Old Scotia vs. New Scotia

Better in Scotland

• The Postal System (by a LOT). 
• Roundabouts.
• Cheese Prices.

Better in Nova Scotia

•  Yard Sales.    
•  The Weather.
•  Bulk Food.

Scone Palace

My last week in Scotland, our friend Sue Anne came to visit. She is a brave soul for agreeing to sleep on our couch after mouse habitation had been verified in that room AND with the full knowledge that the couch is entirely uncomfortable to sleep on if one is not heavily pregnant. We love having her visit, though, as she is wonderful company and brings us delicious foods from Germany. One day the four of us visited Scone (pronounced Scoon) Palace.

The palace was closed but we walked around the grounds.

Scone Palace was the original home of the Stone of Destiny, which was part of coronation ceremonies for Scottish kings.

This is a replica of the Stone of Destiny (homely looking, eh?).  The original stone is now in Edinburgh.  Unless you believe the people who claim the real stone was hidden to keep it out of Edinburgh Castle.

Peacocks roam the grounds, particularly in the cemetery.

I love this fat little man.

This is a maze on the grounds.  We enjoyed navigating through it even though the foliage was dead.

The Bairn and I shared the backseat on the way there and back.

Sometimes The Bairn is dismayed at the goings on out the window.

*We're currently on the road to Canada.  Pictures next week!

Good-Bye, Scotland

The day before The Bairn and I left Scotland, Steve took this picture of us at our tenement, also known as The Worst Place We Will Ever Live (I Hope). You can just see me and the baby in the third window down on the far right.

Good-Bye, Mice.
Good-Bye, Mold.
Good-Bye, Cold Days without Central Heating.

Baby's First Burns Supper

The Bairn managed to attend a Burns supper before leaving Scotland. 

The Bairn and I are leaving Scotland in less than 4 weeks, so it seems like a good time to add to my list of Stuff I Really Extra Super Love (and Will Miss) in Scotland.

13.  Good drivers.  Britain has the best drivers I've ever seen.  We're flying to Utah first to visit friends and family and my head is going to explode as soon as we begin driving on I-15 with all the speeders and right-hand passers.

14.   Delicious chocolate.  Moo asked me if I wanted some bad American chocolate for Christmas.  I did, so she sent me some and truly it is terrible.

15.  Trains.  I don't like the fluctuating pricing scheme, but I love that Steve can get to work or we can run to Edinburgh for the day or friends can get from the airport to our flat via train very easily.

16.  Pay As You Go Mobile Phones.  It's brilliant. We put money on our phones and the credit never. goes. away.  They don't have to be topped up for any particular amount.  It's like the phone companies here don't hate people.  Also, incoming calls are free and Skype is available on the phone.

17.  Maternity care.  I was really impressed with my maternity care here, both before and after giving birth.  Having midwives come to the flat every day or two and then being transferred to a health visitor who also comes to the flat to see the baby seems so logical and right now that I have experienced it. 

18.  Weigh scales for cooking.  We're taking ours to Canada.

19.  No tipping.  

Glasgow Loves Christmas

There were really inexpensive train tickets to the Continent this month and Steve and I very much wanted to take a last vacation before the baby comes, but leaving the country seemed unwise the month before my due date, so we took a mini-break to Glasgow on Monday instead.  It was divine.

We stayed in a nice hotel with a pool, because floating in water is my favorite pregnant activity.  Steve was very pleased with the hotel, because it had a TV and he got to watch The Fall Guy.  And we were both thrilled that there was heat and a comfortable bed.

Monday night we walked into town and to enjoy tasty food and Christmas lights.

Right outside the European Christmas market in St. Enoch Square.

We ate dinner at my favorite Indian restaurant, Assam's.  That peshwari naan is seriously the size of my torso.  And DELICIOUS.

George Square festived up for Christmas.

Steve and Friend.

Nativity on George Square

We would be sad, sad, sad to be back home, except that we're now in our holiday digs at Becky's flat. Hooray!

All I Do is Think about Babies

Someone asked me several months ago how I feel about the differences between maternity care in the UK versus the US.  I don't know.  I've never received maternity care in the US.  I'm sometimes surprised about the maternity/birth proceses here, but I don't know if my expectations come from books and movies or actual practices in the US.

