The Holiday Season
Beginnings
Circular Seasons
Cyborg
Losing Touch
Return
The Holiday Season
03 December 2006
We’re entering the tattered remains of 2006, that time of year when it is dark when I go to work, dark when I return and continual twilight—on those days when one can actually see the sun—in between. No complaint, really. I’ll trade a bit less sunlight for no snow and the absence of the kind of cold that makes your boogers freeze any day.
I call this the Holiday Season, not because I’m afraid of the PC Police, but because it is the season of holidays. To your average Brit, it’s simply Christmas, but to Americans, it encompasses Thanksgiving and the ever-popular Pearl Harbor Day. It is also (again, not bowing to the PC Police but merely to demonstrate how living abroad has widened my world view) the seasons of Diwali (roughly), Ramadan (very roughly) and Chanukah.
But, let’s face it, for most of us, it’s simply Christmas, and the drab days of December are coming alive as decorations proliferate and stores deck their halls with festive displays (actually, they began decking their halls in October). The only downside is we won’t be having fireworks at the lighting ceremony this year. And I would suspect, due to the absence of fireworks, there won’t be much of a lighting ceremony, either. Some civil servant will probably just throw a switch.
That’s sad. When I first moved to town, the lighting ceremony was a huge annual event. But then the Tories came into power here and outlawed fun.
As a substitute, there is supposed to be a candlelight procession (I think they’re using flashlights—health and safety, you know) through the town center accompanied by some Christmas Carol singing—the real kind, with angels on high, shepherds and a baby in a manger, not mutant reindeer or animated snowpersons. It’s sort of an ‘in your face’ to the Christmas curmudgeons.
I like the idea that the Christian population is attempting to regain control of Christmas. I’m far from a church-going Christian, but I am a traditionalist (as well as a Capitalist, and I regard Christmas as a Capitalist holiday, which keeps me totally in favor of it) and I miss seeing manger scenes set up in town squares, angles adorning building facades and the sound of caroling. That’s not likely to happen, however. These days, we’re all too busy worrying about who we might offend instead of just acting responsibly and trusting others to do the same.
And the world is a much sadder place for it.
Still, twinkling lights provide a festive feeling, even if they are in the shape of candy canes or holly leaves. A bit of snow would help, but I’m not going to wish for it lest the gods of granting ill-conceived wishes deflect the Gulf current and plunge us into Siberian-like cold just to satisfy my temporary nostalgia. So, as interesting as the ice fairs on the Thames must have been (when this event last occurred back in the 1600’s) I think I’ll give it a miss and put up with the darkness, instead.
And maybe sing a bit of ‘Angels We Have Heard on High,’ just to prime the holiday spirit.
Beginnings
25 August 2006
This entry isn’t likely to be hugely amusing, so if you’re looking for something edgy and slightly raw, check out T-Bone. But if you’re up for a cozy, read on.
It was five years ago on this day that I fell in love with the woman who now sits across from me at the breakfast table, speaking in monosyllables until she finishes her second cup of tea. It’s a story I’ve not been shy about telling, but if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to take another stroll down amnesia lane.
The first time I saw my future wife, I thought she was a boy. I was sitting in Shannon Airport waiting for my hiking group to assemble when I saw a person dressed in a puffy waterproof, wearing sunglass, and a baseball cap pulled low over short, dark hair. I didn’t think anything of it; I was too worried about what might be in store for me. Being one of two single men in the assembling group, I knew I would be bunking with another single man and, having experienced the quaint backwardness of rural Ireland during the previous days, was wondering if the boarding house custom of men sharing the same bed was still de rigueur.
For my wife’s part, she didn’t even notice me. The first recollection she admits to occurred during a refreshment stop at a café. I was, she later told me, the geeky American who couldn’t figure out how to get a cup of coffee, or pay for it; I was woefully ill-prepared for the excursion we were embarking on, and had managed to leave my shaving gear at the hotel I stayed in the night before. By the time I sat down at the table with her and her companions, she had me pegged as an inept and inexperienced traveller, as well as an American.
It was not love at first sight.
In my defence, I was an experienced hiker, but only in America. Ireland took me totally by surprise and I found myself, on our second day of walking, accepting first aid from this obviously-not-a-boy-but-I-forgot-her-name (all I could remember was it had an exotic ring to it, like Chastity or Shibbon) person in the form of chewable aspirin and an Ace Bandage. While I continued to display a curious lack of what she considered common sense, she demonstrated her talent for locating bog holes by periodically disappearing from sight. I suppose you could argue that our first date consisted of me extracting her from a muddy pit.
