Uncategorized

I TOLD her not to say “it can’t get any worse.” It had been a wonderful visit: my cousin, her hubby, their offspring and significant others had been so fun and so friendly.  Final morning came, and I was ready. I had my two-day trip home from England carefully planned out: I knew exactly when to leave, which petrol stations to stop at, how much extra time to leave in order to be able to explore the peedie village I would be staying at on the first night, and I factored in some last-walk-of -the-day time before my dinner reservation.

Hugged everyone good-bye, shoved the dog onto the backseat, loaded up the car, put the car in gear, and felt the bu-bump, bu-bump of a seriously flat tyre. Dammit.  Fortunately, even though it was clear that there wasn’t a spare in the boot (I had oh-so-carefully packed the trunk (boot) like some sort of a Tetrus cube but that was all ruined in the blink of an eye), my CIL kept digging anyway, and found the most wonderful invention tucked in a corner: a digital tyre inflator that plugs into your cigarette lighter (do they still call them that?) and hooks up to the tyre nozzle.  Moved some of the stuff from front seat back to the boot (trunk), pumped the tyre, drove to the mechanic’s, was taken almost immediately, drove back to get the dog and more good-bye hugs, then back in the car, only 75 minutes later than planned.  But that’s okay, I had factored in enough time – if I shortened the two rest-stops, we could still make it to Irthington by 4:00 (in time to beat the sunset and avoid driving in the dark).

Ah, yes.  Well, someone who has spent her entire adult life within five minutes of the 401 should know better.  Between the traffic, and the rain, and the traffic, it was not a fun drive.  The M25 was a parking lot (that sounds just like a line from a British TV show), and the subsequent three motorways were not much better. Poor Scout got 1 (yes, ONE) pee-stop six hours after being loaded in the car in the morning.

We arrived at the hotel just before 8 o’clock, so my great plan to avoid driving in the dark had failed miserably.

But the hotel! Well, that’s for another time.

Oh, and the first thing I buy when I get home is one of those inflator do-hickeys.  Genius.

Mid-December I noticed that businesses along Albert Street were being boarded up. Massive 2″ x 6″ beams were being bolted across many of the windows and doorways in the centre of town. Why was my hairdresser’s salon under siege? Were the Vikings coming? Did I need to buy a chainmail vest? Fashion a broadsword out of my car’s bumper? Not quite.

A year ago I mentioned that The Ba’ had been scheduled for the first time since COVID, then promptly cancelled due to Omicron. The Ba’ is a series of events that takes place on Christmas Day & New Year’s Day. On each of those days there are two Ba’s: the Boys in the morning and the Men in the afternoon.

The Ba’ is a scrum where dozens of men from Kirkwall and surrounding area (the teams are Uppies, and Doonies, and it has something to do with where you were born, or who you are related to, or how you first arrived in Kirkwall, or something. Beats me.) try to move a ball (the ba’) either up past one of the churches, or down to the harbour. It can last hours. And this shit matters. Check out the newspaper photos of the two teams arriving. These are local farmers, business men, lorry drivers, neighbours, etc in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s out to play a game for an afternoon. No wonder the Scots of long ago scared the bejeezus out of opposing English armies, as they came into battle.

And, it seems, The Ba’ can include damage to property – well, with 100+ men pushing and shoving up and down the road, that makes sense. So the local council boards up windows and doorways along the route. These planks are bolted into the cement. Bolted. The above picture on the left is two shops on the high street, and the one on the right is people’s homes. Yep, for the month of December, people in Orkney have to duck under a barrier to enter and leave their houses.

It seems The Ba’ doesn’t make it to my house; but it comes close. Scout & I will be checking out the New Year’s Ba’ – more to come – stay tuned!

I had ordered some Canadian ‘delicacies’ for my cousin’s family to try over the holidays: Lipton Onion Soup Mix for chip dip, SmartFood Cheddar popcorn, and Kraft Dinner.

We took the SmartFood to a friend’s for Boxing Day dinner, and I was surprised at the lukewarm reaction.  I mean, what’s not to love about cheesy, yummy, tasty popcorn?  But popcorn is not a thing over here, and while everyone was pleasant, no one took more  than one handful (infidels). (*Okay, I’ll admit it here now – I really really wanted to take the remainder of the bag of popcorn home with me – I LOVE SmartFood, and knowing it would likely be binned was killing me. But Norma Reid’s daughter knows better than that.)

The chip dip was a hit, as I had anticipated, and I left the second soup mix packet with them for future use.

