Of course, were we to win the lottery ... 

UPDATE: First ever endorsement of a company that I can remember. (Eeek!) If you were to order anything from Papier for the first time, using my name (or Dorothy Mclean--small "l" for some reason), you would save 10% and get me 10% off my next purchase, which I am very likely to make. I am not sure how this would work outside the UK. However, I really do like Papier's wellness journal. Just click here. 

Thinking about Driving

Driving is expensive. It burns fossil fuel. It is not strictly necessary in a Scottish urban environment. My husband is anti-car, and I would probably be just as anti-car if I didn't grow up with a car, and then two cars, in the driveway. But I did, and now I am very sorry I didn't take driving lessons at 16, when I was too young to think about how scary driving was. I thought about organising my lessons myself, but I had a phobia about talking to strangers on the phone. 

The fact is, I would like to learn to drive because I'm frightened of driving, and I'm tried of being frightened of driving. (I overcame the fear of speaking to strangers on the phone some decades ago.) As I can read papal encyclicals in Polish (with a dictionary), surely I can learn to drive. 

The problem is that I don't want to drive in the UK. I want to drive in Europe, when the time comes. My tentative retirement plans involve driving throughout Poland, to see "real Poland" (as eastern Poles call it) and small-town Italy. 

Driving to Europe would mean driving down to Newcastle, taking the ferry to Holland and then driving to Poland or Italy, which B.A. points out is not very cost effective. It would also entail switching from driving on the wrong left side of the road to the right, and this really burns me up, for if I had learned to drive in Canada, driving in Italy or Poland would be a relative doddle. 

That said, train travel in the UK is hella expensive, and it would be a joy just to drive where we want to go.  Perhaps B.A. would enjoy working out the mathematics to prove that insurance + car club membership + petrol is in fact more expensive than train travel. 

Any decision about learning to drive has to be put off, however, as commercial driving lessons are currently prohibited in Scotland. If I were Queen of the World, and would not be immediately forced into an expensive hotel quarantine upon arrival in Canada, and then again upon return to Scotland, I would go to Toronto, get a learner's license, do an immersive driving course and practise with my parents' smaller car. Maybe that is what I will, in fact, do one day--unless someone convinces me that this is a ridiculous thing to do, given that I live in a country where everyone drives on the wrong left side of the road.    

Update: Another factor is that the European continent has a widespread--and cheaper--network of trains. After retirement, it might be much cheaper to travel even in the UK by train than by private automobile.