My lack of foresight continued to haunt me when, on the fourth day, our leader told us our bags would be shipped to our next destination the following morning while we toured the island of Inishmore. I had cleverly packed for a two week vacation in an overnight bag and a rucksack, which meant my rucksack would have to go with the luggage, leaving me nothing to carry my provisions for the day in. It also meant I didn’t have enough clothes for the entire two weeks. This was actually part of my plan, and it was working quite nicely, thank you. The complementary portion of the plan—finding a Laundromat—was not. By now, I was wearing novelty tee shirts I had bought as gifts for friends back home. My future wife (although to this day she maintains that this was not what she was plotting) volunteered to let me put my gear in her pack.
We spent the day wandering around Inishmore and the next day she took further pity on me and volunteered to help find someplace to wash my clothes.
We scoured the nearby town, eventually ferreting out the local washerwoman, who undoubtedly doubled as the village Wiccan on slow days, and headed off to see the Cliffs of Moher. For much of the week, the weather had been miserable, but this was a bright, sunny day and we had a lovely, long, and leisurely walk during which I acquired a near fatal dose of sunburn (I was wearing shorts and a tee shirt, the only clean clothes I had left) and an unexpected slap upside the head from Angus Mac Og (the Celtic god of love). The sunburn eventually went away, but my ears are still ringing.
We talked non-stop that whole day, mostly about the differences in our cultures. At one point on our walk, she demonstrated the technique of throwing a cricket ball. It was while watching her wind up for the throw that a sudden, horrible truth made my blood run, literally, cold. “Oh my God,” I thought, “I’m falling in love with this woman!”
You have to understand that I was not yet a year out of a relationship with a harridan I now refer to only as “She Who Must Not Be Named.” I had promised myself, while caught like a coyote in a leghold trap in that seventh circle of hell masquerading as a relationship, that if I ever got out alive, I would hire a guy to follow me around and kick me in the ass if I ever looked twice at another woman.
Sensing the danger I was in, I back-peddled furiously, managing even to bring up the subject of matrimony just so I could tell her how thoroughly and absolutely I was through with women.
The next day, after breakfast and before the van came to take us back to the airport, we took a walk down an idyllic country lane and stopped on a moss-covered, stone bridge. I had resolve on my side, but Angus would not be denied; I took her hand, kissed her and . . .
. . . “What was that, dear? No, I’m not doing anything important, just writing an article for the web site. Of course I’ll get you another cup of tea.”
Circular Seasons
24 July 2006
The sun is high and hot, cows laze in the shade, and the fields are ripe with wheat. In America it’s the season of baseball and beach barbeques. In Britain it’s time for Crop Circles.
Why the population of a diminutive island believes that beings of superior intelligence would travel light years across the galaxy just to trample on their wheat is as big a mystery as why the wheat is trampled in the first place (not who tramples it, but why they bother). The stubborn fact remains, however, that they do.
Brits love to believe in the impossible; it’s a trait that has served them well over the centuries. They defeated the Spanish Armada, built the greatest empire the world has ever seen, stood alone against the Nazi war machine and invented the Penny-Farthing bicycle, all because they believed in the impossible. Sometimes, though, it’s better to be able to admit you’ve been misled, cut your losses and accept the truth, and they’re not so good at this.
A stunning example of clinging to the improbable is the Yorkshire Fairies, a set of fake photos purporting to show two young girls gambolling with pixies in their back garden. People scrambled over one another in their rush to believe in fairies. And they still believe, despite the fact that the photos are obviously doctored and the girls themselves explained how the pulled off the hoax.
Most normal people would say, “Ha, you fooled me! Good one.” But the Brits, bless them, possess a heroic capacity for self-delusion even in the face of overwhelming and contrary evidence. This may explain why they keep voting Tory, but it does not explain why crop circles almost exclusively appear in Britain.
As of mid-July 2006, Belgium, France and Italy each had a single crop circle and America could boast only a paltry two, while the British tally was 25 and rising. Does this prove that 80% of aliens prefer to take their wheat trampling holidays in the British Isles, or is there a more rational explanation, such as the licensing laws?
