Tuesday, 14 August 2018
Apples and Roses
Here B.A. and I are in our new home, and with a new home comes a new blog. No doubt the appearance needs quite a lot of tinkering, but here it is.
Sunday, 12 August 2018
B.A. has the keys
On Friday, Benedict Ambrose went to a shabby office in Leith and got the keys to our new home. I was (and am) in the USA for work, but thanks to the magic of Skype, I was able to see B.A. in the new flat (or townhouse, as we would call it in Canada).
After getting the keys, B.A. went back to our rented room in the New Town and packed up our suitcase existence. Fortunately our landlord and a strong Boy Scout were on hand to help him carry it all to a taxi cab. At some point in his day, B.A. also managed to pick up a Z-frame bed and the router from the Historical House, a pizza and a bottle of wine. Thus, when I spoke to him, he was beaming with joy, having everything a man really needs: his own roof, a bed, a pizza, wine, and the internet.
The apple tree, he said, was covered with red-and-green apples. He's not sure that they are ready to be eaten yet, however, as it's only August. There's a push lawnmower in the shed and some gardening tools. B.A. had spoken to the neighbour in the lower villa (townhouse), so that she wouldn't be alarmed to hear someone moving overhead.
One or two of my co-workers said it was a shame that I wasn't there when we finally got the place, but I was much happier hearing about it from B.A. than I would have been to be there. When our solicitor told me last Sunday in the church carpark that he thought he could get us the keys by Friday, I felt all the energy drain from my body.
During Mass I had been worrying and praying over what we were going to do when our friends put their beautiful, highly desirable flat on the rental market. We do own a tent, but I wasn't sure B.A. could take the rigors of life under canvas. There are no cheap rentals in Edinburgh in August, thanks to the Edinburgh Festival. We have no family within a decent commute of B.A.'s work, and any friends with spare rooms have boisterous babies or health woes of their own. We have been living out of suitcases since mid-February.
Thus, when our solicitor told me that he thought he could conclude the business this week, all the planning and fight spilled out of me--through the backs of my knees apparently, and instead of jumping for joy and sharing the good news with fellow trads, I wanted to crawl away and hide. And on Tuesday, after signing the mortgage fifteen minutes before conducting a very important interview, and then conducting the interview, I cried. Cried? Heck, I wailed.
So all in all, I am happy that B.A. got the keys and took possession himself and that I will have had a whole weekend to get used to the idea before I arrive in our new home. Home, of course, is where B.A. is, and I seem to remember telling him, during some earlier threat to our tenancy in the Historical House, that I would be fine living with him in a tent in the Historical House's back field, if it came to that.
But it hasn't come to that, and I am sure B.A.'s happy grin was inspired, in part, by the thought that we have escaped The Rent Trap. At one point, I was all for telling the seller's solicitor--whose rude emails were passed onto me--to jump in the Firth of Forth, withdrawing our offer, finding a cheap lease near B.A.'s work and starting the house-buying process again later. However, I knew B.A. wouldn't hear of it because---The Rent Trap! (And also our friends of the beautiful New Town flat, no strangers to the silent-auction agonies of house buying in Scotland, strongly advised me not to do this.)
So tomorrow I will have a new home, and this means yet another NEW BLOG! If I were giving advice to an aspiring blogger who wants to build a large audience, my principal advice would be "Never move to a new blog!" However, I think of blogs as books: once one is clearly done, wind it up and move to another. And now that B.A. and I have been married for nine years, I feel that I actually know something about marriage now, and can start writing, in an intentional way, about it. Also, I am developing an interest in sustainable living, both in terms of finances and the environment*, so I'd like to write about those things, too.
As they say, watch this space.
*Truth is what is. It could be that Judgement Day falls next week or next year, so the problems of plastic won't matter. However, it could be that Judgement Day won't fall for over a thousand years from now, in which case the problem of plastic is really quite serious. The great Canadian philosopher-theologian Bernard Lonergan, SJ, was not entirely orthodox, but he did have very important things to say about being rooted in reality. I am not interested in slogans like "carbon footprint" and "climate change", but I am interested in what really is and what "stewardship" of the earth looks like from a traditional Catholic point of view. I suspect thrift, discipline and self-denial are all involved in life-giving ways.
After getting the keys, B.A. went back to our rented room in the New Town and packed up our suitcase existence. Fortunately our landlord and a strong Boy Scout were on hand to help him carry it all to a taxi cab. At some point in his day, B.A. also managed to pick up a Z-frame bed and the router from the Historical House, a pizza and a bottle of wine. Thus, when I spoke to him, he was beaming with joy, having everything a man really needs: his own roof, a bed, a pizza, wine, and the internet.
The apple tree, he said, was covered with red-and-green apples. He's not sure that they are ready to be eaten yet, however, as it's only August. There's a push lawnmower in the shed and some gardening tools. B.A. had spoken to the neighbour in the lower villa (townhouse), so that she wouldn't be alarmed to hear someone moving overhead.
One or two of my co-workers said it was a shame that I wasn't there when we finally got the place, but I was much happier hearing about it from B.A. than I would have been to be there. When our solicitor told me last Sunday in the church carpark that he thought he could get us the keys by Friday, I felt all the energy drain from my body.
During Mass I had been worrying and praying over what we were going to do when our friends put their beautiful, highly desirable flat on the rental market. We do own a tent, but I wasn't sure B.A. could take the rigors of life under canvas. There are no cheap rentals in Edinburgh in August, thanks to the Edinburgh Festival. We have no family within a decent commute of B.A.'s work, and any friends with spare rooms have boisterous babies or health woes of their own. We have been living out of suitcases since mid-February.
Thus, when our solicitor told me that he thought he could conclude the business this week, all the planning and fight spilled out of me--through the backs of my knees apparently, and instead of jumping for joy and sharing the good news with fellow trads, I wanted to crawl away and hide. And on Tuesday, after signing the mortgage fifteen minutes before conducting a very important interview, and then conducting the interview, I cried. Cried? Heck, I wailed.
So all in all, I am happy that B.A. got the keys and took possession himself and that I will have had a whole weekend to get used to the idea before I arrive in our new home. Home, of course, is where B.A. is, and I seem to remember telling him, during some earlier threat to our tenancy in the Historical House, that I would be fine living with him in a tent in the Historical House's back field, if it came to that.
But it hasn't come to that, and I am sure B.A.'s happy grin was inspired, in part, by the thought that we have escaped The Rent Trap. At one point, I was all for telling the seller's solicitor--whose rude emails were passed onto me--to jump in the Firth of Forth, withdrawing our offer, finding a cheap lease near B.A.'s work and starting the house-buying process again later. However, I knew B.A. wouldn't hear of it because---The Rent Trap! (And also our friends of the beautiful New Town flat, no strangers to the silent-auction agonies of house buying in Scotland, strongly advised me not to do this.)
So tomorrow I will have a new home, and this means yet another NEW BLOG! If I were giving advice to an aspiring blogger who wants to build a large audience, my principal advice would be "Never move to a new blog!" However, I think of blogs as books: once one is clearly done, wind it up and move to another. And now that B.A. and I have been married for nine years, I feel that I actually know something about marriage now, and can start writing, in an intentional way, about it. Also, I am developing an interest in sustainable living, both in terms of finances and the environment*, so I'd like to write about those things, too.
As they say, watch this space.
*Truth is what is. It could be that Judgement Day falls next week or next year, so the problems of plastic won't matter. However, it could be that Judgement Day won't fall for over a thousand years from now, in which case the problem of plastic is really quite serious. The great Canadian philosopher-theologian Bernard Lonergan, SJ, was not entirely orthodox, but he did have very important things to say about being rooted in reality. I am not interested in slogans like "carbon footprint" and "climate change", but I am interested in what really is and what "stewardship" of the earth looks like from a traditional Catholic point of view. I suspect thrift, discipline and self-denial are all involved in life-giving ways.
Tuesday, 7 August 2018
One-handed typing.
So on top of B.A. having hair- and hearing-loss thanks to radiotherapy, the flood, the eviction(s), the prolonged home purchase (cracks in roof, moisture in walls, wiggle in property boundaries) and the frightening prospect of moving all our stuff out of the attic down three flights of 17th century stone staircase, I am having a tendonitis flare-up in my right arm.
What to do?
What to do?
Sunday, 5 August 2018
Letter from the Past
I spent yesterday afternoon sorting through notes and mementos in another big clear-out as we prepare to move our things from the Historical House.
To my surprise, I found a fat envelope addressed to me with instructions, in familiar writing, not to open it until 2001.
As it is now 2018, that was quite a shock. My heart sped up, my breathing went funny and my hands shook.
I tore open the envelope and a square of blue tartan wool cloth fell out---which I knew meant I had written this as a teenager. It must have been snipped from the underside hem of my high school uniform kilt.
There followed a green metallic disc with the name of a short-story series I had written stamped on it by some forgotten machine and a crucifix from a broken rosary. Tiny presents to myself from myself well over 20 years ago.
I must have got the idea from Lucy Maud Montgomery's Emily of New Moon. I believe it is Emily who wrote her grown-up self a letter as a teen. When I turned 40, I wondered idly if I hadn't written a letter to myself, as I had a dim memory of doing so. Well, I did, and it didn't seem to occur to mini-me that I might not find it until 2018. I read it wearing bifocals.
Bifocals.
The letter was written from the same house my parents live in today. I can see in my mind's eye the room it was written in. Thank heavens, the green shag carpet is now gone, but I imagine I was sitting on it as I wrote, in my teenage handwriting:
Dear Dorothy,
I wonder if you will feel funny at reading this. (Yes.) I find it strange to think of this sheet as all yellowed and fragile torn from my prized Harvard notebook--I used it to write plays in. (It wasn't--no air got to it. It is a little yellowed this morning, though. I wrote plays?)
...
Our major difference that I know of is that you are looking backwards on these years and I'm looking forward. You know what I'm like for no doubt you've kept my diaries. (So true, but I haven't read them in entirety.) My biggest worry is tomorrow's Chem exam. Do you remember it? (No.) How interesting it would be if you could stretch out across the years and tell me what's (what was) on it. (If I could, I would teach you a few memory tricks, you young baggage.)
You know me, but I don't know you. Are you married? (Now, yes.) Do you even have children? (Alas, no.) From where I sit, I can scarcely imagine it. Perhaps you are a nun? ...Dominican, perhaps? Do you have an exciting Career? (I suspect that capital 'C' is ironic.) Are you still writing? (Yes.) Have you been published (say yes!)? (Yes.) Have you written any hit plays? (No.) How many years did you spend in university? (Too many.) I have a lot of questions, but, as much as I hate to, I have to get back to chemistry. (Highlighting and rereading your notes will not work. Make flashcards.)
I hope you don't mind being [my age in 2001]. Every age has its ups and downs. [You have no real way of knowing this, but I admit it is true. Being a teenager was no picnic.] I also hope you haven't seen or experienced many sad or terrible things in your life. [Shudder. But not many. Apart from personal disasters, 9-11 does come to mind. And the mid-term relatio of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family.] I especially hope [parents and siblings, by name] are all well and happy. [Yes, thank God, all well.] I wonder if Grandma [Gladys] is still up and about! [In 2001, yes.]
I hope you kept track (and keep track) of who married who! (Whom. And who divorced whom, too.)
Oh well, I'm going now. Have a very happy birthday.
Sincerely,
Dorothy at Eighteen.
P.S. I hope you've kept up the old moral standards. [What a thing to say to an older woman.] Pax vobiscum!
Included with this spritely missive were a card from a bunch of flowers given to me by my then-boss at the cafe I worked in, a poem from my then-best friend, and a computer-generated illustration of Pavel Chekov from "Star Trek" from my brother Nulli. It had formed part of an 18th birthday card. Oh, and a program from a play I adapted from Little Women for the school Christmas assembly.
It strikes me that no man alive would write himself a letter to be read over a decade later, and I'm a bit embarrassed admitting to such a stereotypically female behaviour.
But, although I had a little trouble sleeping last night, I don't regret it. What I liked best were the tiny material fragments of my life, especially Nulli's 1980s computer drawing.
To my surprise, I found a fat envelope addressed to me with instructions, in familiar writing, not to open it until 2001.
As it is now 2018, that was quite a shock. My heart sped up, my breathing went funny and my hands shook.
I tore open the envelope and a square of blue tartan wool cloth fell out---which I knew meant I had written this as a teenager. It must have been snipped from the underside hem of my high school uniform kilt.
There followed a green metallic disc with the name of a short-story series I had written stamped on it by some forgotten machine and a crucifix from a broken rosary. Tiny presents to myself from myself well over 20 years ago.
I must have got the idea from Lucy Maud Montgomery's Emily of New Moon. I believe it is Emily who wrote her grown-up self a letter as a teen. When I turned 40, I wondered idly if I hadn't written a letter to myself, as I had a dim memory of doing so. Well, I did, and it didn't seem to occur to mini-me that I might not find it until 2018. I read it wearing bifocals.
Bifocals.
The letter was written from the same house my parents live in today. I can see in my mind's eye the room it was written in. Thank heavens, the green shag carpet is now gone, but I imagine I was sitting on it as I wrote, in my teenage handwriting:
Dear Dorothy,
I wonder if you will feel funny at reading this. (Yes.) I find it strange to think of this sheet as all yellowed and fragile torn from my prized Harvard notebook--I used it to write plays in. (It wasn't--no air got to it. It is a little yellowed this morning, though. I wrote plays?)
...
