Posts filed under 'Travel'
It’s a serious question when you’re eight, going on nine. Things are not just out there. You need to know whether you like them or not.
Rachel and David’s eldest is keen on space. She and Dan had fun setting up her telescope while we were there, and while you or I may be struggling to think what to wear tomorrow, she is looking ahead to 2020 and the next manned mission to the Moon.
At one point, she mentioned that she liked Neptune best as a planet. “Why?” “Just do.” (This is also important when you’re eight. And twenty eight or more. Sometimes we just do.) I think it helped that it was also blue.
What was interesting was that then the adults started saying which planet they like. I liked Jupiter, because it was the biggest. Her dad liked Saturn, because of the rings. Dan liked Pluto, because it was also the name of a dog.
It was a great reminder that we too had our preferences, even though we might have long forgotten some of them. Life gets a lot more complicated when we have to justify why we like something (or more often as an adult, why we are still doing something when in fact we don’t want to).
Perhaps it’s a good incentive to have a more immediate response to things. Meanwhile, I’m off to practise a learned response - a cup of tea.
November 20th, 2008
Friends that is. Big and small. We’re just back from visiting Rachel and David, and their four wee ones (some not so wee now), in Italy. As well as restocking the supplies of risotto rice, grana, and a certain small pasta that goes well in sausage casserole.
It’s now nearly 8 years since R and D decided to head to Italy, and interesting to see how friendships develop when you see people less often. For a while, we managed to see each other nearly every 6 months. Rising numbers of children on their side, and work commitments on ours, now stretch it to a yearly catch up. But it’s still well worth it.
One of the features of going over less often is that we end up with a snapshot of life there that may only last a week. Especially with the youngest at a year and a bit, change is a very rapid thing among children. We pick up their catch phrases, identify their favourite books at that time, and see other ‘big’ changes that in fact came in over time: both older girls now reading independently in both English and Italian, for example.
Even being around for just a week, it’s terribly gratifying for you to hear one of the children saying “I want my Alison”, or for another to call you auntie by mistake. Even the littlest went from hiding from us earlier in the week to accepting being fed by us, as well as a few games together, such as repeated shaking your head while holding a naughty grin at the same time. (She started it, not me.)
Time also shows what has lasted since a previous visit - the eldest remembering how to play ”Sausages and chips”, where you try to make the other person laugh by asking them silly questions. She will also set up photo opportunities for their Flat Eric, as we tend to do with ours, having seen our pictures in the past.
Other elements that we completely forgot - interim books that went into a parcel at some time, colouring in stencils on windows - are still part of life there. I remember hearing Rachel’s grandmother saying to me one time, with some pride, an estimate of how many English books she had sent over to Italy while Rachel and her siblings were growing up there, and I started to feel that we might be continuing a little of that trend.
Apart from the food products, there’s always things we bring back. A growing interest in the Veggie Tales’ “Silly Songs with Larry”, which was principal CD in the car while we were there. Photos of another year. An even greater appreciation of R and D’s skills as parents. A couple more pictures to go on our fridge.
Some people go on holiday for a change. I do that too, but it’s sometimes even better to go on holiday for more of the same.
November 20th, 2008
Not quite the ton (that really would have been scary), but I reached national speed limit type velocity today on the A1. What’s more, both I and other drivers lived to tell the tale. (Mind you, you would hope so, with the driving instructor next to me.)
Driving lessons continue, and today included driving in the dark - though heading back into Edinburgh through an amazing sunset first. Doing 50 on the old A1, not many other cars about, you get the feeling that you might just be able to do this…or so I hope. The really scary part will be getting in a car on my own, and going from A to B. (Not to mention actually owning a car…Perhaps I really should have done this in my teens instead, when optimism might have outweighed natural wariness a bit more.)
I now take very seriously how people talk about getting tired doing motorway driving, as I certainly was tired heading back. But overtaking lorries seems a little more familiar now, though having a bus overtake me on the inside lane of dual carriageway on the way back into town was less helpful. Particularly when he’d parked somewhere silly outside Haddington earlier on in the journey.
I am doing other things than driving, but when the driving goes OK, it seems a bit more noteworthy. Maybe a different topic next time.
October 28th, 2008
But can you name the tune the words come from?
I am having refresher driving lessons. Fifteen and a half years on from stunning my mother with my ability to pass my driving test (she took me out to lunch on the strength of it), I am actually behind the wheel again - and so far, actually quite good.
So, I can change up gears (changing down not as good), brake going into bends and accelerate coming out of them, and actually start to believe my driving instructor that I can do more in higher gears than I thought. I can also go over speed bumps…a necessity where I live. And I even got to practise putting fuel into a car for the first time.
Driving is definitely in the ‘feel the fear…’ category, but as it is moving into the ‘feel the need…’ category more, I think I might finally have incentives for keeping going. Even the fact that I am not back to complete beginner status is a boost to the ego.
The strange thing is being able to drive through areas that feel busy, because there’s someone at my elbow to tell me what to do. My bus journeys in the morning are a bit more interesting now, because I am even trying to read the road ahead, as though I were driving. (The only down side is, every time I think we should be changing up a gear, we pull into a bus stop. Obvious limitations with this form of virtual driving.)