My only first-hand experience with birth in America is as a visitor who pops along to see her sister and new niece/nephew in the hospital several hours after the baby is born.  In that capacity I can state with authority that after giving birth, one's sister will be in bed claiming that the baby she just had is the best baby that's ever been and that her older children will be climbing on her bed to drink her juice boxes and poke their new sibling in the eye with the straw.

One thing that is notably different in the UK is that maternity care is handled almost exclusively by midwives.  I consider this a positive thing, because I would lean toward midwifery in the States, too, but here it is my only real option.  If I had medical problems that complicated my pregnancy, I would be referred to a doctor, but my default healthcare provider during my pregnancy is the midwife at my GP's office.  She's based at the hospital but holds appointments at my health center on Thursdays.

I'm giving birth in a hospital, but the hospital has two different birth wards--the labour suite and the midwife unit. The labour suite looks like the birth wards I've visited in the US.  The midwife unit has birthing pools (large enough for dads to hop in too) and showers, birth balls, and low, padded resting/sleeping areas, but no beds.  Active birth is encouraged there and the only drugs available are gas/air and diamorphine.  Anything stronger (like an epidural) is available in the labour suite.

Yesterday in antenatal class we were informed that after the baby is born, they no longer whisk him away to weigh and clean him first thing.  They prefer that we snuggle him up for an hour or so and let him eat first.  There are no hospital gowns; I give birth in whatever I feel like wearing (if I feel like wearing anything at all).  I leave 6-24 hours after a normal birth and then a health visitor comes to our flat periodically over the next 10 days to check on me and the baby.  All of these things were new information to me, but maybe they happen in the US, too.  I don't know.

A Pretty Day in Scotland

Yesterday was beautiful, so I took myself on a walk through the neighborhood

to a park that houses an old castle.

Many of the historic buildings near the park have been converted into flats,

including the former Royal Infirmary buildings, which I think have particularly nice rooflines.

I like it when Scotland is nice to me.

I Have a Bone to Pick with Scotland

I'm tired of defending American cuisine.  It's true that my country has exported a number of rubbish fast food chains to the rest of the world and it's true that America is the most obese country in the world (although Scotland is number 2 and Scottish children are fatter than American children, so they're set to take over the number 1 spot in 20 years or so).  I've been to Dollywood and seen the giant men in the tiny shorts.  I have a special place in my heart for Twinkies and I agree that American chocolate is a sad, sad thing.

BUT there's a lot of excellent food all across the US and the food culture in America appears to be much more alive and well than it is in Scotland, something that can be easily evidenced simply through differences in the availability of cooking supplies in each country.  Just try to find yourself a mason jar or a 25 lb bag of flour in this country.

Here are a couple of examples of what I run up against when talking to people in Scotland:

1. (Okay, this one was actually Steve.)  Steve bought some cornmeal at a little shop downtown and he was telling the guy in the store about cornbread and how popular it is in the southern US.  The man he was speaking to refused to believe him and kept insisting, "No, not in America.  They wouldn't eat such a thing there.  They eat hamburgers."

2. On Saturday we discovered marshmallow fluff in the grocery store and snapped it up because I like to use it in frosting.  The clerk stopped checking us out to question us about this strange new product.  Steve told her what it was and that it's popular in America and she responded, "Oh yes, everything bad for you comes from the States."  Well . . .  Have I ever mentioned that two different towns in Scotland claim to have invented the fried Mars bar?  The overwhelming presence of the chip shop?

I could go on about how everyone mentions McDonald's to me as an example of my native cuisine.  It's not.  Think delicious pulled pork sandwiches from Buddy's BBQ for US fast food.  I wouldn't take it so hard if I felt like Scotland had amazing food itself, but it doesn't.  Italy could defensibly criticize American food, but Scotland should just zip it.

Health and Safety (Gone Mad)

There is a term in the UK that pops up ALL. THE. TIME. The country seems a bit obsessed with it. The term (phrase?) is Health and Safety.  When I worked at the bookstore, I was first briefed on Health and Safety procedures (bend at your knees when lifting heavy boxes).  When I volunteered at the library, we first covered Health and Safety before discussing my responsibilities (meet across the street from the library during a fire).  Steve teaches a COURSE on Health and Safety at the college where he lectures (turn off the tractor before taking apart the engine).