And then there was the KD.  I hadn’t taken it to impress them with North American mac & cheese; I had been explaining its ubiquity to my cousin and decided she needed to experience it at least once.  (Let’s be clear here  – it’s not exactly in my top 10, or 20, or 100 favourite foods either).  But I had explained that it is something that almost every Canadian toddler and then school child would have on firm rotation, much like the UK baked beans on toast, or Spaghetti-O’s on toast.  And in pre-ramen days, university students lived on it. 

Well they made it for the family to try the day after I left.  As suspected, it didn’t go down especially well (“Interesting” was the comment – how polite).  I had to laugh at one text from my cousin; it seems her daughter had thought adding grated cheddar to the final product might improve it.  I’m struggling to imagine what that would have tasted like; it’s not something I’ve ever tried.  Anyway, it seems they ate it.  I doubt they will be asking for a repeat any time soon.

Chrimbo is a thing. It’s a British word for Christmas-time. I’ve seen it in TV and magazine ads, and I’ve heard it referenced on the radio. It can’t be that they’re trying to shorten the word: both Christmas and Chrimbo have two syllables. How odd.

Other Christmas oddities: you know Bill Nighy’s character in Love Actually? Well, having ‘UK Christmas No 1’ is really a thing. It’s announced each year whose song has been named No 1, and it seems a group called Ladbaby has won the last five years in a row. God, I’m old.

Department store Christmas TV commercials are much anticipated, with John Lewis’s being the biggy. They’re discussed at water coolers and covered in the mainstream news media.

Red cabbage, like Brussel Sprouts, is a must at the Christmas dinner: I counted seven separate recipes in: the Guardian, the BBC news, and British morning TV shows. (My host’s was very good; I had seconds.)

Mince tarts are practically a religion. Enclosed or open? Sugar-dusted or not? Shortcrust pastry or shortbread casing? With nuts or without? Feelings run strong.

Everyone is so kind. Neighbours of my cousins invited the family (myself included) for Christmas dinner. Which, by the way, is served in the early afternoon in England, and is called lunch.

There were seven of us, so we had a little parade marching down the street, the young men carrying dining chairs, my cousin with the appetizers, and I (of course) had the champers.

Dinner was amazing – turkey (obvs), roast tatties, brussel sprouts, homemade cranberry sauce (Delia Smith’s recipe), parmesan-breaded parsnips (OMG – they were magnificent), gravy, and bread sauce. Bread sauce is a uniquely British condiment, served with poultry, and comprised of nothing more than bread, onion, and milk, cooked into a thin gruel-like consistency. I may not be selling it well; Brits love it but in my experience, North Americans, well, not so much. Oh and my cousin just reminded me of the braised red cabbage – it was very good and it seems it’s de rigeur on every Christmas dinner table.

The plum pud was quite the dramatic finale: our host’s son was in charge of lighting the pudding. But none of this ‘pour over the brandy and get out the BBQ lighter crap’: at the head of the table he heated the brandy in a large silver spoon held over a candle, tilting it ever so slightly to catch the flame and light up, then tipped it on to the pudding, all while being coached by the other nine guests at the top of their lungs. Ah, tradition.

I’m not sure the post-dinner board game involving Fascists and Liberals is equally traditional, but it was fun nonetheless. Perhaps my cousin and I shouldn’t have stayed up another three hours drinking champagne and talking, but you’ll be pleased to hear we have solved most of the world’s problems.

All in all, the best Christmas I have had since COVID.

I understand I’ve missed the “North American Storm of the Century”. It looked pretty scary, with power outages and pile-ups. I hope everyone who reads this had a safe and happy holiday.

Things were a tad less dramatic here in the south of England. My wonderful cousins took me and the dogs out for a walk (that wasn’t well worded) this afternoon. It was a very different Christmas Eve from last year, and an equally different one from what I’ve experienced in Canada.

Last year at this time, in spite of a kind invitation from said cousins to spend the holidays with them, I’d been too intimidated to drive anywhere other than the relatively barren roads of the Highlands to venture down here. And there was Omicron. So 365 days ago, I was sitting in the lobby of the Oban Hotel, social distancing, admiring the view, and reading a book, all whilst on a typical British Coach Tour Holiday. It was fine, but hardly festive.

But today was also quite different from what I’ve experienced every other Christmas Eve of my life (all of which were spent in southern Ontario). We still did the lazy late-morning-breakfast-running-into-lunch, and, just as back home, took the dogs for a walk. Unlike Canada’s current snowed-in status, the south of England is having a very green Christmas (let’s face it, when we say we’re having a ‘green Christmas’ in the GTA, we really mean we’re having a dull browny beige & grey Christmas). My youngest cousin is an avid rider, with her horse Pete stabled just near here, so she was off on the traditional Christmas Eve horsey pub crawl. It’s a thing. Hunh.

