And Another Reason to Dread Monday...

Have I mentioned that the poet who is the subject of my Ph D was a Gaelic speaker? and wrote lots of his poetry in Gaelic? And that as a result I am going to have to learn Gaelic myself?

I have tried before. Years ago, under the mistaken impression that the Northern Isles, like the Western Isles, was a Gaelic region, my brother in law bought me a Teach Yourself Gaelic course, with tapes. The tapes will tell you how long ago that was!! When I started thinking about this Ph D I hunted the course out and had a go. Epic Fail.

 

About a year ago, thinking I ought to give it another try, perhaps with a more up to date course, I bought one from Mr Amazon. It came highly recommended and had CDs with it. Progress. On the technology front at least. I got very little further than I had with the tapes.

 

Now this is worrying. Languages are my thing. In my time I have learned seven, two of which had non Latin alphabets. If there's one thing that I should be able to do, especially with huge motivation, it's learn another one. But I have an awful feeling that Gaelic might just be beyond me.

 

Let's hope not because I'm about to embark on my third attempt. I'm doing a Gaelic Entry distance learning course via Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic medium college on Skye. This consists of lots of work on your own, which is fine, and an hours telephone tutorial every week with a native speaker, which is not. It's scary scary stuff, especially when you're not convinced you can learn the language and yet it's very important that you should.

 

I don't know why I am so certain that I will find it difficult to impossible, although I have come up with some reasons.

 

It's partly the  sound it makes. Listen to BBC Alba and any notion you may have of Gaelic being a soft  romantic language is swept away. To the uninitiated it sounds like a series of harsh consonants, interspersed with wavering vowels and a lot, and I mean a lot, of shs and chs, most of them made in the back of the throat.  It sounds not very nice, and quite a lot of it is hard to say.

 

It's partly the disconnect between the spelling and pronunciation. What sort of language spells a word leabhar and pronounces it 'yower' (to rhyme with our)? A difficult one, say I. At least when you learn Russian, once you're over the hurdle of the new alphabet it's basically phonetic. With Gaelic, well...

 

And of course it's partly the fact that I've already tried twice without success. And however often I say 'third time's a charm' ,  lets be honest,  that's just a stupid thing people say. It has neither meaning nor effect.

 

Anyway, we have had induction week. I have sent messages, I have recorded an MP3 file, I have done a quiz, answered a questionnaire and stated my time and day preferences for my telephone tutorial. I have downloaded the material for Unit 1. I am as ready as I will ever be, but that doesn't stop me dreading Monday morning. Because that dear friends, is telephone tutorial 1 time.

 

As that other mindless phrase goes 'Wish Me Luck'.

 

 

Back in the Land of the Living!

Yay! I'm back.

 

As far as I can tell my eye is healing well, I'm down from 10 drops a day to 6 (which isn't that much of an improvement really, because fitting in six sets of drops a day is quite difficult) I'm reading a bit, visiting Facebook, knitting, doing the washing....almost normal life again. Hurrah!

 

Rather worried about Monday though as the joiners will be back working in the hall, which will make for  a lot of dust. Since if you do a dusty job (? I know, but that's what it said on the leaflet) you have to get separate advice about when you can resume work although the standard advice is 2 weeks off, I'm thinking lots of dust will not be ideal. I may need to take refuge while they're here in Son No 2's bedroom which will be difficult as quite a lot of it is taken up with books from the bookshelves that normally live in the hall....

 

Such are the joys of house renovation. But, altogether now, It Will All Be Worth It In The End.

Under the Knife

So, on Wednesday I had an op. on my eye.

I knew it was coming, although I had been told it would probably be towards the end of March. So I was quite surprised to get  a letter on 12th Jan to say that it would be the 21st. I was torn between being upset at  not having enough time to psych myself up for it, and being pleased that my waiting and worrying time had been cut by a couple of months.

 

In the event what is billed as a routine operation turned out, due to an equipment failure half way through, to be fairly traumatic. Still in two minds about whether or not I'm glad I had it, but there again, my eye still hurts, it's still swollen and bloodshot and I can't see properly again yet. Once its all recovered I hope I'll be delighted.

 

As looking at a computer screen isn't the best thing for me to be doing just now, it will be a wee while before I'm back on the blog properly. But I will be back as soon as I can. 

 

Can't blog, can't knit, can't read - life's a bit hidebound just now. So frustrating, I was all ready to rant about Thomas Brodie Sangster too, but that will keep. I don't suppose I'll feel any more kindly towards him with the passing of time.