Think about it: British pubs close at the perfect time for the proliferation of crop circles. Eleven PM gives a group of blokes just enough time to come up with an idea that sounds good while you’re drunk as well as enough time to pull it off. I’m sure all over America guys are sitting in bars talking about making crop circles: “Won’t that be a hoot? But first, let’s have another round.” Soon, it’s closing time and the sun is coming up. No crop circles tonight, Virgil; better luck next time.
But in Britain, everyone is turned out of the pubs precisely when they are drunk enough to think they can pull off a stunt like this and at a time when they have nothing better to do. It’s too early to go home, so why not pick up a four-pack of McEwan’s at the offie and go stomp around old Fergus Dunnhill’s wheat field?
Problem is, they have recently changed the licensing laws in the UK. Pubs are now allowed to stay open as late as they want, which could put a swift end to British Crop Circle dominance. Happily, most pub landlords aren’t opting for 24-hour opening and are, instead, sticking with the 11 PM closing.
It’s a longstanding British tradition, don’t you know, like crop circles.
Cyborg
10 May 2006
There’s no elegant way to put this, so I’ll just say it; I have a hearing aid.
The hearing in my left ear has been going downhill ever since, in a moment of not thinking before I acted (also referred to as ‘the teenage years’), I fired my friend’s deer rifle while standing next to a brick wall. For those of you unfamiliar with firearms, allow me to elucidate:
Imagine you’re whacking tennis balls around. You toss one up in the air, bat it with your racquet and it flies harmlessly to the other end of the court. Now do the same thing standing three feet away from the side of your house. Now imagine doing that with a small cannon ball. That’s what the shockwave of a .306 feels like when it rebounds back at you from close range.
This unfortunate oversight concerning the laws of physics left me feeling as if someone had whacked me upside the head with a snow shovel. My ear rang like a fire alarm for about three days before settling into the steady hum of a dial tone that has never gone away.
I’ve compensated for this mostly by having a succession of wives and girlfriends translate for me, but lately it was getting to the point where we couldn’t turn the telly up any louder without risking an ASBO. So, I agreed to a hearing aid.
A hearing aid, if you think about getting one at all, is always something you think you’ll be getting later, like an OAP bus pass or a hip replacement. It’s certainly not something I thought about getting now, and especially not from the Nation Health Service.
The first time I went to the NHS to have my hearing checked, the doctor accused me of wasting his time. “If you can hear, why should I test your hearing? Come back when you can’t hear and you can have a hearing aid!” Once we moved beyond that jolly prognosis, I was sent for a second opinion. This doctor agreed that my hearing did, indeed, require some assistance beyond continually asking my wife “what did he say?” but I was informed by the hearing specialist that it wouldn’t do any good to put me on The List for a hearing aid because, even in the unlikely event they got to me, there weren’t any available.
Therefore, I was happily surprised to receive a letter (eighteen months later) telling me to report to the local hospital and even more grateful to find hearing technology had moved on from the ear trumpet, even on this side of the Atlantic. The gadget the fetching, young audiologistess showed me was tiny and digital and would attach to my ear via a clear plastic tube inserted through an ear-mould. The ear mould, she told me, would be made from a life-cast of my actual ear. She then squirted liquid plastic into my ear canal, which damped her appeal somewhat.
A week later, I was back in her office and fitted with the final product. Wearing the device made me feel as if I was underwater, and listening to her through those speakers you use when visiting friends and relatives who are wearing orange jumpsuits and sitting on the other side of the bullet proof glass.
I suppose I could look at it another way, and say it makes me feel like a secret service agent receiving top-secret commands through his earpiece, or a super-hero Cyborg man whose bionic implants give him super hearing powers. But the truth is, it just makes me feel old.
Hearing aids are so closely associated with the chronologically gifted that I was surprised it didn’t come with a complementary Zimmer Frame. I’m only fifty-one, and still looking forward to my second childhood–hell, I haven’t even left my first one yet–so why have I joined the codger brigade, sitting around fiddling with an electronic earplug so I don’t miss any pithy comments from The Archers or Coronation Street.
That said, it really does make a world of difference. This won’t make sense to you if you have good hearing, but suddenly, everything is ‘centered’ which is mildly disorientating when you’re used to sounds coming at you from the right. As a bonus, everyone stopped mumbling and began speaking clearly, something I wish they had started doing twenty years ago, and our neighbors no long know what we’re watching on TV.