Our major difference that I know of is that you are looking backwards on these years and I'm looking forward. You know what I'm like for no doubt you've kept my diaries. (So true, but I haven't read them in entirety.) My biggest worry is tomorrow's Chem exam. Do you remember it? (No.) How interesting it would be if you could stretch out across the years and tell me what's (what was) on it. (If I could, I would teach you a few memory tricks, you young baggage.)
You know me, but I don't know you. Are you married? (Now, yes.) Do you even have children? (Alas, no.) From where I sit, I can scarcely imagine it. Perhaps you are a nun? ...Dominican, perhaps? Do you have an exciting Career? (I suspect that capital 'C' is ironic.) Are you still writing? (Yes.) Have you been published (say yes!)? (Yes.) Have you written any hit plays? (No.) How many years did you spend in university? (Too many.) I have a lot of questions, but, as much as I hate to, I have to get back to chemistry. (Highlighting and rereading your notes will not work. Make flashcards.)
I hope you don't mind being [my age in 2001]. Every age has its ups and downs. [You have no real way of knowing this, but I admit it is true. Being a teenager was no picnic.] I also hope you haven't seen or experienced many sad or terrible things in your life. [Shudder. But not many. Apart from personal disasters, 9-11 does come to mind. And the mid-term relatio of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family.] I especially hope [parents and siblings, by name] are all well and happy. [Yes, thank God, all well.] I wonder if Grandma [Gladys] is still up and about! [In 2001, yes.]
I hope you kept track (and keep track) of who married who! (Whom. And who divorced whom, too.)
Oh well, I'm going now. Have a very happy birthday.
Sincerely,
Dorothy at Eighteen.
P.S. I hope you've kept up the old moral standards. [What a thing to say to an older woman.] Pax vobiscum!
Included with this spritely missive were a card from a bunch of flowers given to me by my then-boss at the cafe I worked in, a poem from my then-best friend, and a computer-generated illustration of Pavel Chekov from "Star Trek" from my brother Nulli. It had formed part of an 18th birthday card. Oh, and a program from a play I adapted from Little Women for the school Christmas assembly.
It strikes me that no man alive would write himself a letter to be read over a decade later, and I'm a bit embarrassed admitting to such a stereotypically female behaviour.
But, although I had a little trouble sleeping last night, I don't regret it. What I liked best were the tiny material fragments of my life, especially Nulli's 1980s computer drawing.
Thursday, 26 July 2018
Spiritual Luxury
Yesterday I decided to walk to the morning Mass at the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter chapel, and to my surprise, it took me less than half an hour to get there!
I wish I had thought of this earlier in our New Town exile, but my new policy is to think forward instead of regretting the past, so I'm just happy to have the (rare) chance to have the Traditional Latin Mass within walking distance.
As part of the way is hilly, it's also makes for a good workout, something I sorely need as the combination of stress, sugar and ready-meals has made me rather squab.
 |
| Squabs. |
Happy Saint Anne's Day to all the Annes, Anns, Annas, Hannahs, Ancas and Nancys! I can't resist mentioning that Saint Anne, mother of Our Lady (and "Saint Annie, God's Granny" as B.A. keeps repeating) is a patron saint of husband-finding.
That said, I give St. Joseph's intercession the credit for my finding B.A. because B.A. didn't appear on the scene until I went on pilgrimage to St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal. I went with a similarly husband-hunting friend, and she got married a year after I did.
That said, I give St. Joseph's intercession the credit for my finding B.A. because B.A. didn't appear on the scene until I went on pilgrimage to St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal. I went with a similarly husband-hunting friend, and she got married a year after I did.
Wednesday, 25 July 2018
Toothbrush Signalling
I have begun my own little war against plastic. Behold the bamboo toothbrush (model):
I also bought soap nuts. Unfortunately when I opened their cotton bag, I found that they had been double-bagged in plastic! So I will be looking for a different brand next time.
I also bought soap nuts. Unfortunately when I opened their cotton bag, I found that they had been double-bagged in plastic! So I will be looking for a different brand next time.
Tuesday, 24 July 2018
I Ponder Enlisting in the Eco-Army
Between reporting for LSN and writing to our solicitor about the New Flat, I read a lot of books and articles on four subjects: Minimalism, Escapology, Self-Sufficiency and Zero Waste Living. I have come up with a clever acronym that you can pronounce only if you have some acquaintance with Polish: MESZ.
To sum them all up:
Minimalism is about living with as little stuff as you practically can. Escapology is about living as you please, getting by on your clever investments or thanks to a cottage industry, instead of trading at least a third of your time for a salary. Self-Sufficiency is, as far as I can tell, running a very small farm. Zero Waste Living is about producing almost no trash for the landfill and precious little for the recycling bin. It is minimalism on speed, and it is also deeply rooted in reality.
I very much like all these ideas. One seems to lead to another although perhaps not in that order. I hasten to say that they are all nigh impossible to put into practise without familial or spousal cooperation. That said, the very non-Minimalist B.A. and I have been living out of a suitcase for four months, and he has not uttered a word of complaint.
Escapology for me is not about us quitting our jobs but making sure we are not miserably poor when we are old thanks to our jobs (and to highly impractical career choices made along the impecunious way). Minimalism, budgeting and thrift are key.
Self-sufficiency seems to involve gardening and tiny houses and other fun things. I do not know very much about it yet although I have a colleague who is pretty amazing at raising food for his family.
Zero Waste Living is not something you can do all at once. However, it is something to work for once you have forced yourself to confront the reality of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other horrors.
All of these concepts seem to me to be deeply rooted in reality and require the discipline of eyeballing reality, even if that reality is that your family and/or spouse are/is going to take some convincing. Meanwhile I am enjoying the thought of being a jolly environmentalist as well as a liturgical and doctrinal traditionalist: a crunchy trad, if you will. Naturally this would not include vegetarianism--except on fasting days, of course.
Monday, 23 July 2018
Polish Prince Caspian
This morning I finished reading the official Polish translation of C.S. Lewis' Prince Caspian, so I am feeling moderately pleased with myself.
I say "moderately" because I know very well that reading is the EASIEST of language-learning tasks for adults, and for me listening is the hardest.
Still, it is a milestone, and this is the second proper novel I have finished reading in Polish while carefully writing down and looking up the words I don't understand. (I read two Harry Potter novels in Polish, too, but as I didn't stringently look up the words, that doesn't really count.)
I have some reflections, possibly of interest to the language-learners out there.
1. Language Diary: I have been keeping a language diary since October 8, 2017 to keep an eye on my daily language activities and progress (or regress). It is handy to know, for example, that I started reading Ksiązę Kaspian on May 21 and finished on July 23.
2. Vocabulary Notebook: This is essential for keeping me honest about what I don't know and for making flashcards.
3. The Stab Method: This is merely keeping an interest in a difficult language alive by attempting all kinds of small linguistic projects as they catch one's interests: memorising a 1930s tango song; reading a children's book with other learners; speaking as much of the language possible during a city-break; watching an episode of a soap opera; going to a classic film; praying the Angelus with Radio Maryja.
4a. Being Rooted in Reality: Science. I have been working on Polish for almost seven years--rather more diligently in the past four or five--and, after much reading in the science of foreign language acquisition, I have concluded that it is impossible to become professionally fluent (i.e. C1) in Polish unless one lives in Poland or with Polish-speakers for a protracted period of time. This is both sad--since I cannot as yet afford to move to Poland for three months--and liberating.
4b. Being Rooted in Reality: Practicality. I am most likely to need to know spoken Polish when travelling, buying non-tourist things, suffering a medical emergency, ordering food (sometimes) in Polish restaurants off the beaten tourist track. Therefore, in terms of spoken vocabulary, memorising the contents of a standard Teach Yourself course or the first two years of a night-school course. And I do mean memorise. Memorise. Drill. Repeat. Practise. Czy Pani mowi po angielsku? Nie? Nic nie szkodzi. Spróbujemy po polsku. My czworo chcilibyśmy pojechać do Wrocławia ...
But I am most likely to need to know written Polish for work. I travel to Poland three times a year max, but I work five days a week. If I gather from the Polish newspapers that there's a big pro-life story afoot, I can usually get the gist of it. But then comes the hard part, which is writing to Polish pro-life leadership over Facebook instant message. Dear heavens. To be honest, I should be reading Evangelium Vitae in Polish every morning, not the Narnia books. But the central point is that I need to READ and WRITE Polish much more often than I need to SPEAK it.
5. But Balance... I have suspended my weekly conversation sessions with my Polish tutor, which is too bad, really, but there is just too much going on. But during our sessions, I discovered that reading Siostrzeniec Czarodzieje (The Magician's Nephew) was very much improving my spoken vocabulary. That said, I interleaved reading The Magician's Nephew with reviewing a grammar book, listening to a recording of Siostrzeniec Czarodzieja and actively memorising SC vocabulary. Afterwards, I realised that many, if not the most, of the words I worked so hard to commit to memory I would never be called upon to say aloud (dziedziniec--courtyard). However, the listening and the memorising were nevertheless very good exercises and helped me a lot. And, of course, if you want to speak a language, you actually have to speak it, not just read it.
6. Habit is Powerful. It's easy for me to read an increasing number of pages of Polish because I do it from 7:30 AM to 8:30 AM every day. What is hard forcing myself to listen to Polish, especially now that my earbuds have fallen apart. (I need new earbuds, clearly.) It is also hard to force myself to write Polish, except for the semi-literate messages I send the patient leaders of the Ruch Pro-Life w Polsce.
7. Enjoyment is also Powerful. I should read Evangelium Vitae in Polish next, but I am going to read Podróż Wędrowca do świtu (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) after making a dictionary of all the words I looked up for the first two Narnia books. But maybe I could devote 2 mornings a week to EV.
I say "moderately" because I know very well that reading is the EASIEST of language-learning tasks for adults, and for me listening is the hardest.
Still, it is a milestone, and this is the second proper novel I have finished reading in Polish while carefully writing down and looking up the words I don't understand. (I read two Harry Potter novels in Polish, too, but as I didn't stringently look up the words, that doesn't really count.)
I have some reflections, possibly of interest to the language-learners out there.
1. Language Diary: I have been keeping a language diary since October 8, 2017 to keep an eye on my daily language activities and progress (or regress). It is handy to know, for example, that I started reading Ksiązę Kaspian on May 21 and finished on July 23.
2. Vocabulary Notebook: This is essential for keeping me honest about what I don't know and for making flashcards.
3. The Stab Method: This is merely keeping an interest in a difficult language alive by attempting all kinds of small linguistic projects as they catch one's interests: memorising a 1930s tango song; reading a children's book with other learners; speaking as much of the language possible during a city-break; watching an episode of a soap opera; going to a classic film; praying the Angelus with Radio Maryja.
4a. Being Rooted in Reality: Science. I have been working on Polish for almost seven years--rather more diligently in the past four or five--and, after much reading in the science of foreign language acquisition, I have concluded that it is impossible to become professionally fluent (i.e. C1) in Polish unless one lives in Poland or with Polish-speakers for a protracted period of time. This is both sad--since I cannot as yet afford to move to Poland for three months--and liberating.
4b. Being Rooted in Reality: Practicality. I am most likely to need to know spoken Polish when travelling, buying non-tourist things, suffering a medical emergency, ordering food (sometimes) in Polish restaurants off the beaten tourist track. Therefore, in terms of spoken vocabulary, memorising the contents of a standard Teach Yourself course or the first two years of a night-school course. And I do mean memorise. Memorise. Drill. Repeat. Practise. Czy Pani mowi po angielsku? Nie? Nic nie szkodzi. Spróbujemy po polsku. My czworo chcilibyśmy pojechać do Wrocławia ...
But I am most likely to need to know written Polish for work. I travel to Poland three times a year max, but I work five days a week. If I gather from the Polish newspapers that there's a big pro-life story afoot, I can usually get the gist of it. But then comes the hard part, which is writing to Polish pro-life leadership over Facebook instant message. Dear heavens. To be honest, I should be reading Evangelium Vitae in Polish every morning, not the Narnia books. But the central point is that I need to READ and WRITE Polish much more often than I need to SPEAK it.
5. But Balance... I have suspended my weekly conversation sessions with my Polish tutor, which is too bad, really, but there is just too much going on. But during our sessions, I discovered that reading Siostrzeniec Czarodzieje (The Magician's Nephew) was very much improving my spoken vocabulary. That said, I interleaved reading The Magician's Nephew with reviewing a grammar book, listening to a recording of Siostrzeniec Czarodzieja and actively memorising SC vocabulary. Afterwards, I realised that many, if not the most, of the words I worked so hard to commit to memory I would never be called upon to say aloud (dziedziniec--courtyard). However, the listening and the memorising were nevertheless very good exercises and helped me a lot. And, of course, if you want to speak a language, you actually have to speak it, not just read it.
6. Habit is Powerful. It's easy for me to read an increasing number of pages of Polish because I do it from 7:30 AM to 8:30 AM every day. What is hard forcing myself to listen to Polish, especially now that my earbuds have fallen apart. (I need new earbuds, clearly.) It is also hard to force myself to write Polish, except for the semi-literate messages I send the patient leaders of the Ruch Pro-Life w Polsce.
7. Enjoyment is also Powerful. I should read Evangelium Vitae in Polish next, but I am going to read Podróż Wędrowca do świtu (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) after making a dictionary of all the words I looked up for the first two Narnia books. But maybe I could devote 2 mornings a week to EV.
Sunday, 22 July 2018
Not too Tired for a Hike
On Friday B.A., my mum and I all sat around the big kitchen table in the cellar-level of the New Town Flat and had supper. I had finished and submitted three stories that day, so I was feeling tired but cheerful.
"Tomorrow let's do something en famille," said B.A. "That is, the three of us, since the rest of the famille is in Canada."
"What would you like to do, Mum?" I asked.
