A Journey of Rediscovery

 

 

I'm still in Scotland, and enjoying its natural beauty.

After an absence of quite some time, (about 5½ years), I've rediscovered my logon and password for the TSB site. and I'll try to make an effort to re-establish my presence in the Blogworld.

But not for a few days yet.

We're off to Glasgow tomorrow morning to celebrate my 71st Birthday, with museums, art galleries good restaurants and at least one musical show.

No booze however, I've had to give up alcohol in all its delightful forms.

The Strange Scotsman (Part the Last)

The whole sorry saga of the Strange Scotsman is winding down.

The Strange Scotsman (Part the Second)

He wasn't quite as strange as this, but close.

Congee, comfort and a wrecked fence.

My Beloved is a superb cook. Even though at the moment she has a major health issue (semi-continuous nausea) she always has a hot and delicious meal waiting for me when I arrive home.

The Delights of Cottage Cheese

Last night on the TV, an advert came on for Cottage Cheese and it included a competition asking for the best Cottage Cheese recipe, so here's mine.

Still freezing

Now up in the outer reaches of the Empire.  Dungwall Dingwall. Cold, miserable and grey.  Thank the Good Lord (in his many imaginary forms) for life preserving whisky.
Taking my Dad out for a Fish and Chip tea this afternoon.  I might have to get snow chains fitted to the car if the snow gets much thicker.  Envy The Curmudgeon his description of Ocean Beach, with the blue sparkling waters and frolicking dolphins.
Doesn't quite compare to miles of snow-covered desolate farmland and the cawing of a murder of crows.

Can't wait to get back home.
Even to Nuova Lazio.
Almost looking forward to seeing Ringo. No, I'm joking, I'm not.

I miss NZ

Arrived safely, arctic conditions, daughter happy, whisky cheap.  Distinct lack of sticky-out ears.  Snow turning to slush then freezing into a concrete-like hardness, and due to the reduced amount of council spending, little road clearance and gritting.  Depressing visit to the lopcal mall, hordes of pasty-faced neds and nedettes roaming around.  The scum are taking over.
I want to be back on my deck, large G & T in hand, under a kiwi blue sky, eating steaks off of the barbie.
Enjoy your lovely kiwi Christmas and New Year.  We're off to a New Year party tomorrow, then off to Inverness, then off to Paris on the 12th.
I wish I was in Wellington, licking icecreams while walking along Oriental Parade, watching the pretty girls playing beach volleyball.

Lost Memories

Memory

In his recent and very evocative post, The Curmudgeon (TC) tells of how a simple toasted cheese snack took his memories back to a pleasant time in the 70s New Zealand. A simpler time, but by the sounds of it, a more boring time.  There wasn't much to do.

Proust (not to be confused with Prowse) wrote in his book À la recherche du temps perdu about involuntary memory, where an input from any of our senses could trigger non-conscious recall from our past, the taste of the toasted cheese being an example.

I had my own flashback last night. 
Sitting at home, tired after an especially long week at school, I was watching/dozing  TV, with my beloved and my Son (back for a visit from his flat in Wellington).  I was feeling exhausted, but it was too early to go to bed (about 7:30 ).  Like TC, I suddenly wanted a hot and savoury taste, but I wasn't hungry, just having finished a very large plateful of my beloved's Beef Rendang. 

Bovril, the very thing.  My beloved, knowing of my occasional fondness for this British beefy/yeasty drink, always kept a jar in the cupboard, and I had a mugful made in minutes.
The first sip took me back.
It was not a pleasant memory.
It was in Hampden Park in Glasgow.  At that time (1971) it was the biggest football (soccer) stadium in Scotland, and it was used for all the football internationals.  Scotland was playing some other foreign team, and as usual, the Scots were loosing.
I should explain that I have never had any real interest in soccer, but a bunch of my friends and colleagues were going to this match and I went along.  They were all football fans, supporting many of the different clubs in the Glasgow area, and were normally bitter enemies; Rangers and Celtic, plus one poor confused individual who supported Partick Thistle.  However, all such rivalries were semi-forgotten in the face of the common foe.  Scotland uber alles, we're the guys, see you Jimmy, awe awa an bile y'r heed, wha's like us.

