Europe

I've always naturally been a Europhile, and I've always believed in the importance of the European Union, not only as a natural consequence of the events of the 19th and 20th centuries, but also (through it's various mechanisms) to act as a conscience of the countries of Europe, curbing the selfishness that goes along with pursuing national interests.

I can trace these feelings and beliefs by looking back at my education and the experiences I had growing up with Europe and its people:

At Forfar Academy, if you studied History at Standard Grade and Higher, you could forget learning anything that happened prior to about 1830. It was very much a Modern History department. I'm not complaining. I enjoyed it, and it did provide a historical education that naturally segued into a political and social education in a way that learning about the Norman Conquest probably wouldn't have.*

In Modern Studies, which most of us didn't pursue beyond second year, my only abiding memory was learning about the structure of the EU and its associated bodies. I vividly remember a worksheet showing how the EU environment policy had prevented the destruction of wetlands as it had stood against a national body desiring to develop the area. For some reason, that stuck, and for a long time I associated the EU with being the protector of endangered birds and animals across the continent. A lone voice standing against the rampant desire of the developer to pave paradise and create some new parking lots. For a 15 year-old vegetarian, that was quite important.

Back to History, and we learned a lot about pre-1945 Europe. Through the Battlefields Tour, exchange trips with school and Guides, family holidays, and a compulsive need to collect pen-friends through those leaflets that would periodically arrive in children's magazines, I learned to love the countries of Europe and their inhabitants.

I had a French penpal, whose name I can't recall, but she had beautiful handwriting, and she sent me pictures of her cat. I had a Dutch penpal, I think her name began with E. She was a speed skater, and I was very jealous of this activity. Andreas (it's actually embarrassing that I remember his name, and not the penpals), was on the German exchange trip and we kissed at the edge of Forfar Loch. He gave me a necklace with a lion on it, because my star sign was Leo. Pontus and Frederick were two Swedish scouts, who stayed with us after the camping portion of the Swedish Scout exchange trip. They were exceedingly polite, and gave us a table runner in pale blues, pinks and creams as a gift. There was Mats (why can I only remember the boys' names?!), another Swedish scout, with ginger hair and freckles, and a smile that made my heart leap. And then there were family holidays: we went to Brittany one summer, and I gorged myself on chocolate and crepes. Or holidays with other families, cycling across CenterParcs, swimming every day, and agreeing that the national food of Holland was most likely clogs.

Later, at Uni, when I worked at the Balmoral Hotel, the waiting staff was comprised of students and young people on gap years. There were people from: France, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Australia, Brazil, Germany, and Norway. It was a great place to work.

I have nothing but fond memories, so vivid that I immediately recognised the centre square in Strasbourg when I caught a glimpse of it in a recent film, despite only having been there for a two day trip.

So, I've never thought really thought it's a bad thing that "Europe" decides some things in European parliaments and European courts, because I've never thought of "Europe" as a place that we are not part of. None of this talk about Europe imposing things on us resonates with me at all.

Why not?

It's not just because I studied history, or because I knew lots of Europeans not as "Europeans" but as French people, or Dutch people, or Swedish people. Athough, is that part of it? Probably.

And I suppose a significant part is that I was part of a youth delegation to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, during the parliament's summer recess. There were 14-16 year olds from all of the member states, and we each had a seat in the parliment, as though we were MEPs. We attended mini-conferences, and talked about problems facing the EU and how they could be overcome.

So, to me, it's always felt like a real parliament, with all the compromises that entails. There is no Europe, over there, trying to impose its will upon Britain, despite what the tabloids will have you believe. And if sometimes it feels like that, that's just because the other blocs are better at building consensus. Equally, sometimes Britain will be inside those blocs, enacting its own interests along with like-minded other countries.

In many ways, it's like being a Scottish MP, or a Scottish person, looking at Westminster.A small bloc, sometimes feeling hard done by, with locally devolved powers, but the requirement to make a contribution to a bigger whole, and sometimes feeling that you don't get enough back. Or being from London, like Boris Johnstone, and constantly whining that you contribute more than the North.

Both sections have valid reasons for thinking they'd be better off alone, but that doesn't mean they will be.

I've always felt reassured by our presence in Europe, and by the moderating and restraining action that the EU has had on all of its member states. I hope we don't leave.

*Despite that enjoyement, I had had my fill of the Bismarck, Corn Laws and Universal Suffrage, and Appeasement and the Road to War by 6th year. If you chose Sixth Year Studies, you could choose your own subject. It will come as no surprise to learn that my backlash against all this modern history was to go right back to the earliest possible point in British history that still had primary sources: the Roman occupation and the location of the Battle of Mons Graupius.