"What about a Fife Coastal Walk?" she proposed, and so on Saturday morning we took a bus to Elie, Fife and walked along the official Fife Coastal Path to St. Monans.
The weather was warm--but not too warm--and slightly breezy--but not too breezy, and the sun began to shine when we alighted in Elie. We bought sandwiches in the village deli--there being no supermarket--and sat on tussocks of grass, watching men in white playing cricket on the beach. Cricket is an unusual sport for Scotland, let alone cricket on the beach!
We had a marvellous walk, exploring one of the small ruined castles that abound in Scotland, and puzzling over wildflowers, racking our memories for their names: bewgloss, rosebay willowherb, red campion...
The sky and the Firth of Forth were many shades on the spectrum of Blue, and home seemed comfortable near on the other shore. Sometimes the path was quite steep, and I was out of breath, and it felt all very healthy. B.A. observed that his treatment hasn't left him tired out yet. He's got two weeks, two days to go.
When we got to St. Monans, we all had a look in the restored 14th century church, which has been Protestant since the Scottish Reformation. As is our wont, when alone in pre-Reformation Churches, B.A. and I turned to the easternmost wall and sang "Salve Regina". On this occasion, the church vibrated with the sound.
"The acoustics are great," Mum enthused.
We decided that we didn't have enough time to walk to Pittenweem and catch the 4:10 PM bus back to Edinburgh, so we got ice-cream cones or espresso in a teashop and visited a church jumble sale instead.
Thank you for all the prayers! B.A. was very moved last night when he read my last post and saw your comments.
"Tomorrow let's do something en famille," said B.A. "That is, the three of us, since the rest of the famille is in Canada."
"What would you like to do, Mum?" I asked.
"What about a Fife Coastal Walk?" she proposed, and so on Saturday morning we took a bus to Elie, Fife and walked along the official Fife Coastal Path to St. Monans.
The weather was warm--but not too warm--and slightly breezy--but not too breezy, and the sun began to shine when we alighted in Elie. We bought sandwiches in the village deli--there being no supermarket--and sat on tussocks of grass, watching men in white playing cricket on the beach. Cricket is an unusual sport for Scotland, let alone cricket on the beach!
We had a marvellous walk, exploring one of the small ruined castles that abound in Scotland, and puzzling over wildflowers, racking our memories for their names: bewgloss, rosebay willowherb, red campion...
The sky and the Firth of Forth were many shades on the spectrum of Blue, and home seemed comfortable near on the other shore. Sometimes the path was quite steep, and I was out of breath, and it felt all very healthy. B.A. observed that his treatment hasn't left him tired out yet. He's got two weeks, two days to go.
When we got to St. Monans, we all had a look in the restored 14th century church, which has been Protestant since the Scottish Reformation. As is our wont, when alone in pre-Reformation Churches, B.A. and I turned to the easternmost wall and sang "Salve Regina". On this occasion, the church vibrated with the sound.
"The acoustics are great," Mum enthused.
We decided that we didn't have enough time to walk to Pittenweem and catch the 4:10 PM bus back to Edinburgh, so we got ice-cream cones or espresso in a teashop and visited a church jumble sale instead.
Thank you for all the prayers! B.A. was very moved last night when he read my last post and saw your comments.
Friday, 20 July 2018
His Hair is Falling Out
Just as I was feeling all depressed for having gained a lot of weight from the no-kitchen lifestyle AND for yet another crisis regarding the New Flat (which we were supposed to possess today, at the latest), Benedict Ambrose showed me a big clump of hair that had just come out of his head.
That put everything into perspective, and I burst into tears.
B.A. has hair like nobody in my family. It is brown, short, straight and soft like animal fur. Maybe like a beaver pelt. It's a miracle to me that real human beings have hair like that, and that thick, coarse, dry, wavy/curly hair is not a human universal.
B.A. told me not to cry, and he did not seem at all perturbed. The radiation therapy doesn't hurt, and no marks have been left on his skin. His doctor warned him that hair would eventually fall out, and now it has begun.
That put everything into perspective, and I burst into tears.
B.A. has hair like nobody in my family. It is brown, short, straight and soft like animal fur. Maybe like a beaver pelt. It's a miracle to me that real human beings have hair like that, and that thick, coarse, dry, wavy/curly hair is not a human universal.
B.A. told me not to cry, and he did not seem at all perturbed. The radiation therapy doesn't hurt, and no marks have been left on his skin. His doctor warned him that hair would eventually fall out, and now it has begun.
Thursday, 19 July 2018
Consolations in Unplanned Non-parenthood
Writing this post at the request of a reader, I would like to being by saying that childlessness is a terrible form of poverty, and the anti-child attitude of contemporary western societies is a kind of madness. I watch the birthrate of Italians, for example, plunge ever downward, its death rate shoot ever upward, and grieve for a merry, once famously family-minded, Catholic people.
It is a terrible irony to be a married social conservative without any children of her own. When I was an undergrad, I remember a cynical pal sneering at a married Catholic professorial couple. "So why don't they have children?" he said with a knowing smirk.
"They married late," snapped their loyal student, and the cynic shut up.
As far as I know, that's our reason: we married late. However, young couples too sometimes have trouble conceiving, for reasons known (paralysis, for example) and unknown. The young, however, have more options in terms of becoming parents: they can accumulate money so that they can pay the exorbitant fees required to adopt a baby before they turn 40, for example. (Many countries do not allow people over 40 to adopt infants, presumably for the same reason Nature shuts down women's ability to have babies about then.) Therefore, I would advise any young couple would would like to adopt a baby to start planning NOW.
Meanwhile, what are the consolations of unplanned non-parenthood for a traditional Catholic couple? This is a tough question, but I have slept on it and come up with a list.
Before I begin, however, promise you will NOT ask me if I have heard of this or that ground-breaking natural fertility treatment. I am too old. It will not work. I am not St. Elizabeth.
FAITHFULNESS TO GOD: The major temptation contemporary society holds out to the single woman who terribly wants children is to "just go out to a bar and get pregnant." This advice was given to me when I was in my early thirties. I gently told the woman that I was a theology student minoring in Christian Ethics, so I didn't feel I could do that.
The major temptation contemporary society holds out to married couples is In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF), which is not actually the most effective fertility treatment ever devised, but that is what UK doctors offer. Indeed, UK doctors offered it to me again and again until I accused one of anti-Catholic sectarianism. My, was she aggrieved. A kinder doctor told me that he hadn't known the Catholic religion forbade IVF.
So the bright side of the horror that is In Vitro Frankenstein is that fertility-challenged couples can now make the virtuous choice of saying no. Before IVF, we were all just unlucky.
CHILDREN DON'T SUFFER WHEN YOU DO: So last March my husband was suddenly diagnosed with an incredibly rare brain tumour and acute water-on-the-brain. He was hospitalised within fifteen minutes of receiving the Last Rites. He survived the operation, but spent the next seven months getting inexplicably sicker. We both suffered a lot--but nobody suffered the way children suffer when one of their parents is terribly sick and might die.
"This is why God didn't send us kids," I occasionally thought.
Of our own, I meant. God sends us other people's children with regular frequency. The night of B.A.'s incredibly dangerous, make-or-break, fifth operation, Polish Pretend Daughter and French Pretend Son-in-Law were living with me. If they hadn't been, that would have been me alone beside the telephone waiting to hear if B.A. was (A) Dead, (B) Irreparably Brain Damaged, or (C) Alive But We Won't Know Anything for 24 Hours.
OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN: Just because children feel a need to win some independence from their own parents, doesn't mean they don't still need parents occasionally. I'm not even thinking of Little League, Guides, Scouts, and all the children who rely on the para-parenthood of volunteer adults. I'm thinking of university students in housing crises, young (and not so young) foreign brides crying with homesickness, and beautiful young things who might get into trouble if nobody clears their throat (or gets drunk) and says the difficult truth.
Sometimes if you pray for children you will find yourself called upon to parent Other People's Children. And this is a great consolation because, no matter how much contemporary theologians kick around marriage, its primary purpose is to turn self-centred adults into loving mothers and fathers.
Also, of course, I am an Aunt. There is great dignity and honour in being an Aunt. I am also the Godmother of three, including an Italian Canadian, which makes this often underplayed role incredibly iconic and awesome.
ONE'S SPOUSE: Fortunately for me, Benedict Ambrose is a hospitable chap who very much likes young people. If it weren't for the cut-throat politics, he would have made an excellent career as a university lecturer. Therefore, when I ask if this suddenly homeless Pole or that travelling Canadian can stay for a few days, he gives permission. Meanwhile, he was never so drawn to the idea of being a biological father that he feels particularly oppressed by childlessness. He is reasonably sad that I am sad, but that seems to be it. He thinks that he doesn't care so much because he is a man.
FREEDOM TO BE POOR: We are buying the cheapest two-bedroom flat we could find in a poorer neighbourhood instead of a one-bedroom flat in the New Town because we both love offering hospitality. That said, we live a rather cash-strapped lifestyle (soon to become even more cash-strapped, thanks to Mr Mortgage). This is because B.A. works for a Historical House charity, and I am a writer with socially conservative views. We both love historical houses, and I love writing. However, if we had had children, our cash-strappedness might not have been fair to them. I would be terrified that my public social conservativism would preclude my ever being gainfully employed in Scotland, which would mean my children would not grow up with the security with which I grew up with.
That said, I know families with eight children who live on the father's salary while the mother homeschools and performs miracles of household economics. But that brings me to the final, and possibly biggest consolation.
FREEDOM FROM WORRY: All (ALL) my female friends with children worry about them constantly. Constantly. The social conservatives primarily worry that their children will be eaten up and spat out by the innocence-hating world, that they will lose their Christian faith, that they will harm themselves, or allow themselves to be harmed, in all kinds of horrible ways. This is on top of worries about illness, injuries, disappearances, kidnappers, child rapists, child murderers and the state sexual education curriculum.
I don't have that worry. What I do have is the childhood memory of my father's widowed mother crying at Mass because her other child, my only uncle, had recently died.
Don't get me wrong. I cried over poor, never-existed-except-in-my-dreams Baby McLean. I'm not denying my very real pain in saying good-bye to a baby who never was and never will be. But I suspect that is not as bad as suddenly losing a real, born, known child. That is unlikely ever to happen to us. We are free from that fear.
It is a terrible irony to be a married social conservative without any children of her own. When I was an undergrad, I remember a cynical pal sneering at a married Catholic professorial couple. "So why don't they have children?" he said with a knowing smirk.
"They married late," snapped their loyal student, and the cynic shut up.
As far as I know, that's our reason: we married late. However, young couples too sometimes have trouble conceiving, for reasons known (paralysis, for example) and unknown. The young, however, have more options in terms of becoming parents: they can accumulate money so that they can pay the exorbitant fees required to adopt a baby before they turn 40, for example. (Many countries do not allow people over 40 to adopt infants, presumably for the same reason Nature shuts down women's ability to have babies about then.) Therefore, I would advise any young couple would would like to adopt a baby to start planning NOW.
Meanwhile, what are the consolations of unplanned non-parenthood for a traditional Catholic couple? This is a tough question, but I have slept on it and come up with a list.
Before I begin, however, promise you will NOT ask me if I have heard of this or that ground-breaking natural fertility treatment. I am too old. It will not work. I am not St. Elizabeth.
FAITHFULNESS TO GOD: The major temptation contemporary society holds out to the single woman who terribly wants children is to "just go out to a bar and get pregnant." This advice was given to me when I was in my early thirties. I gently told the woman that I was a theology student minoring in Christian Ethics, so I didn't feel I could do that.
The major temptation contemporary society holds out to married couples is In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF), which is not actually the most effective fertility treatment ever devised, but that is what UK doctors offer. Indeed, UK doctors offered it to me again and again until I accused one of anti-Catholic sectarianism. My, was she aggrieved. A kinder doctor told me that he hadn't known the Catholic religion forbade IVF.
So the bright side of the horror that is In Vitro Frankenstein is that fertility-challenged couples can now make the virtuous choice of saying no. Before IVF, we were all just unlucky.
CHILDREN DON'T SUFFER WHEN YOU DO: So last March my husband was suddenly diagnosed with an incredibly rare brain tumour and acute water-on-the-brain. He was hospitalised within fifteen minutes of receiving the Last Rites. He survived the operation, but spent the next seven months getting inexplicably sicker. We both suffered a lot--but nobody suffered the way children suffer when one of their parents is terribly sick and might die.
"This is why God didn't send us kids," I occasionally thought.
Of our own, I meant. God sends us other people's children with regular frequency. The night of B.A.'s incredibly dangerous, make-or-break, fifth operation, Polish Pretend Daughter and French Pretend Son-in-Law were living with me. If they hadn't been, that would have been me alone beside the telephone waiting to hear if B.A. was (A) Dead, (B) Irreparably Brain Damaged, or (C) Alive But We Won't Know Anything for 24 Hours.
OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN: Just because children feel a need to win some independence from their own parents, doesn't mean they don't still need parents occasionally. I'm not even thinking of Little League, Guides, Scouts, and all the children who rely on the para-parenthood of volunteer adults. I'm thinking of university students in housing crises, young (and not so young) foreign brides crying with homesickness, and beautiful young things who might get into trouble if nobody clears their throat (or gets drunk) and says the difficult truth.
Sometimes if you pray for children you will find yourself called upon to parent Other People's Children. And this is a great consolation because, no matter how much contemporary theologians kick around marriage, its primary purpose is to turn self-centred adults into loving mothers and fathers.
Also, of course, I am an Aunt. There is great dignity and honour in being an Aunt. I am also the Godmother of three, including an Italian Canadian, which makes this often underplayed role incredibly iconic and awesome.