Here's a Question

I did some work on my thesis today. I'm currently fighting my way through a draft of the first chapter, which is OK most days. It sort of depends on which particular bit of my poet's biography I'm covering, and my personal level of interest in it. Recently I've been trying to cover  the publishing history of his work in book form. This is not the sort of thing that sets me alight, so it's slow work. Thank goodness (in a way) that he only had three books published in his lifetime. Anyway, I had to get up relatively early because we were expecting the joiners, so I was in my study well before nine and it's now nearly seven. I have managed to get to the end of the publishing summary bit, which is the good thing, but how come my total word count for a fairly long day, is only 606 words? That's not much for ten hours work, is it?*

 

* OK, I wrote a letter and did some e-mailing connected with my work as well. Other than that it's a victory for the distracting power of Facebook, Ravelry and Jo's Dream Organic Café Deluxe 2.

Colours and Carpets

The OH and I had a conversation the other day about decorating the hall once the joiners and electricians have finally finished in there. It went like this.


Me :-  how do you feel about a plum carpet in here when all the work's done?

Him:- ha, ha, very funny.

Me:-  (perplexed) what do you mean?

Him:- well, that's a joke isn't it?

Me:- Er - no! what makes you think it's a joke? Plum carpet. I think it'll look great.

Him: - It's a joke because we already have a plum carpet in here, don't we?

Me:- No!

Him:- (pointing at current carpet)  Well what colour is this then?

Me: - Raspberry.

The New Room - Are We Nearly There Yet?

And the answer is yes, we are nearly there. The electrician came and wired in the controls for the underfloor heating. Sadly the instructions for the options on this are, I am told, difficult to understand. This is what the OH said. Well he may have described them as difficult to get your head round, but either way we have, after several days of having it switched on, on a timer, switched it off. As I said, there is no point in having it on if we are not actually using the room and we're not. Not yet, anyway. So we flicked a switch and hopefully before we push it back the other way again one or other of us, probably him, will have got their head round the intricacies of minimum room temperature versus minimum floor temperature and default settings and why, if you tell the controls that you are away, they carry on switching on the floor regardless.

 

We have moved in some furniture, I have begun the long process that is transferring a lot of my stuff into the purpose built storage and the decorator has been back on several occasion to do the repaint. I think he's finishing today. I am pleased to report that he was fairly sanguine about this. 'Do you remember that old Morecambe and Wise sketch?' he said. 'You know the one where he said he was playing all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order? It's a bit like that with your walls and the colours isn't it?' Well I can't deny it. I'm also pleased to say that, now the colours are the right way round, I feel totally justified in getting him to come back. It makes a lot of difference. (Well it makes a lot of difference to me).

 

The cats love it and are thrilled that we have spent all this money building them a huge suntrap which they have all to themselves. They are in for such a shock.

 

So we should be ready to take possession and spend loads of time in there now, right? Well no, actually massively wrong as we have the builders in the house doing stuff in the hall, and in due course in the living room, and they are bringing all their stuff in through the new room. So it's not very convenient for using just now.

 

But in a couple of months when all the work is finished and the days are getting longer and, hopefully, warmer, and the quagmire that had developed from what was the top end of the lawn has dried out somewhat, we'll be in and enjoying it and telling each other how great it is. Roll on the day.

Project 60 - Number 5

Here are six words I never thought I would say or type.

Today I joined a political party.

I'm not a political person. Politicians in general bore, or irritate or nauseate me. I'm afraid I'm one of those people politicians deplore because I genuinely do think that these days they are all more or less the same and all more or less in it for themselves.

This doesn't mean I don't vote. Very brave women suffered, some even died, to get me the vote, and not to vote would be a callous betrayal of their sacrifice. So ever since I was old enough I have voted.

When we lived in England I was a  bit of a floating voter and voted for different parties at different times. Quite what I would do this coming May, were I still living in England, I have no idea. I have every sympathy for friends facing that dilemma.

 

Since coming to Orkney  however I have been able to vote consistently for one party. One of the good things about moving north of the border was the opportunity to vote for the SNP, and I have done that gladly at every election since we arrived.

 

I wasn't planning to join, despite the fact that I have agreed with their central policy, the independence of Scotland, since I was twelve. Like I said, I'm not a political person. But since the Referendum I have thought that perhaps I should put my money where my mouth is, and quietly nail my colours to the mast.

 

So I did.

NCIS - why do you watch it?

I am prompted to ask by the return of NCIS to British TV screens - well the screens of those of us who have satellite TV anyway.

The program was voted America’s favourite television show in 2011 and during 2012-13 its 10th  series  was the most-watched television series in the U.S. So it must be doing something right.

Forgive the stats but they make me feel better about watching the show. It's  highly formulaic, its politics frequently offend me deeply and at least two of the recurring characters irritate me to the nth degree.