I’m not even going to think about how many million lifts I owe in lieu of how many I’ve been given over the years. But at least some of them have been paid in cake or other foodstuffs, I reckon. And for those friends who live outside of the reaches of Lothian Buses, I might even be able to visit you. Not immediately, but a lot sooner than walking over, anyway.
Dan pointed out that we missed our window of opportunity to drive when fuel was cheaper. My inner Scot/Yorkshirewoman is going to be terrified by the cost of it all. But little by little, we’ll get there.
October 14th, 2008
Overwhelmed as I am with five comments on one post, I know that what you really wanted to read about was Cremola Foam.
I have a Useful Notebook that gets carried around, partly so I can work out which children’s book to buy for which new arrival and that kind of thing, but it’s useful for ideas about blog posts too. Sometimes it’s as good to think about writing as it is to do it - like food in that respect.
Topping the list of items to write about is Cremola Foam. Going to wikipedia, fount of all immediately accessible information, I discover that I have the name wrong - it is in fact Creamola Foam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creamola_Foam
Growing up as a Mackenzie, a big part of family tradition was going on holiday to the Isle of Jura. It’s a few generations since we had direct relatives living there, but there’s a family cottage, and a lot of shared history. It’s where my dad spent his summer holidays too, and part of those holidays, for both of us, was creamola foam.
Part of the mystique of creamola foam was the buying it en route to Jura. We’d drive up from the north of England or central England, according to where we were living at that point, and stay over with my great aunts in Greenock. (Greenock is indeed the place to live if you are an aunt.) We would then drive to Gourock, just up the coast, and get the ferry to Dunoon, to continue the journey.
And once we arrived in Gourock, anticipating the first ferry of the journey, it was time to buy the small pot of creamola foam to induce the holiday mood. In Dad’s day, it was mostly lemon flavour, in mine, orange. But mainly really it allows you to have an absurdly fizzy drink and a huge amount of happiness (and no doubt sugar), combined.
Creamola foam was also available in the shop on Islay, after the second ferry, and before the third, over to Jura itself. Should you run out on the holiday, there would usually be a day trip to Islay, and an opportunity to stock up again.
One year, I attempted the impossible. I brought a full pot of it home with me. Now I could continue the holiday feeling. But then, it being precious, it was hard to make a move to start it. A month or two down the line, and it was already hardening into a lump. And somehow, it didn’t taste the same at home.
Reading wikipedia, I discover the advertising boast that creamola foam was ‘fully sweetened’. You bet. This is a Scottish foodstuff, after all. Needless to say, they don’t write advertising copy like that these days - or perhaps, they just hide the fact that something is fully sweetened.
Tastes of childhood. Perhaps sometimes it’s best for some things to remain at a distance. Worse, perhaps, to discover now that I didn’t like it - although again, wikipedia indicates that there’s a bit of an attempt going on to bring it back.
With rain on the menu most days at the moment, it’s good to think about summer at times, even distant summers. Next stop, soda streams, I feel.
September 18th, 2008
Haven’t been able to file a report from abroad before. I’m sure it ought to be very exciting, full of drama and tension.
Except I’m in Bonn, the town where it was said, by one of the diplomats in residence at the time, that ‘every day was a little like Sunday’.
It’s certainly felt like it - although I’m told that this is more so because students are still currently on holiday. But this is still a small town, and even though it was the capital for several decades, you could argue it has settled back into its Sunday feel fairly happily.
I have connections with Bonn, so I try not to judge it too harshly. My grandparents were here for several years when it was still the capital, and my last visit here included looking up the house where they’d lived - which I’d also visited as a toddler. Needless to say, it wasn’t recognisable to me, although other family members were able to comment on what had changed.
Not to worry. Bonn’s other main claim to fame - being the home of Haribo sweeties - is secure. And these days, it’s still about the economy, eh?
April 4th, 2008
Same again folks. Back to the Isle of Jura. For all that it’s good to see new places, it’s also great to have ones that stay in your mind - and that you are part of.
We had been away three years. I couldn’t quite believe it was that long, but we added it up. However, Jura has been ‘abandoned’ by me before - but there’s always the opportunity to pick up again.
Jura is now one of two places that I have known and returned to since early childhood. The other is my granny’s house in Edinburgh. As people and places move on, and as I do too, being somewhere that is so familiar can be a great relief. Going there on holiday is continuity - not just with my past, but with my family.
We have family connections with Jura going back several generations. Although it’s about 4 generations back that direct family actually lived there, I become part of the subsequent story - the families who retained the link, who went there in their holiday time, and so on.
When I was a child, there was a lot of effort involved in going there - driving up from whichever part of England or Scotland we were in, breaking the journey with our aunts in Greenock who own the cottage. From there on, every part of the journey is mapped - enough of the excitement is in passing the places along the route that also have their own connections, or maybe just attraction.