ONE'S SPOUSE: Fortunately for me, Benedict Ambrose is a hospitable chap who very much likes young people. If it weren't for the cut-throat politics, he would have made an excellent career as a university lecturer. Therefore, when I ask if this suddenly homeless Pole or that travelling Canadian can stay for a few days, he gives permission. Meanwhile, he was never so drawn to the idea of being a biological father that he feels particularly oppressed by childlessness. He is reasonably sad that I am sad, but that seems to be it. He thinks that he doesn't care so much because he is a man.
FREEDOM TO BE POOR: We are buying the cheapest two-bedroom flat we could find in a poorer neighbourhood instead of a one-bedroom flat in the New Town because we both love offering hospitality. That said, we live a rather cash-strapped lifestyle (soon to become even more cash-strapped, thanks to Mr Mortgage). This is because B.A. works for a Historical House charity, and I am a writer with socially conservative views. We both love historical houses, and I love writing. However, if we had had children, our cash-strappedness might not have been fair to them. I would be terrified that my public social conservativism would preclude my ever being gainfully employed in Scotland, which would mean my children would not grow up with the security with which I grew up with.
That said, I know families with eight children who live on the father's salary while the mother homeschools and performs miracles of household economics. But that brings me to the final, and possibly biggest consolation.
FREEDOM FROM WORRY: All (ALL) my female friends with children worry about them constantly. Constantly. The social conservatives primarily worry that their children will be eaten up and spat out by the innocence-hating world, that they will lose their Christian faith, that they will harm themselves, or allow themselves to be harmed, in all kinds of horrible ways. This is on top of worries about illness, injuries, disappearances, kidnappers, child rapists, child murderers and the state sexual education curriculum.
I don't have that worry. What I do have is the childhood memory of my father's widowed mother crying at Mass because her other child, my only uncle, had recently died.
Don't get me wrong. I cried over poor, never-existed-except-in-my-dreams Baby McLean. I'm not denying my very real pain in saying good-bye to a baby who never was and never will be. But I suspect that is not as bad as suddenly losing a real, born, known child. That is unlikely ever to happen to us. We are free from that fear.
Wednesday, 18 July 2018
Hygge and Happiness
PREFACE: When I wrote this post, I was still rather depressed, so I'm glad the grumpy wifi wouldn't let me publish. After a day's reflection, I saw what the central problem was. See Afterward for that.
***
***
I spend forty hours of the week grappling with politics and scandals, civil and church, and at least seven hours reading Polish, so the rest of the time I try to read as widely as possible. This weekend I had a lot of reading opportunity as my parents were here, and when the adult members of my family are together in one room, we tend not to play board games. We tend to read.
So yesterday I was greatly amused by Escape Everything, which is about escaping the rat race to do what you like, which I first did over fifteen years ago, albeit without thinking much about the economics of it all. Escape Everything delves into the economics, dancing a tarantella on consumerism while I applauded. It also forbids the reader from getting a mortgage, to which I could only sigh, having only just got one. Escape Everything enjoys the freedom of renting, as mobility is one of its primary values, and doesn't have much to say about old age.
When I had finished chortling over Escape Everything, which shored up my anti-consumerism beliefs and even inspired me to give up daily coffee (gradually), I picked up The Little Book of Hygge: the Danish Way to Live Well by Meik Wiking.
I didn't buy the hygge (pron. 'hoo-geh') books when they first snowed down upon the bookshops, for they were expensive, and I settled down to The Little Book feeling smug and snug, for I had borrowed it for free from the library. To my dismay, as I read about Danish lamps, warming drinks, bonfires on the beach, December weather, etc., etc., I felt sadder and sadder. Eventually I put the book down and burst into tears.
I burst into tears becasue central to hygge--a north Germanic sense of hominess (as the book correctly says it is called in Canada)--is spending as much time as possible with family and friends. The top source of happiness, according to Copenhagen's Happiness Research Institute, is spending time with family and friends. People are particularly happy while playing with children.
So even if you ignored everything in Escape Everything and bought expensive Danish lamps, woolly Danish jumpers, thick Danish socks, made Danish recipes and Christmas decorations and even imported a reindeer hide and had a fireplace put in, if you don't have friends and family around, you have missed the Happiness Nation in the World Express.
Why this should so upset me after spending a (rare) weekend with my parents is strange. However, it's been a hard week of, e.g., "Humanae Vitae betrayed Casti Connubii by privileging the unitive end of marriage over the procreative end of marriage." It's easy to nod sagely over that if you're married and have kids.
"Auntie, when you're not here, it's like you don't even exist," said my nephew Pirate, for which he is not to blame, for he was only seven. It was not even true, as I was still writing for his archdiocesan newspaper, and thus an out-of-date photograph of my smiling face appeared in his school library every two weeks. However, it hurt like hell.
Sending presents can only go so far to maintain a relationship with children. When I was a child, American uncle and grandmother sent interesting brown paper parcels from time to him, but my Canadian grandmother, who lived a 30 minute stroll (if that) away, came to visit every Sunday. She brought cookies--my mother drew the line at candy--wrapped in paper kitchen towel that smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. She didn't play with us--and she rarely babysat ("My Nerves!")--but she was a genial presence in the kitchen, either smoking or washing the dishes and putting them away where my mother couldn't find them. (Or so said my mother.) As a result, my grandmother, who went through the trouble only of having one child, was adored by five other children.
I'm really not sure what to do about being thousands of miles away from my family and best friends almost all of the time, if spending as much time with family and friends is really the secret of happiness in earthly life. And when I think about it, I've never met any Danes--presumably because they stay with their family and friends in Denmark.
However, I understand that there is a great deal of happiness to be found in gardening, and the mortgage will also get us a garden, so there is that.
****
AFTERWORD: So the central problem, of course, is that I stopped thinking about what we DO have and started thinking about what we DON'T have and, indeed, may never have. Escape Everything is about giving up non-essentials to embrace what you really love. The Little Book of Hygge is about lives entirely unlike mine. I can't imagine what a cloistered nun or a bereaved Syrian refugee, for example, would think of The Little Book of Hygge.
The whole point of the Seraphic Singles blog was to find out, and celebrate, what Singleness had going for it without denigrating marriage or religious life. Now the ongoing challenge, I suppose, is to always appreciate what childlessness and voluntary exile have going for them, without making the mistake of denigrating parenthood, the primary calling of married people, children and family.
There's got to be a middle ground between the dour "Childless spouses are cursed by God" point of view and the imbecilic "Hooray for child-free me".
One of the nicest things I do have, something that doesn't cost me any money at the moment, is the chance to see whole streets of Georgian architecture, with amazing gardens in ceramic pots down the stairwells to the lower flats. So I'm off now to look at them again.
Sunday, 15 July 2018
Space and Hedgehogs
The downstairs neighbours, from whom we were subletting, have gone home to the Continent. Now we are renting directly from the owners, and we have emerged from our room. The New Town flat in which we have slept, washed, eaten and quarrelled for a over a month actually comprises two stories--and perhaps 2,000 square feet--of what was once a six storey townhouse, built before 1840. Now we are the sole inhabitants and can sit downstairs.
Update: One critic pointed out that the central characters are rather nasty about others in the book. I noticed that. However, they are not nasty to these people, and personally I do not mind if incredibly rich left-wingers are trounced in fiction. I also enjoyed how the Catholic reactionaries are shown to be decent in times of crisis. I suspect many lefty French intellectuals enjoy freaking out other lefty French intellectuals by admiring (or pretending to admire) Catholic reactionaries. Look at Houellebecq.
There is a garden, too, with a pile of sticks and leaves that may contain hedgehogs. I have been reading gardening books, and one was very enthusiastic about creating these hedgehog-friendly dens.
I have moved my centre of morning operations to the kitchen. It is directly under the room of our refuge, and it has a twelve-light window looking into the street stairwell (the flat is "lower ground floor") with a cushioned window seat. It is much more comfortable to study here than to study on the floor between the window and the drawn curtains in our room, which I did for weeks, as B.A. slept on.
We used to say, when we lived in the Historical House, that we would never live anywhere so grand or comfortable again. This turned out not to be true, exactly, as now--thanks to our friends, the owners--we are living in a delightful two storey flat in the New Town. Temporarily. If a surveyor finds nothing seriously wrong with the New Flat, we will move there next Monday.
Meanwhile, we live a New Town life, and I am too frightened to look at our bank account. B.A. bought two bottles of £10 wine at Margiotta's yesterday. What was he thinking?
"It was on sale," he said breezily, and as my parents are in town, and like good wine, I just repeated my stricture that once we move into the New Flat the party ends.
The New Flat is in a much less exclusive neighbourhood, to put it mildly. It is in a row house built for such working-class Edinburgh people whose city centre slum was about to be knocked down. At the time, the river outside the row house was dirty, the ground was brown, and the air was full of noise. Ninety years later, there is no more heavy industry in that part of town, and so the environment is actually liveable. But it is neither the Historical Estate nor the New Town, so I will have a very difficult time maintaining my delusions of grandeur.
Comfort comes, however, in The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbary (translated into English by Alison Anderson), which is about a Parisian building superintendent, or concierge, who secretly lives for art, philosophy and fine food. She goes to extreme lengths not to allow anyone in her building--one of the most chic and luxurious apartment buildings in Paris--to find out she isn't the stereotypical Paris concierge: surly, uneducated, uncultured and dumb.
I was not aware that there was a stereotype for Paris concierges. My friend the Economist lives in a new build in Krakow, and the management employs women to watch the door. One seemed very nice, and one seemed suspicious of my presence, much to the Economist's masculine joy. As I am 17 years older than the Economist, it seems unlikely that I could disturb the chaste soul of a Krakow concierge, but then you never know. I am more familiar with the elderly Polish women who maintain the public loos, collecting coins in a little dish while (allegedly) listening to Radio Maria.
But I digress. My point was that this concierge, while striving to live down to an awful stereotype, manages to have a rich interior life involving philosophy, Russian literature (in translation) Japanese films (also in translation), and really delicious cheese and pastries. (I was concerned that she was not sharing her considerable gifts with anyone, but that is where character development came in.)
So, although Madame Michel is an atheist French intellectual who gives phenomenology a good kicking, The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a very inspiring book. Madame M may tend to an architecturally and culturally snazzy building, but she herself lives in three pokey rooms.
Update: One critic pointed out that the central characters are rather nasty about others in the book. I noticed that. However, they are not nasty to these people, and personally I do not mind if incredibly rich left-wingers are trounced in fiction. I also enjoyed how the Catholic reactionaries are shown to be decent in times of crisis. I suspect many lefty French intellectuals enjoy freaking out other lefty French intellectuals by admiring (or pretending to admire) Catholic reactionaries. Look at Houellebecq.
Monday, 9 July 2018
The Joy of Letting Go and Letting God (and Solicitors)
The best-case-scenario move-in date has come and gone because I found an interesting thing in the paperwork that everyone, including our solicitor, missed. Apparently third parties aren't supposed to know about it, so we'll leave it at that.
I may have saved B.A. and me £1,000 or more, so I am quite pleased instead of catastrophically depressed. I have even stopped whining about living in "ONE ROOM", as in, "Oh woe is me, what decisions have I made in life that have culminated in us living in ONE ROOM?" as if the one room were in debtors' prison instead of Edinburgh's ritzy New Town.
Meanwhile it is early July, so the chances of finding surveyors and (potentially) contractors who are not on the traditional two-week July holiday are slim, but that is not my business, but that of solicitors, so I have left them to get on with it, between their own July holidays, of course. No skin off my nose. I have transferred the equivalent of a year's pay (household) into my solicitor's client account and postponed Stage One of the move, and now all I have to do is wait.
All poor B.A. has to do is continue going to the hospital to have radiation shot into his brain tumour. That's why it is Mrs B.A. who is doing all the fine-print reading and dealing with banks, solicitors, mortgage brokers, and man-with-van, in case you were wondering. I have also met a future neighbour and signalled my willingness to put the garden to rights. But, really, all this is nothing to my decision just to let go and let God (and solicitors) work out when B.A. and I are actually going to move in.
Yay, me!
By the way, if I were still writing posts for Singles, I would point out that if you think you can avoid having to talk to bank managers, solicitors, mortgage brokers, and other intimidating people just by getting married to a traditional Catholic man, leaning upon his towering strength like a tender vine twined around a mighty oak tree, you can think again!
Husbands get sick. Sometimes they even die young. I knew a young woman whose husband dropped dead at 24 or so of a heart attack; she was a few months pregnant at the time. She was a model of faith and courage, and everyone admired her so much. But the tragedy was certainly a reminder that youth is no guarantee against death and widowhood.*
There are only so many things you can do about that, too. Top of the list is making sure your husband goes to the doctor when something is clearly wrong with them, e.g. being overweight, being underweight, having a chronically sore neck. For some weird reason, in UK culture men don't go to the doctor unless their wives of kinswomen make them. If your husband is easily influenced by your own habits, don't smoke and don't drink too much. Serve him vegetables. Take him for walks, if that's the only exercise he'll take. If he is of a nervous disposition, try not to stress him out. Speak kindly to him as much as possible, as if he were your prize rose bush.
But really, that's it. With husbands' health, as with real estate, there needs to be a strong let-go-and-let-God (and professionals) philosophy at a certain point.
Meanwhile, as you can see, the two things uppermost on my mind are still the New Flat and B.A.'s Brain Tumour, despite my decision not to be stressed out about either. But I suppose that is not unusual.
*To be scrupulously fair to traditional Catholic men, I should add that some of them may have no taste for business and might actually be relieved if their hardheaded wives do this stuff instead.