Banned!

I think the strangest thing I've ever been banned from doing was wearing Dewberry perfume.

There was a craze for it for a while. We all used to go through to Dundee and buy stuff from The Body Shop, after we'd been to Miss Selfridge next door. It came in glass bottles, with glass sticks to put it on. They chinked very satisfyingly, and you could go back and get them refilled.

It had a very distinctive and overpowering smell. One day, the Home Economics teacher just flipped out. Apparently it gave her headaches. So, we had to stop wearing it. Probably for the best.

I remember it fondly because it's one of my only brushes with synesthesia. To me, it always sort of smells purple.

Ah, Dewberry, I miss you and your purple haze.

But I still don't know what a dewberry really smells like, or really what one is.

Soup, and other conflicting emotions

Andrew used to make soup quite often.

Yummy vegetables, ready to become soup.

He made it today for one of Lori's homework activities. We have just had the following conversation.

Lindsay: Mmmmmm. This is my best meal this month.
Andrew: It's just soup, and a roll.
Lindsay: No, it's your soup. And my roll has butter on it, real butter. I don't know why you don't make your soup more often.
Lindsay (following Andrew through to the kitchen): Your soup is the best soup ever. I hate you [for not making soup], I love you [for the soup].
Andrew: Well, you're just a whole bundle of conflicting emotions, aren't you?
Lindsay: Yes, yes I am.

For the record, it is the most delicious vegetable soup that you will ever taste. I suspect a flavour enhancer. Either that, or I am just very, very hungry today, and thus an easy lay [for the soup].

The Playfair Library

It's all very well packing my weekends full of classes, trips, review adventures, book research, Dr. Who, and roleplaying, but sometimes I get back to work on a Monday morning and just feel like having a whole other weekend.

My Weekend Notes reviewing is coming on very well. Edinburgh is shooting up the table with a whole 19 articles. Wow! 19. Here's a link to my profile, where you can sign up to become a subscriber:
http://www.weekendnotes.com/profile/222833/

One of my latest articles might be interesting to my running friends, a Hallowe'en-themed 5k in Holyrood Park. Perhaps one to do with the family?

It's not going to become my new job, ever, but it is good practice. 

And that's how I've been viewing it: practice. Which is all very well, but if you don't actually write anything on your book, then the practice is actually pretty pointless.

So, I stayed on at work for an extra half-hour earlier this week and squeezed in some writing while all the experiences of last weekend were still fresh in my mind.

We were at the Playfair Library on Sunday as part of the book research.

Who else took finals there? 

I haven't been back since, but I could remember it vividly. Sitting under the archway and doing some final cramming. Chatting with friends about how the last exam had gone. It was cold, even though it was spring. I correct myself: it was cold, because it was Spring. The Library amused me, even through the fug of stress of finals, because of all the busts on their plinths. Who were they? Did anyone still remember why they had been put up there? Did they watch student after student passing in front of them, and smile benevolently down. Did they nod to each when everyone was gone, and say, "That's another year, then. I hope they do well." Of course they didn't, but when I was struggling for inspiration in The Psychology of Adolescence, I looked up at of them and found my thoughts anew.

Unlike during my exams though, they were all tucked away in the alcoves, not sitting on the end of a pillar each.

As well as the busts being hidden in corners, there library presented some other useful, and unexpected, surprises. When I was writing about the it, I didn't expect it to be so filled with light, I'd envisioned a darker place. Indeed, I remembered it being much darker than this, but perhaps it was a cloudy day when I did my exams. 

I wanted to check who all the busts were, but I was also interested in what books were still in the library. While I took pictures of the busts, Lori and Josie wrote down some book names. Lori was much more interested in this than Josie, surprisingly. This is her, diligently writing down a few titles, letter by letter.

Lori Law, little law student.

Then, research started to get a bit boring and tiring, so they ran up and down the library until they collapsed on the floor, giggling and gasping.

I have written and written and written, and now I am very tired.

I was quite pleased with the visit to the library. It set my imagination alight, all those years ago, and last Sunday it did that again.

On that note, back to redrafting!

Socks over Tights

A few days ago I awoke to find that all the tights I thought were tights were actually footless tights. And I only had a skirt or a dress for work. Dilemma.

Luckily, I had a lot of experience in this area circa 1992-1996. Socks over tights.

It's a good look. Some might even call it professional (they'd be wrong).

