Elaine

Well. The next few posts aren’t going to be in any chronological order – a lot has happened in the last seven days and this is a blog, not a court record. And a couple of them may seem a tad callous, laughing at my cousins’ misfortunes. But, like the Canadian Reids, my cousin and her family all have a strong sense of the ridiculous.
Let’s start with some background and a little timeline. My wonderful Uncle Ian died earlier this month. Until the last two weeks of his life, he lived in the house that he and Aunt Margaret built in the early 70’s. It’s a lovely, sturdy little bungalow in a neighbourhood in the Clyde Valley countryside. Much of the décor has not been touched in decades. My cousin intends to keep the house, fix it up, and use it as their Scottish retreat. I will be helping with some of that (more on that in the future). So, here’s what’s happened since we lost Uncle Ian:
> Viv planned his funeral in Scotland for last Monday, with a reception at his house after the service. Her family would be staying at Ian’s or at her hubby’s mother’s house about 40 minutes away. (I was staying with a kind neighbour.)
> Last Friday, four days prior to the funeral, her daughter & SIL arrived at the house and tried to get in the backdoor, only to find pipes had burst and the kitchen ceiling had fallen in.
> Family moves into overdrive and finds a plumber, a B&B large enough for the family, and a restaurant that will let them have the reception after the funeral on Monday. They head north to Scotland, some by car, some by plane.
> They are a family of eight, and would need transportation around the area, so were planning on using Viv’s MIL’s car, plus those they had already driven up from England. But, they’ve been given notice that that car has broken down.
> Viv finds out her confused Dad forgot to renew his home insurance.
> Funeral was lovely, reception very nice.
> Family arrives at house the next day to rip up some of the wet carpeting, only to find out the living room ceiling has collapsed too from the weight of the water.
> I leave for Kent, because I’ve paid for a B&B in the Midlands and would just be underfoot anyway.
> While they’re clearing the disaster in the living room, the hall ceiling comes down too.
> They do what they can, then half the family heads home, and the other half heads to the elderly MIL’s house to wish her a Merry Christmas and let her visit with the grandkids.
> They arrive to find out she is seriously ill and needs to be hospitalized.
> They call an ambulance. Ambulance drivers are currently on strike, but one eventually arrives.
> They see MIL settled in the hospital, and get in the car to make the eight-hour drive home, where I’m sitting sipping wine, reading a book, and awaiting them. (To be clear, MIL wasn’t left alone; my CIL isn’t a monster – his brother is staying with their mother.)

That was the last five days of my cousin’s life – she and her family are taking it all in stride, some tears, lots of laughter, and a sense of ‘stuff happens, heigh-ho’.
For the last month or so, every time something happened my cousin would say, “well, at least things can’t get much worse” – I keep telling her to stop saying that, she’s tempting the gods, and clearly they don’t like that, as they keep proving her wrong.

Last year, the only snow I remember happened on three or four separate days over the course of the winter. Mostly it wasn’t real snow, just sleet that had flown horizontally across the gardens, landed as less than 1cm on the ground, and was gone within a day or two. Being a good Canadian I had bought an ice scraper by the first of November, but never once used it.

This week has seen the most snow that Orkney has had in a few years. People are (mostly) driving slower, the gritter (sander) has been around to sand the roads, and for some reason, the biggest impact I’ve seen is that Orcadians seem to lose all sense of parking when the snow sticks – I didn’t have my camera with me but two separate parking lots looked like people (who have been using these lots for years ) just pulled in, and decided to step out of their cars and leave them higgledy-piggledy strewn about the lot.

It took about 15 minutes to scrape the car yesterday afternoon. Real sense of déjà vu. But at least we’re not experiencing the outages and layers of snow that Shetland is. I drive south tomorrow – here’s hoping the roads are clear.

In the UK, the pound sterling is the universal unit of money. But that doesn’t mean that all British money is alike. The Bank of England prints money that is accepted everywhere in the United Kingdom (just like Bank of Canada) and it is the only English bank that prints money. But, in Northern Ireland and Scotland (but not Wales – of course not, why be consistent with your inconsistencies?), the major regional banks can print their own money. So in Scotland, the Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and the Clydesdale Bank all print their own money, and that’s what I see and use 95% of the time. Occasionally an ATM (or Cashpoint as they’re known here) will give me a Bank of England note, but that is rare. Every shop and business in Scotland will accept all Scottish notes, and all Bank of England notes. But, not all English businesses will accept Scottish money. My young cousins in the south of England have to visit a bank branch to exchange their birthday money from their grandma in Scotland. In Canada, if you take Bank of England notes into a bank branch, you will have little trouble exchanging it for Canadian. But not so Scottish bills – those have to be sent away ‘on collection’.