I don't think any of that is so unusual, but here's where it gets weird.  Steve isn't allowed to change the light bulb in his office, because of Health and Safety.  Only electricians may perform that job.  Volunteers in England wanted to plant trees at a park, but they weren't allowed because none of them were trained in digging holes.  The council arranged for qualified hole diggers to plant the trees for them.   ??!!??

Last year when it snowed, we were not allowed to drop off our recycling at the recycling centre.  We drove up to the bins labeled glass and plastic only to find the sidewalk roped off and blocked by orange traffic cones.  We were literally separated from the bins by only about two feet of concrete, but the sidewalk was slushy and hadn't been shoveled so a man in a high visibility vest stopped Steve from stepping up onto it.  Being a fully qualified Canadian who was already extremely scornful of the country's reaction to a mere 6 inches of snow, Steve almost lost his mind over that incident.  Even I, who dislike the winter and agreed with the Scots that we should stop going to work in the snow, learned the Minnesota Shuffle from my college roommate and know how to cross an icy sidewalk on my own.  Health and Safety rules supreme, though.

This is my favorite effect of Health and Safety:

photo from http://www.hopesanddreams.co.uk/security.html

When children from nursery school go out on the town, they're first dressed up in high vis vests and attached to walkodiles.  I find it hilarious.

We All Have Our Disappointments in Life

Steve's Most Recent Disappointment:
I have absolutely put my foot down and refuse to name Baby McBaby either Bickford or Bletchley, the two names Steve currently claims to prefer.

My Most Recent Disappointment:
Vanilla extract is only available in tiny, tiny bottles in this country.  Like the size of food coloring bottles or the size I buy for almond extract.  I hadn't realized because we had a big (normal-sized) bottle from Costco.  It just ran out.  We bought a tiny bottle at the store on Saturday (after I stood in the aisle insisting to Steve that it wasn't possible that this was the normal size) and it is now half-way gone after baking one batch of zucchini bread and one pot of rice pudding.

Taking a Vacation from Our Problems. Again.

My friend Chou and her husband came to visit this past weekend.  It's nice to drive around the countryside and eat food with friends and forget about fingerprints and raging against government bureaucracies for a few days in order to focus instead on skeletons (again).

Gravestone with excellent prone skeleton in St. Andrews.  Does that baby bump look a bit big for 17 weeks?  It looks a bit big to me.

Another impressive skeleton in St. Andrews.

I've been super keen to go see this stone in Angus for a while now.  That skeleton's so pleased to be resurrected.

I Ate a Taaaaco

Steve and I traveled to Glasgow yesterday. Steve was attending graduation for the college where he teaches (the degrees are granted by the University of Glasgow) and I was stuffing myself with Mexican food. Because Glasgow has a taco shop. A taco shop!

Steve in his robe.  The hood is SUPPOSED to be red.

Cloisters at the university (where post-graduation refreshments were served AND where I dropped my strawberry tart on my shirt).

I visited Glasgow Cathedral while Steve fulfilled his duties.

Blackadder's Aisle in the Cathedral

I checked out the Necropolis too.  I don't know what this symbolizes, but I saw it a lot.

Necropolis Monument

Necropolis

I made it back to the university just in time to see the piper leading everyone out to the quadrangle.

Steve got led.

And then we went to eat at the Mexican place again. Because the only Mexican restaurant in our city costs a billion pounds and serves all its entrees with Cajun wedges.

Celebrating My Independence from British Food

Steve felt no need to celebrate Canada Day last week, but I insisted we salute Independence Day yesterday.  Steve was happy to comply, since it involved pulled pork.  I unearthed the I Love Liberty napkins and we invited over the missionaries (one American and two English) and we celebrated the fact that our nations parted ways so that now, years later, I can eat delicious Mexican food and delicious pulled pork and delicious cheesecake in my home country, which I'm beginning to think may have been worth it, even if we did get the short end of the stick when it comes to chocolate.

Skeleton Love

Last night I went to a presentation at church about cemeteries.  The speaker was the oldest woman in our congregation, Betty, who is 96-years-old.  She spent 10 years studying Scottish graveyards with her friend Bunty (I'm having a really hard time getting over that name--it's so British boarding school), and last night she told us about some of her experiences and explained some of the symbols on Scottish gravestones, which I find FASCINATING.