In the 92-96 era I was mostly rocking a two-tone look - coloured socks over coloured tights.

Or cherry Docs! The bottom half of this outfit could quite literally be my legs in 1995.

Anyway, I didn't want to make splash with my socks and tights combo. I work in IT, in a Bank, everyone is very serious about Things and Stuff. Gone are the days when I could get away with a shirt, dress, and tie. So, I went for black socks under the footless tights. It worked quite well, except I think everyone was looking at me and wondering why I had such wrinkly ankles.

I think next time I'll just distract their attention from my ankles with a drawn-on moustache.

Ecce Romani!

Walking through Edinburgh last night I was confronted with some deep and profound questions:

1. Why does Patisserie Valerie open so late?
2. Why didn't I check the website to make sure that my dance class actually started this week?
3. Who painted that Police Box purple?


Let's address these questions:

1. I'm obviously actually asking a deeper question, which is "Mmmmmmm. Cake." Not a question? You, sir, are an idiot.

I had the one in the middle for my birthday this year. Best. Gateau. Ever.

2. Rhetorical question. I don't expect an answer, but if I got one it would probably be: because you, ma'am, are an idiot. 

3. It would appear, from the evidence presented to me as I walked past, that it was a man dressed in surprisingly historical clothes, who looked awfully like Sir Walter Scott. Or a man in the high-visibility vest, which proclaimed in marker pen that his name was Stevie, who was talking to Sir Walter Scott.

I suspect time travel.

I have suspected time travel before.

I was pleased to be studying Latin at secondary school just in case I should ever happen to be forcibly time travelled to circa 1st to 4th century AD and had to make contact with the invaders in the Roman camp near my parents' house. I often rehearsed my first contact speech. It started with me proclaiming to the local tribespeople, "Ecce! Romani!". I'd even named myself: Antonia.

I am not even joking.

I also convinced myself that I had seen a legion of red and gold clad Roman centurions marching over the Malvern Hills. Another area, in which part of my family lived, that had Roman forts and other such activity. Coincidence? 11 year old self thought not.

Luckily, at university I encountered Andy Law, Richard Dawkins and Thomas Gilovic (author of How We Know What Isn't So), and such superstitious nonsense was put behind me.

Nevertheless, last night, when I saw the Doctor, dressed as Sir Walter Scott, with his companion Stevie, I did hover for a bit just to check that they weren't time travellers. They seemed to be discussing the dimensions and interior of the box. Perhaps they seemed a little confused that it was purple. Could this be a further malfunction of the cloaking technology? I'm pleased to report that my observations were inconclusive.

Boring evidence to the contrary? Probably fabricated. I declare that they might very well have been time travellers. All is well in the world.

How the mouse empire has fallen...

Foraging opportunities are quite rare in a city (no, the bins outside Tesco don't count), so I like to take them when I can get them.

On Saturday, a sunny early autumn day, we had some time to kill before Dr. Who, and so armed with some empty tupperware tubs Josie, Lori, and I headed off to Pilrig Park to search for brambles.

For those of you of a non-British persuasion, these are brambles, also known as blackberries:

Delicious with apple, bubbling away under a crumble topping, or sieved for pips and turned into a bramble jelly.

I keep my eye out for bramble bushes on summer walks and take a mental note of where I've seen big clumps of them. All the better to return in the autumn to gather the glossy, black berries.

They ripen slowly over the course of month or so, therefore to gather enough of them for crumble, you really need a hedgerow or two to harvest.

To begin with, it didn't look very promising in the park. The brambles were peeking over an impassable wall, and I could barely reach a few ripe ones. However, I had spotted some bushes on one of the less popular park entrances a few months previously, so we headed round there and struck black, shiny gold: a brambly hedge.

Scout Josie found this one first. She also informed me about the nettles, and the spiky bits, and anything else that might possibly have caused an injury. Lori just looked at the brambles warily, and refused to come near them after Josie's tirade of danger.

There were hordes of berries, and although there were tracks around the bushes, none seemed to have been  picked. We made our way through nettles and grass, getting further and further round into a bit of land behind a small industrial estate, filling up the tub as we went. Then Josie spotted an open drop about 10 metres down, over an old wall and into another part of the light industrial buildings. Round the corner, and down in a hidden spot, I noticed some sleeping bags, plastic bags, and empty cans of lager. It looked like it had been used by a homeless person, although perhaps not for a while.