I may have saved B.A. and me £1,000 or more, so I am quite pleased instead of catastrophically depressed. I have even stopped whining about living in "ONE ROOM", as in, "Oh woe is me, what decisions have I made in life that have culminated in us living in ONE ROOM?" as if the one room were in debtors' prison instead of Edinburgh's ritzy New Town.
Meanwhile it is early July, so the chances of finding surveyors and (potentially) contractors who are not on the traditional two-week July holiday are slim, but that is not my business, but that of solicitors, so I have left them to get on with it, between their own July holidays, of course. No skin off my nose. I have transferred the equivalent of a year's pay (household) into my solicitor's client account and postponed Stage One of the move, and now all I have to do is wait.
All poor B.A. has to do is continue going to the hospital to have radiation shot into his brain tumour. That's why it is Mrs B.A. who is doing all the fine-print reading and dealing with banks, solicitors, mortgage brokers, and man-with-van, in case you were wondering. I have also met a future neighbour and signalled my willingness to put the garden to rights. But, really, all this is nothing to my decision just to let go and let God (and solicitors) work out when B.A. and I are actually going to move in.
Yay, me!
By the way, if I were still writing posts for Singles, I would point out that if you think you can avoid having to talk to bank managers, solicitors, mortgage brokers, and other intimidating people just by getting married to a traditional Catholic man, leaning upon his towering strength like a tender vine twined around a mighty oak tree, you can think again!
Husbands get sick. Sometimes they even die young. I knew a young woman whose husband dropped dead at 24 or so of a heart attack; she was a few months pregnant at the time. She was a model of faith and courage, and everyone admired her so much. But the tragedy was certainly a reminder that youth is no guarantee against death and widowhood.*
There are only so many things you can do about that, too. Top of the list is making sure your husband goes to the doctor when something is clearly wrong with them, e.g. being overweight, being underweight, having a chronically sore neck. For some weird reason, in UK culture men don't go to the doctor unless their wives of kinswomen make them. If your husband is easily influenced by your own habits, don't smoke and don't drink too much. Serve him vegetables. Take him for walks, if that's the only exercise he'll take. If he is of a nervous disposition, try not to stress him out. Speak kindly to him as much as possible, as if he were your prize rose bush.
But really, that's it. With husbands' health, as with real estate, there needs to be a strong let-go-and-let-God (and professionals) philosophy at a certain point.
Meanwhile, as you can see, the two things uppermost on my mind are still the New Flat and B.A.'s Brain Tumour, despite my decision not to be stressed out about either. But I suppose that is not unusual.
*To be scrupulously fair to traditional Catholic men, I should add that some of them may have no taste for business and might actually be relieved if their hardheaded wives do this stuff instead.
Wednesday, 4 July 2018
Enforced Minimalism
Thank heavens for Marie Kondo, authoress of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Last summer I gave our flat in the Historical House a tremendous clear-out, little knowing that a pipe would burst, destroying our bathroom and leading to our exile. We have Kondo to thank for the fact that our flat, though much trodden upon by firefighters and workmen, is not a complete shambles.
After a few short (thank heavens) stays in hotels, we were put in a one-bedroom "holiday let" flat with a kitchen for some months. Then, having received the bad news that we could never again live in our beloved Historical House, we were asked to vacate the holiday let. Now, thanks to a generous friend who has bought a country home, we are living in a room in the New Town.
This is downsizing to a whole new level, and I keep thinking about James Joyce's family's spiral down the property ladder. However, that is not fair, for the reason we have not just signed a year's lease on a £900/month flat in the New Town is that we have offered to BUY a flat and now we are just waiting for the solicitors to tell us where to send the money and to give us the keys. Unlike the great majority of flood victims, we have a choice here.
Meanwhile, I have been learning what is absolutely essential for comfortable living, and to my surprise, I only do need one pair of shoes although I admit a prettier pair for Sunday Mass would be an excellent addition. Strangely, my husband seems to need five or six pairs; occasionally I collect them from around the room and place them in two rows by the door.
Also essential (for summer): one raincoat, two skirts, a suit, four T-shirts, enough socks, tights and underclothes for a week, two nightgowns, a Sunday dress, bed-socks and a towel.
In terms of furnishings, one really does need a stove of her own. After a month of microwave meals, I can safely say that when I have a stove again, I will never willingly eat a microwaved meal for the rest of my life. A hot plate would have saved us a lot of money, for we might not have been driven to eating out so often with a hot plate.
Then one needs a table, a chair, a fork, knife and spoon, a wide bowl that can also serve as a plate, a drinking glass, a mug for coffee, a kettle, a french press (for coffee), a tray on which to keep the morning coffee equipment, a shelf for books and papers, a bed with pillows that can double as cushions, two fitted sheets, two duvet covers, a duvet and a bathroom with plentiful hot water. Oh, and a wardrobe for hiding all clothing. And a plastic bag for the rubbish which one must take out ASAP to the friendly bin on the street. And two dishtowels. And a dirty-laundry basket.
If you are B.A., you also need a radio and wi-fi. I admit I wish the building's wi-fi was strong enough to reach my computer, but after 8-9 hours online in my little office back in the Historical House, I am happy to be off while back in the One Room.
If we had a stove, naturally we would also want a sharp knife, a chopping board, a mixing bowl, a pot-holder, a pot and a frying pan.
I am thinking these thoughts because one day in the next two months we are going to have to pay movers a hefty sum to take all our belongings down three flights of stairs from the long Attic Flat in the Historical House and carry them up one flight to the short First-Storey Flat in the Riverside Row House. This means that we are going to have another massive clear-out, and I am stiffening my resolve with the thought that we need much less than we currently have.
This is going to be a serious exercise in being rooted in reality.
After a few short (thank heavens) stays in hotels, we were put in a one-bedroom "holiday let" flat with a kitchen for some months. Then, having received the bad news that we could never again live in our beloved Historical House, we were asked to vacate the holiday let. Now, thanks to a generous friend who has bought a country home, we are living in a room in the New Town.
This is downsizing to a whole new level, and I keep thinking about James Joyce's family's spiral down the property ladder. However, that is not fair, for the reason we have not just signed a year's lease on a £900/month flat in the New Town is that we have offered to BUY a flat and now we are just waiting for the solicitors to tell us where to send the money and to give us the keys. Unlike the great majority of flood victims, we have a choice here.
Meanwhile, I have been learning what is absolutely essential for comfortable living, and to my surprise, I only do need one pair of shoes although I admit a prettier pair for Sunday Mass would be an excellent addition. Strangely, my husband seems to need five or six pairs; occasionally I collect them from around the room and place them in two rows by the door.
Also essential (for summer): one raincoat, two skirts, a suit, four T-shirts, enough socks, tights and underclothes for a week, two nightgowns, a Sunday dress, bed-socks and a towel.
In terms of furnishings, one really does need a stove of her own. After a month of microwave meals, I can safely say that when I have a stove again, I will never willingly eat a microwaved meal for the rest of my life. A hot plate would have saved us a lot of money, for we might not have been driven to eating out so often with a hot plate.
Then one needs a table, a chair, a fork, knife and spoon, a wide bowl that can also serve as a plate, a drinking glass, a mug for coffee, a kettle, a french press (for coffee), a tray on which to keep the morning coffee equipment, a shelf for books and papers, a bed with pillows that can double as cushions, two fitted sheets, two duvet covers, a duvet and a bathroom with plentiful hot water. Oh, and a wardrobe for hiding all clothing. And a plastic bag for the rubbish which one must take out ASAP to the friendly bin on the street. And two dishtowels. And a dirty-laundry basket.
If you are B.A., you also need a radio and wi-fi. I admit I wish the building's wi-fi was strong enough to reach my computer, but after 8-9 hours online in my little office back in the Historical House, I am happy to be off while back in the One Room.
If we had a stove, naturally we would also want a sharp knife, a chopping board, a mixing bowl, a pot-holder, a pot and a frying pan.
I am thinking these thoughts because one day in the next two months we are going to have to pay movers a hefty sum to take all our belongings down three flights of stairs from the long Attic Flat in the Historical House and carry them up one flight to the short First-Storey Flat in the Riverside Row House. This means that we are going to have another massive clear-out, and I am stiffening my resolve with the thought that we need much less than we currently have.
This is going to be a serious exercise in being rooted in reality.
Thursday, 28 June 2018
The Already and the Not Yet
I have been sitting on the stairs to our new flat. We don't actually own the flat yet. We have had an offer accepted, and a genial bank has given us a mortgage, and there is a "Sorry, Sold" sign on one of the river-facing windows. Our solicitor is working with the seller's solicitor for an earlier move-in date. The seller lives out of town, so this shouldn't be a problem.
All the same, I have been sitting on the stairs to our new flat. It is on the second floor (i.e. on the first floor by European counting) of a two-storey row house built in 1930. It is accessible by a wide concrete staircase, which leads up to a west-facing front door. There are five windows facing west over the gardens (two in the kitchen, one in the bathroom, one over the front door, and one in the front bedroom) and three, I think, facing the river across the street (two in the sitting-room and one I the back bedroom). For some reason, the flat has been demarcated on the west side by a coat of reddish-ochre paint. B.A. likes this and says it is authentic.
This morning's was my third visit to the flat since webought put in an offer for it. My purpose was to see where in the garden the sun falls in the morning. Yesterday I dropped by to see where the sun fell in the afternoon. The raised beds at the back of the garden, under the apple tree, seem to be always in shade.
Yes, we have (or will have) an apple tree, and the Lady Downstairs told us on our first visit that it gives good eating apples. The Lady Downstairs has a wider strip of garden than we do, but no fruit trees. The departed tenant of our flat used to give her apples, she hinted, and we promised that if our bid was successful, we would keep the apples coming.
The apple tree clinched the deal for me (does anyone ever say 'clinched 'anymore?), to be honest. My first surprise was that the two bedroom flat came with a private garden at all. For over a year, off and on, I have been looking at affordable flats in Edinburgh and environs, and it never dawned on me that one might conceivable come with a private garden. A shared concrete chessboard with laundry lines stretched across it, yes. A sad strip of grass covered in cigarette butts, certainly. But a private garden, no.
For the first time since my Mediaeval Herbal Phase, I have been reading gardening books.
Meanwhile, we are still living in one big room (with ensuite) in the New Town, loaned to us by a generous friend for a peppercorn rent, which goes to her proper tenants, who suddenly found themselves with both housemates and an income-stream. It is a beautifully proportioned room, an excellent shelter after an evening of admiring the architecture of the New Town.
However, the wi-fi connection is weak, which means I go to the Historical House to work, and we are shy of intruding upon the proper tenants in the kitchen, which means either cold food or the microwave. Then there is the problem of two married people who cannot politely get away from each other. B.A. sleeps lightly and late, so in the morning I make a chair out of two pillows on the other side of the closed floor-length drapes and there read five pages of Książe Kaspian.
If we were newlyweds in our twenties this would be sooooooo romantic. Sadly, we aren't.
So while sitting on the steps to our new flat, whose keys we do not yet have, I think about how nice it will be to go indoors and have a kitchen and sitting-room again. The irony, of course, is that the New Town is arguably the best place in all Edinburgh to live, and we will be much older and richer before we even have the opportunity to do so again. I think sadly of the violent assault that befell a young man on our new street, but then there was an actual murder in the New Town a year and a half ago, so You Never Know.
We have a new flat---and we don't have a new flat. It's like the Already and the Not Yet I was told about in theology school. Since the Incarnation, the Kingdom of God is already here. But on the other hand, it's not fully yet here. Since Christ's self-sacrifice, we get to go to heaven. But on the other hand, we haven't got to heaven yet.
So sitting on the steps to the new flat, looking at the garden, is a bit like contemplating the heaven we have been offered but can't get into yet--and might not get into, if we slip up egregiously. Still, we are pretty hopeful we will not slip up that egregiously, and that we will get the keys to both places.
The other thing about looking at the garden is that it reminds me of my childhood garden (or "backyard" as Canadians usually call the land behind a house). This is a little bit sad, for when I sat on the swings in my childhood garden, I wished with all my might to be grown-up and somewhere else---perhaps romantic Britain! And now I am grown-up and in romantic Britain, and I think about the old backyard, and my thirty-something mother climbing up the cellar steps with a basket of wet laundry to hang out.
Oh, aye. How young we all were once--and presumably will be again one day!
All the same, I have been sitting on the stairs to our new flat. It is on the second floor (i.e. on the first floor by European counting) of a two-storey row house built in 1930. It is accessible by a wide concrete staircase, which leads up to a west-facing front door. There are five windows facing west over the gardens (two in the kitchen, one in the bathroom, one over the front door, and one in the front bedroom) and three, I think, facing the river across the street (two in the sitting-room and one I the back bedroom). For some reason, the flat has been demarcated on the west side by a coat of reddish-ochre paint. B.A. likes this and says it is authentic.
This morning's was my third visit to the flat since we
Yes, we have (or will have) an apple tree, and the Lady Downstairs told us on our first visit that it gives good eating apples. The Lady Downstairs has a wider strip of garden than we do, but no fruit trees. The departed tenant of our flat used to give her apples, she hinted, and we promised that if our bid was successful, we would keep the apples coming.
The apple tree clinched the deal for me (does anyone ever say 'clinched 'anymore?), to be honest. My first surprise was that the two bedroom flat came with a private garden at all. For over a year, off and on, I have been looking at affordable flats in Edinburgh and environs, and it never dawned on me that one might conceivable come with a private garden. A shared concrete chessboard with laundry lines stretched across it, yes. A sad strip of grass covered in cigarette butts, certainly. But a private garden, no.