I had only been to one football game in my life, with my late Grandfather, who took me when I was about 4 or 5 to see Airdrie play Partick Thistle.  I didn't understand or enjoy it very much.  So when I entered Hampden Park, I was unprepared for the experience. It was in the winter it was cold.  There were no seats, we all stood in the terraces, supported by the occasional iron railing.  There was no drinking inside the stadium, something new in Scotland, but a riot the previous year when Celtic played some Spanish team had allowed the Polis to crack down on the booze. 

Of course wee all had had a few warming beverages before, about 4-5 pints of beer, and a few whisky chasers. We were feeling absolutely no pain by the time we got in.  I cannot remember much about the match, but at half time, we went up to the rim of the stadium, where the food cabins were situated, and we managed to get a hot pie and a cup of Bovril.  The Scotch Mutton Pie is a rare delicacy and with the grease congealing on your lips, the hot bovril added a delicacy to the whole gastronomic experience.  We made our way back to our place and as we arrived, I became aware of a noise.  It was not unlike the sound made by a little stream as it fell into a placid brook, a gentle tinkling/splashing sound.  The sound was getting louder and louder, and I became aware of a waterfall now forming and flowing down the terraces. 
There were over 52000 men (plus the very occasional woman) in the stadium.  There were 10 toilets. Everyone had partaken of a fair amount of beer before the match.  Bladder pressure (and the cold) necessitated relief, and seemingly the football etiquette insisted that if you needed to go, you went up to the very tip of the terrace and pissed against the back wall.  Gravity then collected the liquid and it flowed down the terraces in a series of waterfalls.

The smell was appalling, the impression I took away was of complete barbarism.  I have never been to a football match since, and often, when I take my first sip of Bovril, I smell the ammoniacal stench of the waterfall.

I much prefer real football (Rugby Union) now.

Relief

I'm very relieved that Richard (of RBB) is feeling OK after his confrontation with a blackbird.
I'm also relieved that the water is back on chez TwistedScottishBastard. So nice to have a really long hot shower. It's strange how expectations differ. When I was a boy in Scotland, a weekly bath was quite the norm. My family prided itself on our cleanliness. We had two baths a week, and changed our underwear every other day.
Looking back now, I wasn't aware of any especially bad smell, but I think that we must have all smelled.
The reasons for what we would now see as unhygienic conditions were based on economics and technology.



Most homes then did not have washing machines, families used communal wash houses. Water needed to be heated by fires. Either a wetback boiler in our household coal fuelled fires, or copper boilers fuelled by wood or coal for the communal wash house. It took time, effort and money to heat and wash, and all three were in short supply in the UK in the early 50s, still recovering after the war.
I can still remember the excitement when my Dad had our first electric immersion heater fitted.
Showers were virtually unknown, it was a bath. Either plumbed in in a bathroom, or a tin bath dragged into the kitchen, and filled from the kettle which was always kept simmering above the coal-fired kitchen range.

I now feel uncomfortable, to the extent that my skin feels like it's crawling, if I don't have at least one shower a day, and I really need one before going to bed, or I just feel unclean.

So nice to have instant, almost unlimited hot water.
So nice to be able to wear clean clothes every day.
It's easy to forget what it used to be like, and what it must be like for a very large proportion of the human race.

Sleep-in Saturday

Too busy yesterday to post anything on the blog.
Reports all finished, printed and posted to the expectant kids and parents.
Nuova Lazio High was virtually empty by 4:00.
Just a few dedicated souls (not me, I was just too tired to move)completing lesson plans for next week, or setting relief for their classes next week.

That last one gives me pause.

How many other jobs do you have to do your work before you get time off.
In teaching, if you have say a doctors appointment during the day, you are expected to plan a lesson for the class(es) you are missing. Have all resources found or created and ready for the class(es), together with a list of pupils and their photographs, everything ready for your temporary replacement.
Even if you phone in sick, you are expected to provide something similar.
When you get back, it's quite common for you to be given the kid's work to mark for feedback.

So time off is not really time off.

Most of us would rather fight our way through a bad cold/flu/Lurgy or whatever, rather than take time off. It's often a lot less hastle.

Going to look at some show houses today.

We might have the option to purchase a really beautiful section in a semi-rural location, quite close to where we are now. My beloved has a really bad back, and we have to be prepared for a time when she will probably have to go into a wheelchair, so building a house with customised access is a definite possibility.

Weather here is still chilly and wet.
I must be getting old, this winter seems colder and wetter than any I can remember in NZ.






Not in Scotland. Even a mild winter in Scotland would seem like a nightmare, even to a farmer in the deeps South.
Be grateful.
You don't know how lucky you are!