Here are a couple of £20 notes. The woman on the Scottish bill is Kate Cranston, a prominent Glaswegian business woman in Victorian times, and I’m assuming you recognise the other lady.

No reason for sharing this – just a useless piece of trivia I thought you might enjoy.

I’m heading south this week to spend Christmas with my cousin’s family in the south of England. Because I flat out refuse to drive in the dark in the UK, this means more than one night in a hotel, as it’s over 15 hours door-to-door without rest stops (it’s the same distance as the crow flies as Kitchener to Quebec City, which would take about 8 hours to drive non-stop – gotta love straight lines).

Scout & I are travelling alone, no car companions, no one to meet up with along the way, so I want to make the most of this trip. So I started planning. I was working with a number of different criteria: I wanted to dine at a Michelin-praised restaurant (Michelin will also give commendations to restaurants the didn’t quite make their 1,2,3-star cut which is good enough for me); the restaurant had to be within walking distance of my hotel so I could have wine with dinner; the hotel had to accept dogs; neither could be in a major city with complex traffic; and they had to be located roughly halfway between Carluke & Kent on the way south, and Kent & Aberdeen on the return trip, with no driving-after-dark involved.

Below is the set up to get this trip booked. I had Google Maps open on one screen, a wonderful website called Leading Restaurants on another, Expedia.com on another, along with Outlook Calendar, Northlink Ferries, and the WeatherNetwork. It took a few hours and several phone calls, but I think we’re good to go.

I betcha Jacques Cartier didn’t put this much effort into going up the St. Lawrence.

Last May I mentioned that when LL and I stayed at the Airport Marriott Hotel in Inverness, there were security guards on each floor. We found out that they were there because a reality TV show was being filmed locally and it was the guards’ job to make sure the contestants had no contact with one another. I remember I also saw a row of black Hummer-like SUVs along the highway near there that same week, but I didn’t connect them with the Prisoners of Marriott at the time.

I rarely watch reality shows. The ones I do watch are things like The Great British /Canadian /New Zealand Bake Off, The Great British Sewing Bee, The Great British Menu (you get the drift). I prefer not to even think about the ones where roses are handed around to hunky men, or people have bees poured on them, or are required to eat unspeakable things. Don’t get me wrong, there is no sense of superiority about my avoiding reality shows: my TV watching roster is hardly highbrow and we all have our guilty pleasures. It’s just that those backstabbing, survivalist, look-at-me shows are just not to my taste.

Last week I saw a promo for a show set in the Highlands, hosted by a British presenter whom I really like, Claudia Winkleman. Like me, she’s not good with the survivalist show genre, but she was intrigued enough by this one to become the host. It was as she was describing it I made the connection: the castle that all the events take place is about a half-hour from the Marriott – it must have been the contestants from this new show in the rooms down the hall, and being transported back and forth in the blacked-out SUVs.

So, I’ve started watching The Traitor. And OMG, I’m hooked (seriously cannot believe I’m saying this). I can see why these shows become water-cooler fodder – I keep wishing I knew someone who was also watching it so we could discuss it. The competitions are all palatable things like a treasure hunt, or a canoe race on a loch, which don’t gross me out; and then the plotting and scheming and nutty reasoning afterwards is hilarious. And, the castle, Ardross Castle, is stunningly beautiful – I drive within five miles of it every time I head south and back.

Winter nights are long in Orkney, and this house is cold. I need something to do in the evenings, and it seems reality TV is a new option (or at least this one show is – I still refuse to watch the gross food competitions). But maybe I’d better go buy a jigsaw puzzle as well – this can’t consume my life.

Not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but Brits sign their texts and emails with a kiss. Really. I first heard about it when an English actor, David Mitchell, was complaining about getting emails from his plumber (or someone) signed off with at least one ‘x’. I didn’t pay too much heed to it, because part of his on screen persona is to complain about people getting too close or personal with him, so I assumed it was just part of his schtick.