The OH watches it too, in fact it's one of the very rare programs on TV that we both enjoy. I always used to assume that he watched it for Ziva, played by the extremely attractive, if somewhat oddly named, Cote de Pablo^. If you're unfamiliar with the cast, she's at the extreme right of the photo at the top of the post. 

 

^I know actors frequently have stage, or these days, screen names, but honestly if you were picking out a new name for yourself, would you choose one that put 50% of the audience in mind of an old fashioned fragrance house?

 

The OH always indignantly denied that Cote had anything to do with his watching the program. 'I watch it for Gibbs' was the burden of his song , to which my response was always a casual but amused 'Yeah, right. And the rest.'

 

Anyway last year I was at an academic conference and conversation turned, as it does in these circumstances, to TV watching. The group I was in all turned out to be NCIS watchers so  I asked  the guy on my left  'So, who do you watch it for, Abby or Ziva?'. And do you know what he said?

 

'I don't watch it for either. I watch it for Gibbs.'

Canada - The Non-Christmassy Bits.

We weren't actually in Canada  that long: courtesy of the OH's disinclination to go at all, I decided early on that I'd better keep the trip to the minimum possible sensible length, so in the event we were only out of the UK for ten days.

We arrived in Toronto in the evening and by the time we had cleared immigration it was quite late and we were very tired, so we crashed into bed the minute we got to the hotel. Next day we picked up our hire car and drove a wee bit out of Toronto where I spent a lovely day with a friend. She and I  started off as penpals many years ago and have managed to meet up on a few occasions. From sometimes bitter experience I am here to tell you that meeting penfriends can be disastrous, but luckily that doesn't apply to R. We all had lunch together and then the boys went off to do stuff, and R and I had a lovely girly time looking round the shops. I don't want to sound like a stereotype here, but where I live there really aren't that many shops to browse and although I have many and good friends they aren't shop browsing people really. So although I would never take it up as a hobby, or make it a general every Saturday thing, it is lovely to do it once in a while. We went to the Mall where I bought Son No 1 a tea infuser and some specialty teas for his upcoming birthday, and a pair of PJs and a top for myself. We went to Chapters, a wonderful bookstore where I bought some magazines for a friend back home.  And we went to a wool shop where I  bought, well yes, some wool. More of that at a later date. Of course I totally forgot about getting a photo of the two of us together (d'uh!) but here's a photo of the Mall decked out for Christmas.

 

 

and for good measure here's a couple of the Mall in Windsor where the family is.

 

I came to the conclusion that Canadians definitely take their Christmases seriously. Many of the houses had beautiful outside decorations and I wish I'd tried to take pictures of some of those. However they looked best after dark when they were all lit up and we were usually going past them in the car at that stage so conditions not ideal for snapping blow up penguins (yes really) or illuminated reindeer.

 

The weather was much milder than we had anticipated, in fact the temperatures were higher in Windsor than they were at home and out of all the days we were there we only wore our coats once. (Gather it's turned a fair bit colder since we left though) As proof, here is the daughter in law ready for a trip out

See? T-shirt weather.

We went for a drive up to Lake St Clair where there's a wetland bird reserve (just like home really) and had a walk there

It was beautiful and there were hundreds and hundreds of birds there, although too far away for my little camera to capture them

Another day we went to the historic township of Amherstburg. This was the day when we gave in and put on our coats, as it was a bit chilly.

 

former fur-trappers post

 

memorial to the men who kept the Americans out!

 

oh look, a black squirrel. Proud of myself for catching this one 'at rest'; they're very lively and very quick

 

My beautiful boys, all together for once. Hard to believe that in photos from when they were young it's difficult to decide which of the two sons it is. Practically indistinguishable then, totally different now.

 

 

And that was about it, apart from an all too brief lunch meeting with a fellow Raveller on our way to the airport to catch the plane home. Also a great  success, also an occasion when I forgot about taking photos.

 

We flew home in a 'Dreamliner' aka a Boeing 787. If you get the chance to fly in one of these, take my tip and don't. Cramped, uncomfortable and the 'click together' interior panelling showed a nasty tendency to unclip of its own accord, decanting panels onto the heads or feet of those below. Gives you a lot of  confidence in the plane as a whole (not).

 

 

Christmas Squared Part 2

Lots of pictures of our second Christmas Day in Canada.

 

Yes, this is our tree and these are our presents and I'm soooooooooooo  excited!

 

I'm really not at all camera shy, unlike my Dad and I wanna be in this pic of the tree too!

 

This is  heavy and really too unwieldy for me but it's a train set and I am not gonna let anyone else touch it

 

Next time that thing goes past I'm going to cause carnage. You Do Not Mess With  The Cat!