For the first time since my Mediaeval Herbal Phase, I have been reading gardening books.
Meanwhile, we are still living in one big room (with ensuite) in the New Town, loaned to us by a generous friend for a peppercorn rent, which goes to her proper tenants, who suddenly found themselves with both housemates and an income-stream. It is a beautifully proportioned room, an excellent shelter after an evening of admiring the architecture of the New Town.
However, the wi-fi connection is weak, which means I go to the Historical House to work, and we are shy of intruding upon the proper tenants in the kitchen, which means either cold food or the microwave. Then there is the problem of two married people who cannot politely get away from each other. B.A. sleeps lightly and late, so in the morning I make a chair out of two pillows on the other side of the closed floor-length drapes and there read five pages of Książe Kaspian.
If we were newlyweds in our twenties this would be sooooooo romantic. Sadly, we aren't.
So while sitting on the steps to our new flat, whose keys we do not yet have, I think about how nice it will be to go indoors and have a kitchen and sitting-room again. The irony, of course, is that the New Town is arguably the best place in all Edinburgh to live, and we will be much older and richer before we even have the opportunity to do so again. I think sadly of the violent assault that befell a young man on our new street, but then there was an actual murder in the New Town a year and a half ago, so You Never Know.
We have a new flat---and we don't have a new flat. It's like the Already and the Not Yet I was told about in theology school. Since the Incarnation, the Kingdom of God is already here. But on the other hand, it's not fully yet here. Since Christ's self-sacrifice, we get to go to heaven. But on the other hand, we haven't got to heaven yet.
So sitting on the steps to the new flat, looking at the garden, is a bit like contemplating the heaven we have been offered but can't get into yet--and might not get into, if we slip up egregiously. Still, we are pretty hopeful we will not slip up that egregiously, and that we will get the keys to both places.
The other thing about looking at the garden is that it reminds me of my childhood garden (or "backyard" as Canadians usually call the land behind a house). This is a little bit sad, for when I sat on the swings in my childhood garden, I wished with all my might to be grown-up and somewhere else---perhaps romantic Britain! And now I am grown-up and in romantic Britain, and I think about the old backyard, and my thirty-something mother climbing up the cellar steps with a basket of wet laundry to hang out.
Oh, aye. How young we all were once--and presumably will be again one day!
Monday, 18 June 2018
I Am Served a Stale Croissant
In a very few but nevertheless significant ways, I am a patient and long-suffering person.
For example, I have been slaving away at One of the Most Difficult Languages in the World (TM) for six and a half years.
I can also put up with Continental argumentativeness from which the average English- or Scotsman shrinks.
Furthermore, I can stuff money in a wedding envelope with a cheerful shrug while about me fellow Anglo-Saxons quietly wail or simply refuse to do it.
Even more impressively, when an extraordinarily rude Polish wedding guest twitted me on the plight of those in Canada whom she called "Indians", I did not name the ghastly pogrom that jumped immediately to mind. (Not that one; the 1946 one.)
But there is a limit. Yes, my friends, there is a limit to what I will put up with on the Continent, and a stale croissant is it.
This morning I decided I would go and visit my favourite Krakow art gallery, which is in Plac Szczepański. There is quite a nice French-style bakery-cafe named "Charlotte" nearby. I have happy memories of "Charlotte", having been there with my husband in January. Then it was full of beautiful Polish young things with rucksacks, all looking hopeful and happy and full of potential. B.A. and I were clever enough to be at the doors when it opened for the day, so we were served promptly
However, this time "Charlotte" was full of English-speaking middle-aged tourists clearly bored with their spouses/travelling partners, for they struck up conversations with complete strangers, and what was worse, the servers were not as interested in serving today as they were back in January. I stuck it out for awhile, but then decided I had wasted enough time and went across the square to "Tribeca u Sołayskich".
That was a mistake.
This time I didn't mind the wait because I was outside under an umbrella this time, not in a humid building listening to Canadians starting friendly relationships that would last five minutes. However, when the young blond server brought me a stale croissant with chocolate sauce poured over it, I was outraged.
I mean, it was stale. STALE.
Stale.
I'm not going to pretend Edinburgh is a croissant paradise. To my knowledge there are only three businesses in Edinburgh where the croissants are worth eating: Twelves Triangles (Portobello), The Wee Boulangerie (Clerk Street) and La Barantine (The Bow; Bruntsfield; Stockbridge). But however boring and unbuttery croissants are in other establishments in Edinburgh, they are not STALE.
Without even pondering "What Would Polish Pretend Son Do?" I was suddenly possessed by the combative spirit of Polish Pretend Son. Grabbing my handbag with one hand, and the plate in the other, I stormed into (remember this name for avoidance) Tribeca u Sołayskich.
"Excuse me," I said, in Polish. "This croissant is stale."
"What?" said the waitress and some other stuff I did not understand.
"Stale. This croissant is stale."
"I do not understand," said the waitress, so I repeated my complaint loudly in Canadian English, and now that I think about it, I wish I had added a whole lot more, so that she would have to contemplate her lack of fluency in English and how it had led her to be shouted at by me instead of safe in a cushy job at a bank in London like her cousin Marysia.
Scowling, she told me that I would have to wait for a fresh one, and I said that was fine although now I wish I had flung down the money for my cappuccino and informed her that at 10 AM there was no excuse for not having fresh croissants ready.
I wish this for when the fresh or, I suspect, baked-from-frozen croissant appeared it had the overly sweet chocolate sauce poured on it, which I had forgotten to mention was disgusting.
As a denouement, the museum bookstore was shut, and I suspect the museum was too, as it is Monday, but at the sight of the locked bookstore door, I quitted the Place Szczepański in a very bad humour indeed. Yes, it is June and, yes, Kraków is a tourist town, but trying to palm off stale croissants on foreigners is unforgivable, which is why I am indulging in internet revenge.
I thought sadly of the Cranky Lady Cafe, and how the lady behind the counter may be cranky--and charge an extra 50 groszy for milk in the coffee--but at least she doesn't serve stale food.
It was particularly galling because I avoid tourist traps, but ended up at two yesterday, thanks to a Russian acquaintance who doesn't mind them. First we went to the Cafe Noworolski, which is actually in the Cloth Hall in the Main Market Square, and according to guide books Lenin loved it. Presumably the staff bothered to serve Lenin, whereas the server the Russian Lawyer approached inexplicably said he had already approached us and would be back in two minutes.
The waiter lied on both counts, so after a quarter of an hour we abandoned Noworolski went to the "Sioux" steakhouse instead. This had a wooden representation of the face of a First Nations person over the front door, but the wait staff (wearing checked shirts) was kind and attentive and spoke English to the Russian Lawyer and Polish to me, and so as tourist traps went, it was okay. Besides, I cannot think of anything more Central European than a First Nations themed restaurant so un-PC it would kill a member of the Ontario English Catholic Teacher's Association to eat there.
That said, in future I will avoid setting foot in the freaking Główny Rynek, to say nothing of (remember to avoid) Tribeca u Sołayskich.
To cheer myself up, I went browsing in "De Revolutionibus Books & Cafe", and when I found a book in the children's section subverting the notions of "man" and "woman", I sought comfort in the Catholic "Logos" bookshop across the street. This had a smaller selection, but I was greatly cheered by the sight of Antonio Socci's Ostatnio Proroctwo: List do Papieża Franciszka.
Your correspondent's spoken Polish is a complete mess this week, but at least she can still read.
Update: Of course, having heard this amazing reflection by Matt Walsh, I now feel rather petty.
Update: Of course, having heard this amazing reflection by Matt Walsh, I now feel rather petty.
Saturday, 16 June 2018
Postcard from Krakow
It's a warm and sunny morning in Krakow. I am in my friend the Giant Economist's* top-floor flat in Grzegorzki, a neighbourhood beside the more tourist-travelled Kazimierz. The three-storey block was built in 2006, but it has a nice old-fashioned balcony from which to watch the neighbours.
Many of the neighbours get up quite early and go to the bakery and other shops, returning home with plastic shopping bags. Presumably nobody is being charged extra for plastic bags yet. Because the sun rises at four AM, many of the older buildings are both Italianate and painted ochre, and church bells ring the hour, the neighbourhood resembles towns in Lazio. One of the shopping-bag ladies was stocky, wearing a black dress and sandals, which also added to the illusion that I am in Italy.
Naturally the biggest visual difference between Grzegorzki and Italy is the Polish names on the signs, and instead of celebrating various Italian Freemasons (at last my highly trad blog mentions the Freemasons), the streets are named in honour of various priests with very long names ending in -ski (or, since they are in the genitive case, -skiego).
Yesterday I woke up too early and too little rested to really appreciate the Główny Rynek, or main market square, which is really one of the most beautiful urban sights in Europe. It is even June, so my heart should have leapt like a lamb, but no. I surveyed the sunny square with jaded, baggy eyes and made straight for the Cranky Lady Cafe where Benedict Ambrose and I habitually go to be scowled at while I order coffee and cake.
After a good hour's note taking, I decided that I have too many unread Polish books to justify buying any new ones, and so after an aimless walk around the Planty (gardens encircling the Old Town), observing all the priests and nuns striding hither and thither, I walked back to Grzegorzki to read the Catholic news and start reporting on some myself. After that I could have been anywhere, except that almost all the books on the Economist's bookshelf are Polish and there is an ashtray on the balcony. Oh, and the internet, presumably mistaking me for the Economist, started feeding me adverts for Polish football betting sites.
Eventually the Economist came home, worn out from a day of helping keep the New Polish Economy going, and made supper while I transcribed Jordan Peterson's peppery lecture for PragerU. Conservative Poles love Jordan Peterson as much as Conservative Canadian (Brits, Americans, et alia) do. The difference is that these conservative Poles had to have splendid educations to understand Peterson's Canadian English in the first place, naturally.
This reminds me that my grasp of Polish has not been stellar this weekend. I hope I did not jinx myself by looking the celniczka (woman customs officer) square in the eye and saying "Hello" instead of "Dobry wieczór." For once, I was actually rather nervous of a grilling, since having to explain why I was returning to Poland (on a Canadian passport, too) after having left only a week ago would be complicated, as is this weekend's groom's surname, which after eight years I realised I didn't actually know. (I had to study the invitation on the plane). So I said "Hello" to the celniczka and she hurriedly sent me on my native anglophone way, and that was that.
The Economist went out to watch Spain v Portugal with friends, and I elected to stay behind and finish my JP transcript, not only out of duty but because I didn't want to stay out drinking until 3. Instead I watched episodes of "The Suite Life on Deck" over youtube and went to sleep on the Economist's pullout couch. Oh, the romance of life in Kraków.
This morning I did rather better as a travel writer: I went out in pursuit of coffee and buns at 7:15 AM, passing various Poles with their laden shopping bags. I found a cukiernia (bun shop) beside the famous Hala Targowa (covered market) and ordered a double espresso with milk and a yeast bun in idiomatically imperfect Polish. The word for yeast in Polish is outrageous: drożdże. This means a bun made with the creatures is a drożdżówka. Try saying that before your first coffee of the day.
But I managed and had a lifesaving coffee and a yeast bun with marmalade before returning to the Economist's flat to consult a map. The Economist was still asleep, so I merely plotted a route to Kazimierz, slapped on some sunscreen and went out again. The journey past lovely old houses, a disappointing new American-style mall, and the ivy-bedecked walls of the Old Jewish Cemetery was better than the arrival, as once I got to Kazimierz I realised that there was nothing I really wanted to do there. After an abortive attempt to buy hairpins/Kirby grips/spinki in "Jasmin", I walked back to the Economist's flat.
The Economist had awoken by this time and texted "Where are you?" just as I was climbing the stairs. He made us scrambled eggs, but I perceive that he has now fallen asleep again, so much did he enjoy yesterday's evening out with the boys. I shall have to make some noise so that he wakes up and drives me and my bag to the Market Square, where I am to meet this chap, who is also going to this wedding.
I am reminded of the duelling travel writers in Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond, since I suspect my escort may write about this wedding. Remember how I neglected to write about Polish Pretend Son's wedding so I could use the details later? The next thing I knew, it featured in this piece in First Things. Fortunately Jozef was less interested in the details than he was in the politics. I see he used the expression "social cohesion." Every time I type "social cohesion," I lose another left-leaning reader.
When I was a young thing of twenty-two, I longed to belong to a "school" of writers, and now I perceive that I do, only it isn't strictly literary or artistic but more academic-journalistic, composed of people who go to the Traditional Latin Mass and write about it and other conservative/traditional/restorationist topics.
It's thanks to that, that I am safely housed in this nice Polish flat, but now I must stop pondering my social ties and go and put on a wedding guest dress.
*The Economist says he doesn't like being called the Giant, which suggests a miscommunication with Polish Pretend Son, who told me he liked it.
Many of the neighbours get up quite early and go to the bakery and other shops, returning home with plastic shopping bags. Presumably nobody is being charged extra for plastic bags yet. Because the sun rises at four AM, many of the older buildings are both Italianate and painted ochre, and church bells ring the hour, the neighbourhood resembles towns in Lazio. One of the shopping-bag ladies was stocky, wearing a black dress and sandals, which also added to the illusion that I am in Italy.
Naturally the biggest visual difference between Grzegorzki and Italy is the Polish names on the signs, and instead of celebrating various Italian Freemasons (at last my highly trad blog mentions the Freemasons), the streets are named in honour of various priests with very long names ending in -ski (or, since they are in the genitive case, -skiego).
Yesterday I woke up too early and too little rested to really appreciate the Główny Rynek, or main market square, which is really one of the most beautiful urban sights in Europe. It is even June, so my heart should have leapt like a lamb, but no. I surveyed the sunny square with jaded, baggy eyes and made straight for the Cranky Lady Cafe where Benedict Ambrose and I habitually go to be scowled at while I order coffee and cake.