But no, it’s a thing. I’ve read articles in British newspapers about it becoming common in the workplace which I simply cannot imagine. It was bad enough at BMO when (and this started sometime in the early 2000’s, I have no idea why) everybody started greeting one another with a hug. A hug! How intrusive and unprofessional is that? One executive actually said, “I know Elaine hates being hugged, so I always hug her extra hard.” – haven’t missed that person in retirement, trust me. Sorry, off on a tangent there. Okay, so maybe an ‘x’ in print on an email from a colleague isn’t as bad as a coworker pressing her body against mine (let it go, Elaine, let it go), but I have to think it’s weird when your boss sends you a note saying “Can you arrange a meeting for 4 this afternoon? Thanks, <kiss, kiss>. Just plain weird.

All my acquaintances here do it too, and fortunately, so does my cousin. I say fortunately because about a year ago I was travelling back from my uncle’s and we broke our trip at a nice little inn & pub in a town called Boat of Garten. After dinner a very pleasant local gentleman approached Scout, and then ended up chatting me up for awhile before returning to his friends. We exchanged phone numbers and he texted me once or twice. And each time he signed it with an ‘x’. If my cousin hadn’t been doing that for several months prior, I would have been very creeped out. But I recognized it for what it was: a normal convention; and now, when I get a text from my hairdresser, or a friend, or neighbour, and it includes a kiss at the end, I know not to take it the wrong way.

But it’s still weird.

My cousin has introduced me to a new food: Scottish Plain bread. Yup, I am now obsessed with a loaf of sliced, bagged, processed, manufactured, white bread. Last week Viv and her Aunt Ursula got talking about having ‘plain doorstep with butter’ for breakfast and, as so often happens when I’m with Scots, I was bewildered.

So, first of all, what’s a doorstep? Other than the stoop of the house. It’s what Scots call the end piece of a loaf of bread. I do not remember ever hearing Norma call it that; will have to check with my sisters.

Okay, so why specify ‘plain’? Well, it seems there is a type of white sandwich-style bread made in Glasgow called Mother’s Pride, aka Scottish Plain. It’s not just another name for Wonderbread or Dempsters; it is actually different. If you look closely at the picture you will see it is very tall (long and narrow). It’s denser than regular sandwich bread and I was advised that its crust or ‘doorstep’ is amazing when toasted and buttered. As someone who never liked the crust end piece of the loaf (when I was little Mum would tell me to eat my crusts as they would give me curlier hair – not a selling point for a little girl with a headful of tangles – to this day, I use those pieces to make homemade breadcrumbs), I was doubtful but tried it. They were right, it was delish. I’m not a sliced bread fan, but I do really like Scottish Plain. Today’s lunch is homemade Scottish lentil soup and Plain bread with Orkney butter. Yum.

*While looking this up on the internet, I discovered that there is an actual thing called ‘Canadian bread’, different from normal sandwich bread. Who knew? Something to look forward to when I get home.

I made three New Year’s resolutions almost twelve months ago: visit ten of the 70 Orkney islands (check), prepare five new/different types of seafood (check), and my perennial: swear less. Now, to be clear, I’m not talking about when you hit your thumb with a hammer, or drop a bottle of milk on the floor, or anything like that. And, as you may have noticed, I do like a good acronym (FFS, WTF, etc…) in writing. But I have a very good vocabulary and there is no reason not to exercise it when speaking, which is why I include reducing swearing annually in my personal challenges. For the most part, I’ve done okay over the years at holding the foul language in check. Then I moved to the UK.

Swearing is much more prevalent here, possibly even more so in Scotland than England (but I have little to base that on, just a hunch). Both Canadian and British television have ‘watershed’ times, times after which the content of TV shows can be more ‘mature’. But I don’t remember some of the language I hear on Graham Norton, or Mock the Week, or really, almost any serialized UK programme, ever being said on a Canadian show. Staff in shops swear in front of customers (not at them, in front of them), I hear quite a range of Anglo-Saxon on the streets, and in Scotland kids say the foulest things.