At that point, I started to feel a little bit less safe. No-one knew where we were, and very few people would ever walk past this bit of land. One of our tubs was full, so we headed back, checking in with Andrew on the phone to let him know where we were. It's a shame really, that I felt so unsafe a mere ten minutes from home, and perhaps I was overreacting (although a recent assault in the park would suggest not).

And from that horrible note, to more pleasant memories of childhood. I can't go collecting blackberries without thinking about Brambly Hedge.

This is exactly what my childhood was like in early autumn. Exactly. Right down to the little bonnet. 

They are an absolutely lovely set of books for early readers. The Winter Story is intrinsically linked with my own memories of deep snow falls in my toddler and primary school years. I spent a long time  peeking under every stump in a wood nearby to our family home just in case I should happen upon the mice of Brambly Hedge. They hark back to an idyllic time in British life, when mice lived in little hobbit houses in the hedges, and harnessed the water of the nearby river to turn their flour into delicious, if tiny, loaves of bread, and dressed like proper gentlemen and ladies of the country. How the mouse empire has fallen, and left Western civilisation all the poorer for it.

So, in memory of a special early autumn day spent foraging with the girls, and in memory of the watercolour art of the books I remember so fondly, I created this today, rendered in Games Workshop inks and acrylics:

My obsession with the Latin names for things is still very much in evidence.

We are planning a return trip in a week, but I think I'll take Andrew along this time. He can reach the really high ones that no-one else will get!

As for plans of what to do with the brambles, well, I'm going to try a much more homemade Christmas this year, so they might just be helping along some bramble-flavoured vodka for family and friend hampers. Far less complicated than jelly or pie!

Tonk...tonk...tonk

I was saddened today to read about the demise of the studio that created the Wipeout series of games. It was my first ever game for the Playstation, and I loved it. I’ve never been a fan of racing games, but there was something about Wipeout that made it very special.

Perhaps it was the way you glided round corners effortlessly, with no need to change gear, or do anything other than make a tiny tap of the airbrake.

 Perhaps it was the weapons, and how you could blow other competitors off the track, or send forward (or backwards) a massive quake to cause carnage among your rivals.

Perhaps it was because I was better at it than all my friends, and took great delight in inviting them round to beat them while they "tonked" off walls.

Was it speed starts, or massive jumps, or loop-the-loops?  

Or was it the soundtrack - a thumping and pulsing electronica, which I would never listen to in everyday life, but curiously fitted with the bright colours of the futuristic game?

It was probably all of those things, and they hooked me into console gaming, and never let me go.

RIP Psygnosis, aka Liverpool Studios.

Happy Birthday, Josie!

Strictly speaking, I wasn't being entirely honest when I said I had no deadlines. I was (secretly) hoping to have completed the first draft before Josie's birthday, which is today. However, that was always quite ambitious, so I'm pretty pleased with the progress so far despite not having it fully completed.

We went to the Museum of Scotland today for her birthday, and I took the opportunity to do a little more research on the local statuary. The statues of Edinburgh can largely be split into two categories:

1. Historical figures, who are mainly male and close to ground level.

2. Mythical concepts, who are mainly female and adorn the porticoes and domes of neo-classical buildings:

There are a couple of exceptions, but the rule mostly holds true.

I wandered around between the Royal Musuem of Scotland, on Chambers St., and Games Workshop, on the High St. (known to visitors as the Royal Mile, but the postal address is High St.).

It's an area that holds a lot of memories for us. Andrew used to work in Games Workshop, and we lived across the road on the second floor of Geddes' Entry. Geddes' Entry is a Close, which is thin alleyway leading to a common stair. It was built in 1797, and it had a lot of character, by which I mean the floors sloped, and the windows rattled behind the shutters. This is the Close one down from ours:

Anchor Close in the twilight

On my wanders, I was surprised to find a statue of King Charles behind St. Giles (commonly called St. Giles Cathedral, but it's more properly the High Kirk).

I've walked the front of St. Giles countless times on my daily commute, first to Uni across George IV bridge, and then later down the Mound to my first grown-up job. I've walked round the back, to where the statue stands, perhaps ten times fewer, but even then...I would have thought I would remember him. He must have some good ninja skills:

The obfuscating King Charles II

He's dressed as a Roman Emperor, and sits astride a huge horse. He's the oldest lead cast statue in Britain, but originally it was planned to be a statue of Oliver Cromwell. The Restoration of the Monarchy changed that!

I wonder how heavy a lead-cast statue that big would be? And what sound would it make when it clopped down the street? What other statues that I thought were bronze are actually lead? Interesting questions, but they're not getting that final chapter written any quicker!