The only downside is, I can no longer justify not understanding someone because I can’t hear them properly; I have to admit I just simply don’t know what they’re rabbiting on about.
Losing Touch
06 April 2006
Going to the cinema in our little Sussex town is a lot like going to the theatre, in no small part because our cinema is a theatre.
When we find a movie worth going to–which happens about as often as a lunar eclipse–we have the luxury of sitting in the lounge with a pint and some nibbles before the show, instead of having to hang around in a lobby watching teenagers play video games, and trying to avoid buying an overpriced barrel of popcorn. It’s civilized, and generally peaceful.
The theatre holds two performance areas as well as two movie screens, but curtain times are generally staggered enough so large crowds are avoided. Expect on our last visit, when we inexplicably found ourselves surrounded by enough nuns to fill a convent, several dozen lederhosen-clad Brits, and more than a few people dressed up as bright copper kettles, warm woolen mittens or brown paper packages tied up with strings. There was also a couple decked out as the Austrian Alps, a trio of young girls representing DO, RAY and MI (one must assume FA, SOL and LA were held up in traffic) and one lone Nazi officer who was roundly booed as he entered the room.
This was, of course, the audience for ‘Sing Along With the Sound of Music’, which was showing in the main theatre. Fortunately, we already had our drinks so we were able to relax and allow ourselves to be more entertained by this unexpected and free spectacle than we would be, as it turned out, by the movie we had paid to see.
At one point, my wife turned to me and asked, “Do you do this in America?”
I had to think about that for some time, and eventually realized something I found quite startling; I didn’t know.
I’m still very much an American, and looked upon as the local expert in everything that happens in the US, but four years is a long time and perhaps, while I’ve been away, you have developed a penchant for dressing up as Mother Teresa and belting out show tunes (or maybe you were doing it before I left and I just wasn’t paying attention). My point is, I don’t have any idea what you people are up to over there any more. Maybe you’ve all adopted those things I take for granted here by now, and maybe the things I find typically British, because I first saw them here, actually started over there.
For example: Do your cars give you directions in an irritatingly calm voice (“You’ve just missed your exit, turn around at the next junction.”)? And is your vehicle overly concerned about the weather? Does it beep and flash lights at you (assuming it can’t talk) when the outside temperature nears the freezing mark (as if you’re supposed to pull over and wait until spring)?
And what about your mobile phones? My last US cell phone did nothing but make phone calls; I can’t believe these days that anyone under 25 would be caught dead carrying something that couldn’t play MP3s and video games simultaneously, take photos and movies, surf the web and, oh yeah, make phone calls. But I don’t know; I only assume it’s so because everyone here does.
When you go to the corner mini-mart, can you buy pre-made sandwiches in triangular plastic containers? Do you know who Jimmy Carr, Bill Bailey, and Billy Bragg are? Do you spend all your time playing Sudoku and watching Big Brother?
Is it now in vogue to wear your motorcycle helmet even when you’re queuing up to pay for your petrol or buying a pack of fags at the off-license? To my eyes, anyone who is more than three feet away from a motorcycle and still wearing a helmet looks like a complete dork. But maybe that’s just me.
Has direct debit caught on in the US yet or do you still need checks and cash to pay your bills? For that matter, do you still receive a pay check? All of this is accomplished electronically over here, and has been since I arrived; have you caught up yet?
Is every move you make recorded by a security camera? And I don’t mean every move you make inside of a store; I mean every move you make while strolling down the sidewalk or enjoying a picnic in the town park?
Can you get a decent Indian take-out over there yet? Do you drive Smart Cars? And do you still use dollar bills? (You do? How quaint.)
Does preparation for marriage involve the guest of honor being trundled off to a distant city for a weekend of misbehavior so raucous and outrageous that it often ends in fistfights and/or jail time, or do you still just organize the traditional bridal shower?
All of this confuses me, and that’s disconcerting. After all, much of my humor these days is based on pointing out the differences between America and Britain. I’m starting to feel like Yakov Smirnov must have felt when the Soviet Union collapsed and took his stand-up routine with it.
So, I’m left wondering just what you people are up to, but maybe not for long. I’m going back to the States for my bi-yearly visit soon, and, this time, I’ll take notes.