I came home all inspired and wishing we still had our car so we could try again to find the Logie Pert Cemetery (last time we went looking for it we forgot to bring the GPS coordinates and never located it).  Instead I satisfied myself with a quick trip to our nearest cemetery this morning.  Our new closest library happens to be on the way to the cemetery so I stopped there too.  Pretty, yes?  Much prettier than the main branch which is in a mall.

Library

The unfortunate thing about our nearest cemetery is that it was established in 1845, so all of the carvings are quite stylized and restrained.  Like these:

Scottish cemeteries before the 19th century are the ones full of the awesome.  Like these:

That skeleton at the bottom is one of the best things I've ever seen.  I'm not sure you can really see it, but he's got a very happy grin.

Serious trumpet action from those angels.

Visiting the Doctor in the UK is Better

I don't enjoy visiting the doctor's office EVER, mostly because I don't like strangers to touch me or look at me or talk to me.  However, going to the doctor in the UK is way better than going in the US for two main reasons.

1.  It's free.  FREE.  FREE.  That's the best part and I really, really enjoy it.

2.  The scales don't measure weight in pounds.  They weigh in kilograms and/or stones and I never bother doing the math to figure out the equivalent in pounds.  Instead, I just keep the happy feeling in my heart that the number (no matter what it really means) is so much lower than when I weigh myself at home.

Of course I'm watching the Royal Wedding

I don't know any Scots who are planning to watch the Royal Wedding.  It was noted on the radio that while there are a number of street parties planned in England and Wales tomorrow, there will only be 20 in all of Scotland.  There are other forms of wedding celebration planned, though.  I talked to a 4-year-old this morning who informed me that they're having a special wedding party at her nursery school today.  She's wearing a pink dress and a crown and she thinks that maybe the party is happening because Princess Katie (she had to think for a long time before coming up with that name) is getting married.  She advised her 3-year-old brother that he would have to be the prince, which made him stomp his feet and declare that he was a pirate, not a prince.  Steve and I are having our own wee 2-person party tomorrow.  We're eating celebratory food (chips and salsa) and parking ourselves in front of our computer and maybe sprinkling some of this commemorative sugar over something as it's been our only Royal Wedding-themed purchase.

I believe the wicked, mean winter is behind us.

The weather's been BEAUTIFUL lately, which makes me quite fidgety if I have to stay inside too much. I end up grabbing Steve and saying, "Come here. I need to shake you." Then we go for a walk.

I don't know what these flowers are, but they're lovely.

This burn (stream) used to power several mills in town.  It seems quite small these days, but there's still an aqueduct that runs over top of it.

We realized yesterday that there was a cemetery in town I'd never visited.  This angel stands on the entry gate.

This is the entire inscription on this grave.

The stone in this wall plaque didn't hold up very well, but I love the iron frame.

Yay, Spring!

Thank You, Martha

I've mentioned Martha on the blog before. She's a lovely, white-haired woman who's probably in her late 80s or early 90s.  When Steve and I first got married, she greeted me with, "So, you've gone and married my boyfriend, have you?" and several months ago she advised me that the first 60 years of marriage are the hardest (she was married for 61).  She's wonderful, but we really don't interact with her that often, just the occasional quick conversation at church every month or two.

Sunday she gave us this lovely anniversary gift.

It's a Scottish tradition to give a new couple something of your own for their first anniversary.  Martha's grandmother gave her this bud vase and we've been instructed to pass it on in the same way.  She told Steve that she considered giving it to one of her grandchildren, but she has so many she couldn't decide who it should go to, so she passed it to us instead.  I was so touched that she would think of us.

Thank you, Martha.

Window Shopping

There was some excellent window shopping in St. Andrews on Saturday.

Very fine looking haggis in the artisan butcher's shop.

William and Kate paper dolls.

Do you see what that sign says?  Cheese wedding cakes!  I really enjoy the speciality shops in Scotland--cheesemongers, fishmongers, ironmongers, all the mongers really.

I often see these wee frogs in bakery windows.  I'm always tempted to buy them because they're darling, but then I remember that cute food is generally less delicious than non-cute food (learn and remember).