One year in Glasgow... and things become normal and you stop writing about them.
Like, say, how the trendiest as well as warmest piece of clothing in Glasgow by a long shot is the beer jacket. And how next in this ranking come the beer tights. This, however, might indicate that some Scots have an alcohol problem. Which they do. Which is why men sometimes provide such entertaining, if in a wholly unintentional way, company.
(A good way to travel back to the naive mind of a year ago, however, turns out to be simply to enhance the experience. And the best way to enhance the experience of seeing scantily clad Scotswomen wobbling about (often barefeet due to excessive heel-caused pain) next to equally wobbly Scotsmen, is a nice walk along Sauchiehall street after clubs' closing time. Sauchiehall street is where the aptly named Garage and many other similar venues spew out hordes of teenage girls in glittery/flowery/tight/tiny/all of the above dresses on stilts clinging to the shoulders or preferably the lips of horny teenage boys. Being one of three thirty-ish and comparatively sober women in actual coats wading through this to reach a chance of a taxi constitutes a true anthropological experience.)
And then there are the British queues (yes, the one thing that is truly British) - which I already miss when I get to Schiphol's passport control and find myself computing complicated calculations concerning the average speed of each of the ten queues times its length, alongside with 50 other people continuously switching queues.
But on the other hand while so conveniently queuing I've stopped noticing how I've so far failed to spot one of the simplest yet most grocery-shopping enhancing inventions, the thingy that separates the conveyor after the cashier in two, so that you can conveniently bag your stuff while the cashier can equally conveniently serve the next customer. This thingy, by the way, is so nameless even in thingy-rich Holland.
Another invention of modern life (=of the 50's) hasn't made Britain: the mixing tap. For some probably utterly British reason, the British do not seem to have a need for water at body temperature anywhere but in the shower, where they do have body-temperature water but it comes drizzling down from an enlarged tea-boiler. Apparently, you should always put a plug in a sink, turn on the cold tap and the hot tap, and then wash your hands or face by splashing them about in the contents of the sink (which with some public sinks really isn't an option). Either that, or you wash your hands with ice-cold water or with water so hot the tap carries a CAREFUL! HOT! warning sign. And yet I recently found myself plugging my sink without a thought.
Then there is road maintenance, which seems to be only an occasional occupation for whoever is in charge of Scotland´s roads. This observation can be fully revived in two ways: take a road trip in Utah and notice how they have a warning sign next to every - rare- occurrence of something vaguely resembling a bump or a hole. If Scotland's road authorities applied the same warning-needed-threshold, one would be left to admire the scenery through a never ending hedge of signs. The other way is to drive around months after a big freeze and notice how the wheel axles are still put seriously at risk every other km, er, mile.
But there are also the ever-friendly Scots. Who'll help you with any technical problem you run into. Who'll fight over who gets in the bus last. Whose favourite phrases are 'no bother' and 'that's fine', though the latter sometimes makes me wonder what it is I should be apologizing for. (I've stopped writing about them and instead started using them. Luckily this seems to be the only Scottish influence on my English so far.)
But what I've also stopped writing about, but haven't stopped noticing is how beautiful Scotland is.
Like, say, how the trendiest as well as warmest piece of clothing in Glasgow by a long shot is the beer jacket. And how next in this ranking come the beer tights. This, however, might indicate that some Scots have an alcohol problem. Which they do. Which is why men sometimes provide such entertaining, if in a wholly unintentional way, company.
(A good way to travel back to the naive mind of a year ago, however, turns out to be simply to enhance the experience. And the best way to enhance the experience of seeing scantily clad Scotswomen wobbling about (often barefeet due to excessive heel-caused pain) next to equally wobbly Scotsmen, is a nice walk along Sauchiehall street after clubs' closing time. Sauchiehall street is where the aptly named Garage and many other similar venues spew out hordes of teenage girls in glittery/flowery/tight/tiny/all of the above dresses on stilts clinging to the shoulders or preferably the lips of horny teenage boys. Being one of three thirty-ish and comparatively sober women in actual coats wading through this to reach a chance of a taxi constitutes a true anthropological experience.)
And then there are the British queues (yes, the one thing that is truly British) - which I already miss when I get to Schiphol's passport control and find myself computing complicated calculations concerning the average speed of each of the ten queues times its length, alongside with 50 other people continuously switching queues.
But on the other hand while so conveniently queuing I've stopped noticing how I've so far failed to spot one of the simplest yet most grocery-shopping enhancing inventions, the thingy that separates the conveyor after the cashier in two, so that you can conveniently bag your stuff while the cashier can equally conveniently serve the next customer. This thingy, by the way, is so nameless even in thingy-rich Holland.
Another invention of modern life (=of the 50's) hasn't made Britain: the mixing tap. For some probably utterly British reason, the British do not seem to have a need for water at body temperature anywhere but in the shower, where they do have body-temperature water but it comes drizzling down from an enlarged tea-boiler. Apparently, you should always put a plug in a sink, turn on the cold tap and the hot tap, and then wash your hands or face by splashing them about in the contents of the sink (which with some public sinks really isn't an option). Either that, or you wash your hands with ice-cold water or with water so hot the tap carries a CAREFUL! HOT! warning sign. And yet I recently found myself plugging my sink without a thought.
Then there is road maintenance, which seems to be only an occasional occupation for whoever is in charge of Scotland´s roads. This observation can be fully revived in two ways: take a road trip in Utah and notice how they have a warning sign next to every - rare- occurrence of something vaguely resembling a bump or a hole. If Scotland's road authorities applied the same warning-needed-threshold, one would be left to admire the scenery through a never ending hedge of signs. The other way is to drive around months after a big freeze and notice how the wheel axles are still put seriously at risk every other km, er, mile.
But there are also the ever-friendly Scots. Who'll help you with any technical problem you run into. Who'll fight over who gets in the bus last. Whose favourite phrases are 'no bother' and 'that's fine', though the latter sometimes makes me wonder what it is I should be apologizing for. (I've stopped writing about them and instead started using them. Luckily this seems to be the only Scottish influence on my English so far.)
But what I've also stopped writing about, but haven't stopped noticing is how beautiful Scotland is.
 |
| 100410 Bute & Cowan - Lella |
 |
| 100530 Arran - Katrien |
 |
| 100417 East of Edinburgh |
 |
| 100523 Ben Lomond |
 |
| 100611 Westcoast Thomas |
 |
| 100820 Glasgow, Highlands - Bar en Han (the mixing tap has occasionally been spotted, even in its advanced one-handle form, but this requires some explanation to the weary public of course). |
 |
| 0219 Han en Auk |
 |
| 0227 One year in Glasgow |
Comments