 

Three generations of train nuts - one small supervisor and two engineers

 

I've warned it. Any minute now, it's curtains for that thing

 

Christmas lunch: turkey, home made cranberry sauce, and the rest. So nice to have it made by someone else.

 

Dessert - Son No 1's version of cassata.

 

Post lunch chaos - but a happy lad and his Dad

Christmas Squared - Part 1

So, there we were, planning to go to Canada for Christmas and the question arose; what to do about presents? Quite early on we rejected the idea of taking a lot of wrapped presents over to Canada to open them and then bring them back again.  So we took them to Glasgow instead.

 

We couldn't just unceremoniously get all the gifts out of our bags and rip off the paper at some random time, so we had two Christmases this year; a pre-Christmas one in Glasgow before we flew to Ontario and another one in Canada on the right day. 

 

We bought a tree and a set of decorations on our way to Glasgow and Son No 2 and I put it up.

 

 

At home we have a very eclectic set of decorations for our tree; some that I made, some that the kids made, things we've picked up on our travels, and the occasional baubles that we have bought just because we saw and liked them. It's a wonderful record of our time together and full of memories and I love it. But every Christmas when I see trees in shops and magazines decorated in lights and baubles all in one colour I allow myself a little sigh of, well, not quite envy, but longing.

 

 

 

But look! the Glasgow tree almost qualifies as monochrome, as the decorations were all black and gold. And very fine it looks too

 

 

 

We had a mini Christmas dinner - chicken, not turkey

 

 

and this is Son No 2 opening a present. I think it must be something he had expressed a passing interest in having...!

 

It was fun, if a little low key, and  set us up nicely for the adventure which was Christmas in Another Country. 

 

Project 60 Number Four

And that was Going Away for Christmas.

I've always fancied doing this. The OH however has not. 'I like to be at home at Christmas. I don't like leaving the cats. It's not a time to be on the roads/railways/in airports....' and so it went on.

This year was different though. It was the first Christmas that Son No 1 and his family would be spending in Canada and the first chance that we would have to spend Christmas with them, as for the previous nine years they have been snapped up/coerced by the in-laws to spend Christmas with them.

I have found this upsetting and annoying in equal measure. Partly because I know the kids would occasionally have liked a Christmas on their own. Partly because I could never be so selfish as to deprive someone else of the chance to spend Christmas with their child and grandchild for so long. The daughter-in-law's parents seem to have no qualms about this. They want their children at their house for Christmas and there is no argument, or ever any suggestion that perhaps it might be 'our turn'.

Families, eh? Recipe for disaster.

Anyway although it wasn't quite the Caribbean idyll  that I have always envisaged when I have used the phrase 'going away for Christmas', we did go away and have Christmas in Canada. It was wonderful. It was in fact a bit like the credit card advert. 'Flights to Toronto £X. Hotel in Windsor £X. Meals out and presents $CX. Spending Christmas with the family Priceless.

Pics aplenty over the next few days.....

Happy New Year!

We've been away, hence the silence. Post and pictures to follow shortly - as in, not today but sometime this week.

I was very pleased to say goodbye to 2014 which was a rubbish year for us and I'm hoping that 2015 will be a huge improvement.

It almost got off to a bad start. When we got back to Orkney  on New Years Eve we discovered that in our absence the decorator had been in and painted the new room. Which should have been good news, right? And it would have been if he hadn't painted the walls the wrong way round. Honestly how tricky is 'This wall is to be this light green, and the other three walls are to be this cream, and that's why there's a small tin of green paint and a bigger one of cream'. Not very, I wouldn't have thought. Until I came home to three green walls and a cream one.

 

I have tried for several days to convince myself that I can live with it, but at the end of the day I just can't. So I've written to the decorators asking them to come back and put it right. The OH seems very antsy about this. Not sure why. He is convinced that they will a) run out of paint b) charge twice for the work and c) never come back to do any more work for us.

 

I said to him that if he got something totally wrong for work  would he not a) expect to be asked to redo it b) not expect to be able to charge for it twice and c) worry about not being asked to do any more work, rather than decide he could afford to take home his bat and ball. All of which he is in agreement with. Even so, he wasn't happy when I posted the letter this morning. 

 

At the end of the day this new room has cost us a small fortune, and I don't see why I should be asked to live with something that isn't  quite right. It's not as though I waved in the direction of the paint tins and said 'Two colours, four walls, take your pick'.

 

The only slight consolation is that it was done in old rubbish 2014 and hasn't blotted the fresh copybook that is 2015. Yet. I'll keep you up to date with developments.