After a good hour's note taking, I decided that I have too many unread Polish books to justify buying any new ones, and so after an aimless walk around the Planty (gardens encircling the Old Town), observing all the priests and nuns striding hither and thither, I walked back to Grzegorzki to read the Catholic news and start reporting on some myself. After that I could have been anywhere, except that almost all the books on the Economist's bookshelf are Polish and there is an ashtray on the balcony. Oh, and the internet, presumably mistaking me for the Economist, started feeding me adverts for Polish football betting sites.
Eventually the Economist came home, worn out from a day of helping keep the New Polish Economy going, and made supper while I transcribed Jordan Peterson's peppery lecture for PragerU. Conservative Poles love Jordan Peterson as much as Conservative Canadian (Brits, Americans, et alia) do. The difference is that these conservative Poles had to have splendid educations to understand Peterson's Canadian English in the first place, naturally.
This reminds me that my grasp of Polish has not been stellar this weekend. I hope I did not jinx myself by looking the celniczka (woman customs officer) square in the eye and saying "Hello" instead of "Dobry wieczór." For once, I was actually rather nervous of a grilling, since having to explain why I was returning to Poland (on a Canadian passport, too) after having left only a week ago would be complicated, as is this weekend's groom's surname, which after eight years I realised I didn't actually know. (I had to study the invitation on the plane). So I said "Hello" to the celniczka and she hurriedly sent me on my native anglophone way, and that was that.
The Economist went out to watch Spain v Portugal with friends, and I elected to stay behind and finish my JP transcript, not only out of duty but because I didn't want to stay out drinking until 3. Instead I watched episodes of "The Suite Life on Deck" over youtube and went to sleep on the Economist's pullout couch. Oh, the romance of life in Kraków.
This morning I did rather better as a travel writer: I went out in pursuit of coffee and buns at 7:15 AM, passing various Poles with their laden shopping bags. I found a cukiernia (bun shop) beside the famous Hala Targowa (covered market) and ordered a double espresso with milk and a yeast bun in idiomatically imperfect Polish. The word for yeast in Polish is outrageous: drożdże. This means a bun made with the creatures is a drożdżówka. Try saying that before your first coffee of the day.
But I managed and had a lifesaving coffee and a yeast bun with marmalade before returning to the Economist's flat to consult a map. The Economist was still asleep, so I merely plotted a route to Kazimierz, slapped on some sunscreen and went out again. The journey past lovely old houses, a disappointing new American-style mall, and the ivy-bedecked walls of the Old Jewish Cemetery was better than the arrival, as once I got to Kazimierz I realised that there was nothing I really wanted to do there. After an abortive attempt to buy hairpins/Kirby grips/spinki in "Jasmin", I walked back to the Economist's flat.
The Economist had awoken by this time and texted "Where are you?" just as I was climbing the stairs. He made us scrambled eggs, but I perceive that he has now fallen asleep again, so much did he enjoy yesterday's evening out with the boys. I shall have to make some noise so that he wakes up and drives me and my bag to the Market Square, where I am to meet this chap, who is also going to this wedding.
I am reminded of the duelling travel writers in Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond, since I suspect my escort may write about this wedding. Remember how I neglected to write about Polish Pretend Son's wedding so I could use the details later? The next thing I knew, it featured in this piece in First Things. Fortunately Jozef was less interested in the details than he was in the politics. I see he used the expression "social cohesion." Every time I type "social cohesion," I lose another left-leaning reader.
When I was a young thing of twenty-two, I longed to belong to a "school" of writers, and now I perceive that I do, only it isn't strictly literary or artistic but more academic-journalistic, composed of people who go to the Traditional Latin Mass and write about it and other conservative/traditional/restorationist topics.
It's thanks to that, that I am safely housed in this nice Polish flat, but now I must stop pondering my social ties and go and put on a wedding guest dress.
*The Economist says he doesn't like being called the Giant, which suggests a miscommunication with Polish Pretend Son, who told me he liked it.
Update: I am now in a rustic hotel, suitably if warmly garbed.
*Update 2: I have returned to Grzegorzki, and the Economist says that there is a tax on plastic bags in Poland. This shakes my faith in the thrift of elderly Poles. Perhaps they are bringing old ones from home?
*Update 2: I have returned to Grzegorzki, and the Economist says that there is a tax on plastic bags in Poland. This shakes my faith in the thrift of elderly Poles. Perhaps they are bringing old ones from home?
Thursday, 14 June 2018
Back to Krakow
Just a short note that I am going to the SECOND Polish wedding of the summer. Originally I was going to stay in Poland between weddings, but then B.A. got his diagnosis, and I decided I didn't want to stay away that long.
So stay tuned for yet another travel post!
So stay tuned for yet another travel post!
Sunday, 10 June 2018
After the Wedding
Polish Pretend Son’s Silesian wedding lasted the traditional two days. On Monday I sat outside the countryside hotel’s separate restaurant and admired the formal gardens and Germanic palace opposite while trying not to mind the sun too much. It was blazing away again, and I feared that no matter how often I slathered myself with sunscreen, I would wrinkle into an apple doll before my time.
Eventually PPS himself emerged from the palace and wound his way around the formal gardens.
“Beautiful day,” I remarked.
“Beautiful day, beautiful life,” declared the newlywed and went in to breakfast.
That was the last I heard from PPS. Eventually he and the bride disappeared completely, driven away by the best man, I believe, bound for the airport and Paris.
There was some confusion as to how his car-less guests were going to get back to the railway station, a repeat of Sunday’s struggle to get 20 people to Mass. There was also a long delay for the Schola had befriended some of PPS’s other traddie friends and planned to return to Wrocław with them. One Trad—the one who looks like a pre-war Austrian officer, being slim, straight-backed, dark-haired, dark-eyed and moustachioed—has a long morning grooming regimen.
“[Austrian chap] doesn’t do formal,” explained his plump Polish-Canadian pal. He was wearing a T-shirt and smoking a cigarette. Eventually he strode off to the village shop for more tobacco. I tagged along for the exercise and to see this village shop. It was very small, with a friendly lady behind the counter and “Balkanica” thumping over the radio. The Polish-Canadian pal chatted with her fluently albeit with a Toronto accent Polish-Poles at the wedding told him was funny.
When we returned, the Austrian appeared looking cool and fresh and prepared for a garden party. The village taxicab was summoned, and it was decided that it would take four of us away to the railway station and then return for B.A. and me. It turned out that the cab driver who had charged us double had poached us from this taxicab's driver in an act of inter-village piracy.
The formal gardens, by the way, had box hedges, and they threw off a wonderful perfume. Wrocław smelled wonderfully, too, thanks to the linden trees. One of the Schola explained that in Scotland it never gets hot enough for our linden trees to fill the air with scent. As the weekend was simply roasting, whenever we set foot outdoors, we were wrapped in delicious smells.
After a half hour or more, the legitimate village taxi returned and took us to the railway station, it driver chatting gaily all the way. The little cafe in the railway station had run out of sandwiches, so the lady behind the counter cheerfully allowed us to leave our big red suitcase with her while we walked to that, rather bigger, village for lunch. Sadly, I was still wearing my wedding hat, and so looked rather ridiculous. The hat even inspired a Polish cry of “Look, she’s from England.” However, it was worth it, for we swiftly found a bakery and bought some cheesy pizza bread to eat on the railway platform. The sight of the big Germanic/Polish houses and the romantic Post Office, so conveniently near the railway station, was also satisfying.
To my joy, the train was one of the old-fashioned ones, with a long hallway and compartments. Even better, as we raced towards Wroclaw, I saw a shirtless young farmer turning over hay with a pitchfork. Such old-fashioned country scenes I see only from Polish trains. I will never forget spotting a farmer, somewhere between Kielce and Krakow, following a horse and plough. (Nor will I forget the Astrophysicist's look of acute embarrassment when I told him of this.)
The orange castle that is Wrocław Główny railway station swung into view, and before long B.A. was rolling our suitcase towards the Market Square. We checked into an old-fashioned hotel different from the last, for I had decided it would be fun to change. B.A. wanted coffee and ice-cream, so after a bit of book-shopping, we found a chocolate shop with tables and chairs on its pavement on a side street. Somehow we both ended up with ice-cream, and it was very good. We enjoyed very much looking at the ochre 18th century buildings and puzzling out the odd chocolate-themed slogans painted on the chocolate shop’s front.
At the appointed time, we met the others at “Pijalnia” in the Market Square for beer. Our friend the Astrophysicist, who is getting married next weekend, also appeared and, when the Austrian and the Polish-Canadian left to visit the latter’s grandparents, he led us off to classier drinking establishments.
First there was “Przedwojenny” (Pre-war, i.e. 1930s style), where we ate a number of traditional appetisers and snacks: beef tartar with raw egg and onions, cottage cheese and pork jelly, for example. Then there was a dark and shiny cocktail bar with a glass-enclosed whisky-and-cigar room. Then there was a very long walk hither and thither, around this palace and that monument, as the Astrophysicist led us to a 'Scottish' pub that turned out to be closed because of the lateness of the hour. I was a bit drunk after my cocktail, so I am unsure as to whether or not we went to two bars after this or just one. I think it was two.
The Astrophysicist was very eager to buy us a variety of drinks at a variety of places. There was really no stopping him. I recall drinking sweet kriek, which is a Belgian fruit beer, and giving half of it to one of the Schola when the A’s back was turned. The others also drank sliżowicz, which I thought was spiritus and thus a bad idea for non-Slavs. By midnight I was really very tired as well as drunk. When we finished up at “Pod Lantarniami” (Under the Lanterns), I would drink only grapefruit juice, and when I discovered it was 12:45 AM, I finally made good on my threats to leave. B.A. came with me, and after a comedy with some gates that seemed locked but weren’t, we returned to our hotel room.
Alas for your correspondent. B.A., as he invariably does after a (thankfully rare) night of drinking, snored to make the ceiling fall. Also, sad irony, the grapefruit juice was one too much for my tummy, and I was sick. However, the old-fashioned chamber had a door between the bedroom and the vestibule, and the bed was really two singles pushed together. Thus, I was able without waking BA to take my duvet and make a nest beside the loo. The good thick door between the bedroom and the vestibule almost completely stifled B.A.’s snores, and thus I eventually fell asleep.
Saturday, 9 June 2018
Conversations in Silesia
Our Polish Pretend Son got married in his native Silesia last weekend, and naturally his British Fake Foster Parents were there.
I am not going to write much about the wedding, however, as I have the vague intention of borrowing from various Polish parties and adventures to write a heartwarming comedic thriller tragedy set at a Polish wedding.
THURSDAY
Three members of the Men's Schola and I flew to Wrocław on Thursday evening via RyanAir, all sitting apart from one another in "allocated" seats to save money. Going to Poland from Scotland with RyanAir is rather like travelling for 2.5 hours on a crowded bus. It is squashy but mundane. Before you finish your book, you have landed and are standing in a queue to have your passport inspected minutely by an unsmiling customs guard.
Although I know my passport will be scrutinised a lot longer if I speak Polish, I always do. It's daft, for it's not like anyone around is going to yell "You're in Poland: speak Polish" in Polish at me. Meanwhile, the reward for my beautifully articulated "Dobry wieczór" is a look of dark suspicion and the observation that I am in Poland a lot, as if I may have been sneaking into the country to work for zl instead of working decently at home for £ or even $.
Excitingly, this time the Customs Conversation was enlivened by B.A., who had gone before me, not being able to get through the gate.
"Bramka nie działa," I pointed out, which was probably even more suspicious than "Dobry wieczór."
The next conversation was the Bus Ticket Conversation, in which I successfully bought tickets from the young bespectacled driver and accurately answered his "where-to?" His radio was tuned to, apparently, the "Wa-Wa-Wrocław" station, and so the cheerful thump of Disco Polo music accompanied us all the way to the historic centre.
Wrocław used to be Breslau and was flattened near the end of the last World War. However, the historic centre was rebuilt, so it is very pretty. Well, most of it is very pretty. The Plac Dominikański, where we alighted, is ugly and modern, flanked by an ugly modern Galleria (indoor shopping mall). However, after I led us all in the wrong direction, the Master of the Men's Schola discovered the way on his phone and we soon found ourselves in our shabby chic turn-of-the-century (i.e. 1903) ex-German hotel.
It was 11 PM, but naturally the Schola was gasping for beer, so we dumped our stuff and found the Main Market Square, which is truly impressive. It is actually a square of buildings within a square, so that one can sit outside one of many bars in the middle and look at the beautiful facades around the periphery. We found a bar called "Pijalnia" ("Open 24 h"), with little tables and chairs outside. It was a very warm and dry night, so we sat down at once and looked about for a server.
It quickly dawned on us that there might not be table service, so the MMS and I approached a waitress coming out of the bar. To my horror, I completely forgot the word for "to order". Dear heavens, the Buying Drinks Conversation was awkward. However, it wasn't a complete failure, for the waitress caught my meaning and told me to order at the bar, which I successfully did.
There followed a lot of drinking of beer, of remarking on Polish girls wearing microscopic skirts, and of discouraging a Romany beggar. I was longing to get up and look at other parts of the large and lovely square, but B.A. was afraid I'd be stolen. How happy I was when we finally went back to the hotel to sleep.