We brought the dogs – Hector is my cousin’s adorable little Lakeland Terrier (see Instagram) – and met the riders on Keston Common. Much of the local English population was there, sitting on the patios of the village pubs and cafes, or standing about on the common, chatting with friends and feeding the horses carrots. The riders had their pints while the horses nibbled on the grass, and it was all so very, very . . . English. Then the riders hopped back up on their horses to amble off to the next wee village, and my cousin, CIL, and I took the dogs and headed down the trails into the woods.

It was an delightful Christmas Eve.

Last spring I posted how I had been an absolutely delightful houseguest to my cousin and her husband: getting sick halfway through the visit, commandeering a bathroom and the sofa, and thereby forcing my cousin to wait on me for the remainder of my stay.

Well, the streak continued: my first morning here Viv & I took the dog for a walk through the woods around Charles Darwin’s house (as you do), and I went over on my ankle. It felt okay, so we kept walking and then headed into town to finish up some last minute shopping.

By evening my ankle had swelled up and was throbbing, and I had had to strap it with a tensor bandage (not a term they knew) and sit with it up on a cushion while everyone else made meals, and handed me things, and gave me wine & Ibuprofen (I know, I know, don’t say it). All I could think was: I’m here for several more days, this is a very active family, they have other things going on in their lives at the moment, and how could I be imposing on them like this yet again.

I hobbled off to bed, feeling horribly guilty. But it seems that, all common sense to the contrary, a cocktail of sparkling wine and anti-inflammatories actually works (kids, don’t try this at home). So, while I am still walking carefully when out on the hiking trails, it turns out I am not the burden on my cousins’ hospitality that I had feared (don’t speak too soon, Lainey, the visit is just beginning).

Before all hell broke loose with my cousin’s life, I had booked my car trip from her Dad’s after the funeral down to her house in Kent for Christmas. As it would be on the shortest day of the year, and I DO NOT drive in the dark in the UK if at all possible, I decided to break my journey about halfway. After much planning, phoning, and mapping, I booked us (Scout & me) in at the White Lion pub & inn in Hampton In Arden, a wee village near Birmingham.

Well, it seemed I had landed us in my first truly posh, absolutely rah-rah, tree-lined, mansion-filled, quintessential English Village. There is a large church and the church grounds are full of graves (not quite the same as a cemetery – a cemetery seems to me to be something cordoned off to one side of the church, and there was one of those too, but there were others up against the paths, or under trees in the front ‘garden’ of the church). These graves were all around the grounds and I saw one from 2021, right next to one dated 16-something – wow. Every other car parked along the street was a mud-splashed Land Rover, and all the houses were red-bricked and lit up with tasteful Christmas decorations.

The pub wasn’t quite as old as the village – the village was named in the Domesday Book in 1086, whereas the pub/inn is a mere youngster, barely 400 years old.

The stairs to the rooms had tiny little treads but risers at least 6″ high, the floors were uneven, the window panes were bubbled, and every ceiling was slanted. It was perfect! Granted, the management doesn’t stay on the premises after the pub closes, and the doors are all alarmed after midnight, which had me lying awake at 2 a.m. thinking, “I know ghosts aren’t real, but if they were, would they come in this room?” Really.

The pub itself was also very ‘country-English’. Delicious pub food, lots of beers on tap, and a clientele that seemed to dress entirely in Barbour jackets, wellies, tweed caps, and cordorouy trousers. Everyone knew everyone else, and dogs roamed about, off-leash.

I was at a tiny table with a small bench and a couple of stools. I had a book, and my wine and was just enjoying a quiet evening observing the locals. But the pub was busy, and my table’s stools were empty, so over the course of the evening two different couples sat down and joined me for a drink. One was working class and one was middle class. I am not saying that out of any sense of judgement: each couple told me where they stood on the social ladder. (!) The working class couple regaled me with stories of the past year: the deaths in the family, the nutty relatives, and it’s safe to say the husband hadn’t met a sentence he couldn’t interrupt. They were so nice and so friendly.

The middle class couple were also very pleasant to visit with – they loved Scout and we talked dogs, and travel, and COVID – it was a great half hour’s chat, before they headed off to walk home. I continue to be amazed at how friendly Brits are – I’m not sure where their reputation for coldness came from. Certainly not Hampton In Arden.

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.