I’m also not talking about some of the milder words, I’m talking true profanity here. Of course, part of the issue is that there are words here that are considered, if not exactly acceptable, at least somewhat unimportant, but which would absolutely get you a formal discipline at BMO if you used them in the workplace. I had an interesting conversation recently with my cousins (a nurse & a cop) who were surprised to find out just how truly offensive I found some fairly common words (starting with a ‘c’ or with a ‘t’ for example – I leave it to you to figure them out). To my cousins, hearing (or using) words like that would be water off a duck’s back; to me, they made me cringe. (They actually think of one of them as a term of endearment. Truly.)

And yet, despite my claims of cringing, I find swearing less and less offensive by the day. I don’t think I’ve used any of the truly profane (by Canadian standards) words aloud myself, unless directing someone to a small town here in Orkney (look it up), but I no longer flinch when I hear them. And, I do find the hammer-to-the-thumb words slipping out far more often than before in just normal conversation. It’s a slippery slope, and I head back to Canada in ten months – FFS, I’d better get my act together.

So we know at least one of this New Year’s resolutions, dammit.

This rose bush in Uncle Ian’s back garden is still blooming on the 3rd of December. I have one in my garden with one bloom left, but it’s pouring outside, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Note: Apologies for the radio silence but it has been an odd couple of weeks.  I have been keeping notes; I just haven’t got around to adding them to the blog. To help me keep track I will be back-dating the posts, so the previous few and next several posts will catch me up to date.

One of my plans before leaving Canada had been to join an Orkney chapter of the Women’s Institute. When I first retired, I joined Milton’s CFUW (Canadian Federation of University Women) and I now have a whole raft of terrific friends whom I would not have met otherwise, and I take pride in all our club does for local girls and women (scholarships, public forums for elections, advocating for the elderly, etc). So I figured I could do the same in Orkney: give back to the community, and make new friends. I should say, despite indications to the contrary, I find things like this hard to do. It’s hard to walk into a room of total strangers, to put myself forward in an unfamiliar situation. My sister and many colleagues find this difficult to believe, given my demeanour and my career, but I do get nervous doing things like this – I just don’t show it (I am a much better actress than people realize).

So I did a bit of online research to find a local chapter of the SWI (Scottish Women’s Institute), but didn’t find any (I have since realized that I didn’t look very hard, and I was using the wrong terms in my search – and with COVID much club activity had died down and was therefore much less obvious). But I was in the stationer’s shop one day in September and I blatantly eavesdropped on a conversation – they were talking SWI! As the one lady left the shop, I accosted her and asked about a local chapter. Bingo!

So off I trotted to my first SWI meeting – it was a group of 7 or 8 lovely ladies – apart from the other newbie, I was the youngest in the room. I won’t go into everything that was discussed in that meeting and the next, but I did find a couple of aspects funny/interesting.

They are a fast-dwindling group so were most intrigued by CFUW Milton’s membership size and growth, so at the 2nd meeting I came with a list of ideas that the Kirkwall SWI might want to implement. (Because, yes, Elaine, that is exactly what people want: a total stranger to waltz in and tell them how to do everything better. Well, they had asked, and I did preface my list with a deferential “these are just some things that worked for us in Canada” speech.) I focussed on social media and advocacy, because they want to attract younger women and that’s what seemed to draw the under 50’s at CFUW. They liked the FaceBook ideas, but seemed much less keen on the Advocacy which, now that I’ve googled ‘Scottish Women’s Institute’, does make more sense – the focus seems to be on maintaining Scottish crafts and heritage rather than on advocating for women and girls.

Which leads to my 2nd experience: at each month’s meeting members are asked to bring in two items for a wee ‘competition’, often something homemade or handcrafted. Last month it was ceramics (so I brought the plate with the levitating hedgehog that I had painted back in the summer), and a handmade Christmas card (which I did not take). The three photos here show: what I tried to make; what happened; and why I’m glad I gave up. The first photo is a card I found on YouTube, with clear instructions. So I went out and bought card stock, ribbon, and glue, and tried to follow the video (I used PowerPoint & my printer to make little cheater stars). The second photo is the point at which I gave up, when I discovered the glue I had bought had a hole in the bottle and the glue had become a single, hardened lump. No, I couldn’t go out and buy more – I was doing this on the day of the meeting. (I’d had a month’s notice, but why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?) And the third photo is what the SWI members had produced. They were stunningly beautiful; thank God I had not finished and produced mine.

Anyhow, back to the club. I have decided not to join the club, as I am more interested in giving back to my temporary home here and have found a few organizations that I prefer to support (more on those later).