FRIDAY
The next morning I bounced down to the dining-room before the clerk got there and so breakfasted clandestinely. Then I rushed out to see all the square and the square next to it and further around and about. Although it was only 8:30 AM or so, the sun blazed away fiercely. Fearing sunburn, I scampered back to the hotel and had breakfast with B.A. This time I was stopped and checked off the list by a clerk. Polish breakfast clerks are so anxious about their clipboards, there must be a serious breakfast-stealing problem in Poland.
After breakfast the Men's Schola went off together to look at churches, and I went to the Galleria to book a manicure. The Galleria looks just like an American or British shopping mall, only with such Polish shops as Empik (books) and Sowa (cake) mixed in with H&M and Sephora and the entire staff and clientele being white, European and Polish-speaking.
After some difficulty and two short conversations (Mall Security Guard Conversation, Information Booth Conversation), I found "Mani-Pedi" and my brain froze again because I had no idea how to say, "I would like an appointment for a gel manicure, please."
When I resorted to asking if she spoke English, the young lady behind the desk looked like her brain had frozen too. The poor girl called up Google Translate on the computer to find the English for "Do you have an appointment?" She lacked the courage to pronounce the words, so she motioned me over to look. Poor sweet. I knew exactly how she felt. We both had failed the Beauty Shop Conversation.
But the upshot was that Mani-Pedi had no free slots until Monday, and I went to PPS's wedding with bare fingernails. They were tidy, at least, for I bought a package of nail files in the Galleria's Rossman toiletries store.
My feet got blistered during my morning's walk, and although my self-confidence was low, I knew I had to buy some hot weather shoes. To my pleased surprise, I knew all the necessary words, including "I take a size 38" and "I don't need the box", so my Shoe Shop Conversation has vastly improved since that October day I had to buy emergency snow boots in Kraków.
I was due to meet the Men's Schola outside St. John's Cathedral for lunch. As it happened, we met on the way, and after rejecting a restaurant opposite a church as too expensive, we found ourselves in a cheap and cheerful joint outside the old market hall. There I had a Food and Beer Ordering Conversation, which was redundant as the server clearly spoke English.
I should stress that none of these conversations were as fluent as I would have liked, and my ego was getting as blistered as my poor feet. Every week in Edinburgh I have an hour long conversation with a Polish graduate of Linguistics, and I usually natter on comfortably about anything. In Wroclaw, however, I was having an awful time---until the Railway Ticket Conversation.
Wrocław Główny railway station looks like a long, low orange castle. It has a couple of Polish cafes, a Starbucks, a Costa Coffee, an Empik, a Biedronka grocery store, a McDonald's and a library. It has no ticket machines, so everyone has to queue up and buy his ticket directly from a person. Sadly by the time the Master of the Men's Schola and I got to the front of our queue, it was our person's break time. At the dot of 5 PM he was out of there. Alas.
MMS and I queued up again and eventually approached a middle-aged lady behind a glass window.
"Does Madame speak English?" I said politely in Polish, for this is my great get-out clause.
"Only a little," said Madame in Polish
"No harm done," I said. "We will try in Polish."
Fluency kicked in. Hooray! And what made the Railway Ticket to PPS's Village Conversation particularly sweet was that the Master of the Men's Schola was right beside me and heard it all.
There followed soon after the Coffee-and-cake in Costa Conversation, the Ticket Inspection Just-as-our-station-approached Conversation and, most gloriously, the Very Chatty Taxi Driver Conversation, although we discovered later he had charged us double the going rate. Fortunately, 70 zl is only about £14, so we were ripped off only £7, and presumably he needed it more than we did. Besides it was worth £7 to hear the cowed silence of the back seat. For the first time in history the Men's Schola shut up and listened to me for a solid 15 minutes.
Polish Pretend Son's wedding reception was in a country hotel. Originally a German Schloss, it is now a Polish pałac. PPS, looking slim and elegant (if a little frazzled), greeted us as we got out of the cab and then ordered me to register in Polish. Thus I had the Registering at a Hotel Conversation Polish hotel clerks usually conduct with foreigners in English, actually. Then, after B.A. and I had taken possession of our luxurious 19th century suite, we went to the hotel dining room to chat with other English-speaking guests, including a priest.
PPS then took all the young men away to his bachelor party, leaving me to dine with the priest, for whom I ordered (Ordering Supper Conversation), as he speaks no Polish. This was quite easy, as the priest had been in Silesia for four days and developed a taste for both chłodnik and pierogi ruskie, which I like, too. Also, both are meatless, and it was Friday.
I was very tired, but after supper with the priest I managed one more Polish conversation. Polish Pretend Son's war-survivor grandmother was dining at a table near us with a blond lady. I recognised Babcia at once for, as it happens, PPS brought her, his father and one of his sisters to the Historical House one day. Instead of sensibly catering for Polish tastes, I had made an enormously complicated, sweet and British simnel cake, complete with marzipan decorations. Babcia had thought it a very strange cake and said so, eliciting giggles from her grandchildren and blushes from me.
I have been afraid of Babcia ever since, but I thought that it would be rotten not to acknowledge her at her grandson's wedding. I gathered up my courage and, addressing the blonde lady, launched into the Polite Introductions Conversation. The blonde lady was, I believe, PPS's great-aunt, and it soon transpired that Babcia didn't remember me at all.
SATURDAY
The next day, wearing meticulously correct English morning dress, Polish Pretend Son married a beautiful, tall, slim, dark-haired young radiologist. She wore a lace dress, a traditional floral wreath, and a floor-length veil.Half the female population of Edinburgh committed suicide, and t The happy couple returned to the hotel from the famous shrine in a vintage white Corvette.
I am not going to write much about the wedding, however, as I have the vague intention of borrowing from various Polish parties and adventures to write a heartwarming comedic thriller tragedy set at a Polish wedding.
THURSDAY
Three members of the Men's Schola and I flew to Wrocław on Thursday evening via RyanAir, all sitting apart from one another in "allocated" seats to save money. Going to Poland from Scotland with RyanAir is rather like travelling for 2.5 hours on a crowded bus. It is squashy but mundane. Before you finish your book, you have landed and are standing in a queue to have your passport inspected minutely by an unsmiling customs guard.
Although I know my passport will be scrutinised a lot longer if I speak Polish, I always do. It's daft, for it's not like anyone around is going to yell "You're in Poland: speak Polish" in Polish at me. Meanwhile, the reward for my beautifully articulated "Dobry wieczór" is a look of dark suspicion and the observation that I am in Poland a lot, as if I may have been sneaking into the country to work for zl instead of working decently at home for £ or even $.
Excitingly, this time the Customs Conversation was enlivened by B.A., who had gone before me, not being able to get through the gate.
"Bramka nie działa," I pointed out, which was probably even more suspicious than "Dobry wieczór."
The next conversation was the Bus Ticket Conversation, in which I successfully bought tickets from the young bespectacled driver and accurately answered his "where-to?" His radio was tuned to, apparently, the "Wa-Wa-Wrocław" station, and so the cheerful thump of Disco Polo music accompanied us all the way to the historic centre.
Wrocław used to be Breslau and was flattened near the end of the last World War. However, the historic centre was rebuilt, so it is very pretty. Well, most of it is very pretty. The Plac Dominikański, where we alighted, is ugly and modern, flanked by an ugly modern Galleria (indoor shopping mall). However, after I led us all in the wrong direction, the Master of the Men's Schola discovered the way on his phone and we soon found ourselves in our shabby chic turn-of-the-century (i.e. 1903) ex-German hotel.
It was 11 PM, but naturally the Schola was gasping for beer, so we dumped our stuff and found the Main Market Square, which is truly impressive. It is actually a square of buildings within a square, so that one can sit outside one of many bars in the middle and look at the beautiful facades around the periphery. We found a bar called "Pijalnia" ("Open 24 h"), with little tables and chairs outside. It was a very warm and dry night, so we sat down at once and looked about for a server.
It quickly dawned on us that there might not be table service, so the MMS and I approached a waitress coming out of the bar. To my horror, I completely forgot the word for "to order". Dear heavens, the Buying Drinks Conversation was awkward. However, it wasn't a complete failure, for the waitress caught my meaning and told me to order at the bar, which I successfully did.
There followed a lot of drinking of beer, of remarking on Polish girls wearing microscopic skirts, and of discouraging a Romany beggar. I was longing to get up and look at other parts of the large and lovely square, but B.A. was afraid I'd be stolen. How happy I was when we finally went back to the hotel to sleep.
FRIDAY
The next morning I bounced down to the dining-room before the clerk got there and so breakfasted clandestinely. Then I rushed out to see all the square and the square next to it and further around and about. Although it was only 8:30 AM or so, the sun blazed away fiercely. Fearing sunburn, I scampered back to the hotel and had breakfast with B.A. This time I was stopped and checked off the list by a clerk. Polish breakfast clerks are so anxious about their clipboards, there must be a serious breakfast-stealing problem in Poland.
After breakfast the Men's Schola went off together to look at churches, and I went to the Galleria to book a manicure. The Galleria looks just like an American or British shopping mall, only with such Polish shops as Empik (books) and Sowa (cake) mixed in with H&M and Sephora and the entire staff and clientele being white, European and Polish-speaking.
After some difficulty and two short conversations (Mall Security Guard Conversation, Information Booth Conversation), I found "Mani-Pedi" and my brain froze again because I had no idea how to say, "I would like an appointment for a gel manicure, please."
When I resorted to asking if she spoke English, the young lady behind the desk looked like her brain had frozen too. The poor girl called up Google Translate on the computer to find the English for "Do you have an appointment?" She lacked the courage to pronounce the words, so she motioned me over to look. Poor sweet. I knew exactly how she felt. We both had failed the Beauty Shop Conversation.
But the upshot was that Mani-Pedi had no free slots until Monday, and I went to PPS's wedding with bare fingernails. They were tidy, at least, for I bought a package of nail files in the Galleria's Rossman toiletries store.
My feet got blistered during my morning's walk, and although my self-confidence was low, I knew I had to buy some hot weather shoes. To my pleased surprise, I knew all the necessary words, including "I take a size 38" and "I don't need the box", so my Shoe Shop Conversation has vastly improved since that October day I had to buy emergency snow boots in Kraków.
I was due to meet the Men's Schola outside St. John's Cathedral for lunch. As it happened, we met on the way, and after rejecting a restaurant opposite a church as too expensive, we found ourselves in a cheap and cheerful joint outside the old market hall. There I had a Food and Beer Ordering Conversation, which was redundant as the server clearly spoke English.
I should stress that none of these conversations were as fluent as I would have liked, and my ego was getting as blistered as my poor feet. Every week in Edinburgh I have an hour long conversation with a Polish graduate of Linguistics, and I usually natter on comfortably about anything. In Wroclaw, however, I was having an awful time---until the Railway Ticket Conversation.
Wrocław Główny railway station looks like a long, low orange castle. It has a couple of Polish cafes, a Starbucks, a Costa Coffee, an Empik, a Biedronka grocery store, a McDonald's and a library. It has no ticket machines, so everyone has to queue up and buy his ticket directly from a person. Sadly by the time the Master of the Men's Schola and I got to the front of our queue, it was our person's break time. At the dot of 5 PM he was out of there. Alas.
MMS and I queued up again and eventually approached a middle-aged lady behind a glass window.
"Does Madame speak English?" I said politely in Polish, for this is my great get-out clause.
"Only a little," said Madame in Polish
"No harm done," I said. "We will try in Polish."
Fluency kicked in. Hooray! And what made the Railway Ticket to PPS's Village Conversation particularly sweet was that the Master of the Men's Schola was right beside me and heard it all.
There followed soon after the Coffee-and-cake in Costa Conversation, the Ticket Inspection Just-as-our-station-approached Conversation and, most gloriously, the Very Chatty Taxi Driver Conversation, although we discovered later he had charged us double the going rate. Fortunately, 70 zl is only about £14, so we were ripped off only £7, and presumably he needed it more than we did. Besides it was worth £7 to hear the cowed silence of the back seat. For the first time in history the Men's Schola shut up and listened to me for a solid 15 minutes.
Polish Pretend Son's wedding reception was in a country hotel. Originally a German Schloss, it is now a Polish pałac. PPS, looking slim and elegant (if a little frazzled), greeted us as we got out of the cab and then ordered me to register in Polish. Thus I had the Registering at a Hotel Conversation Polish hotel clerks usually conduct with foreigners in English, actually. Then, after B.A. and I had taken possession of our luxurious 19th century suite, we went to the hotel dining room to chat with other English-speaking guests, including a priest.
PPS then took all the young men away to his bachelor party, leaving me to dine with the priest, for whom I ordered (Ordering Supper Conversation), as he speaks no Polish. This was quite easy, as the priest had been in Silesia for four days and developed a taste for both chłodnik and pierogi ruskie, which I like, too. Also, both are meatless, and it was Friday.
I was very tired, but after supper with the priest I managed one more Polish conversation. Polish Pretend Son's war-survivor grandmother was dining at a table near us with a blond lady. I recognised Babcia at once for, as it happens, PPS brought her, his father and one of his sisters to the Historical House one day. Instead of sensibly catering for Polish tastes, I had made an enormously complicated, sweet and British simnel cake, complete with marzipan decorations. Babcia had thought it a very strange cake and said so, eliciting giggles from her grandchildren and blushes from me.
I have been afraid of Babcia ever since, but I thought that it would be rotten not to acknowledge her at her grandson's wedding. I gathered up my courage and, addressing the blonde lady, launched into the Polite Introductions Conversation. The blonde lady was, I believe, PPS's great-aunt, and it soon transpired that Babcia didn't remember me at all.
SATURDAY
The next day, wearing meticulously correct English morning dress, Polish Pretend Son married a beautiful, tall, slim, dark-haired young radiologist. She wore a lace dress, a traditional floral wreath, and a floor-length veil.
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