As a child, driving up a hill called the Rest and Be Thankful had a huge impact on the imagination. Passing Inverary, where we had had separate visits - and where I could see the remains of a little tower on the hill that Dad had climbed up to. Driving alongside the Crinan Canal, sometimes seeing sailing ships passing along, above the height of the car. Coming into the painted enclosure of the harbour at Tarbert - and remembering the one overnight drive to Jura, where we woke up in Tarbert, and had sandwiches for breakfast, overlooking the pier.
For a child mostly living fairly far inland, access to a beach was a big attraction. But also to ferries - the big one and the small one. To seals. To red deer. To a coastline where each little part had its own name - and a story that, if it didn’t belong to me, belonged to another family member.
There is a point on the big ferry, heading out from Kennacraig, where you pass the opening of the headland, and come out to run alongside the Mull of Kintyre. Behind you is green, fairly flat - and ahead of you, an island - your island! With its distinctive three main hills, the Paps, it is a key moment.
Why take so long to tell all this? Normally I would get to that view and cry. This year, for the first time, it didn’t happen. I had returned to Jura more as an adult - somehow thinking more about others’ responses to the island than my own recollections.
Going on holiday allows you to keep an idealised view of a place. Not everyone gets to go to an island on holiday - even with Britain as it is - and to a cottage that ‘belongs’ to them. This time I saw the life on Jura perhaps more as it really is - hard work at times for the locals, what with rough seas cutting off ferries, pot holes that the council seems to avoid filling, new attempts to fill the main additional ’shop’ with a business venture that will last.
And in this era of being seen to be holidaying in Britain, spending to support the (local) economy, and so on, returning to Jura feels not just a logical choice, but one that contributes to more people’s future than my own.
March 25th, 2008
About time I put another post out there, keen to extol blogging as I am yet not doing much of it just now…
Blame spring cleaning, early summer cleaning, oh there’s another cold snap cleaning and general furniture shifting. But, for a change, blame holiday…where we deliberately kept off-line.
Actually, this gets easier if you go somewhere which doesn’t have internet access. Scottish island, family cottage owned by great aunt (who is also a great-aunt) who isn’t online but keeps very busy in other ways, thankyou. Even though the island has a public access internet point, we managed to keep away.
This isn’t so hard: holidays are about doing things you don’t get time to do (or don’t get round to): watching films, reading books, eating porridge. Even playing Scrabble and drinking tea from pots (not directly, you understand, mugs were still involved).
It’s also about doing things that you don’t get access to at home: watching red deer from the back window of the cottage, watching storms (and strong moonlight) from the front. Going to the beach when it isn’t really spring yet, and having the place to yourself. Leaning out of the front door (which is conveniently a stable door that you open the top half of), surveying the morning’s activities - of other people.
There was even drama surrounding getting home yesterday - a call before 8am to say that we would need to make a 10.30 ferry if we wanted to get off the island that day. A wait to see if the second ferry would divert to the other side of island 2 because of rough seas, as it had the previous day - which would have meant quick moves to a bus across to the other port. Harder to achieve when you’re foot passengers, and the bus doesn’t go that often.
Thankfully going home by coach, though time-consuming, also meant we avoided having to drive in slushy conditions. Say what you want about Scottish summers, these factors are not part of our more usual visits to this island home from home.
Yes, we missed out on a genuine opportunity to be stranded away from work. It was quite tempting, actually. But we gained a story to tell, and some further kindness from those based on islands, who understand how easily plans, including travel plans, may have to change if the weather does.
This time next week, I’ll be preparing for travel with work. But for now, I’m holding on to the sophistications of cooking my breakfast, looking out of the window…and rejoining our book collection at home.
March 23rd, 2008
That’s Valentine’s Day to you. I just fancied writing it. “Valentinky” has quite a nice ring to it too.
Why Walentynki? I don’t really subscribe to the common concept of what Valentine’s Day is about in the UK.
As a teenager, you just kind of sulk about it (though there are so many things to sulk about as a teenager, I’m not sure how much others perceive the difference on this occasion).
As a young adult, the pang increases a little. Now people possibly have some money to spend on the day. But as much as anything, it’s just a reminder that others have someone in their lives and you don’t. Which is not always a good thing to dwell on. (At this stage you dwell on things, rather than sulking, possibly because you only have one main room to hang out in, so you can’t exactly run off to your room when it gets too much.)
In this stage of life, I happened to be in Poland during Valentine’s Day. Both times were memorable, for different reasons. The first time, I received a Valentine’s fax from a family friend.
Firstly, receiving a fax made quite an impact in the boarding school/convent where I was staying, and secondly, it reminded me that a world existed beyond the one in Poland I had joined just a week before. (My family didn’t hear from me for a fortnight, the length of time it took to me first to remember and then to work out how to post my first letter from Poland. Life pre-mobile eh?)
The second time, a sudden change in circumstances. I had someone, I hadn’t been together with them the previous Valentine’s Day, and all of a sudden, this year, I was engaged. And he was in a different country. But I learned to be upbeat - particularly aided by seeing the enthusiasm with which Poles had taken to Valentine’s Day.
This was a holiday adopted after the end of Communism. The flashy thing to do was take your true love out to McDonalds. In fact, the drive-through McDonalds round the corner from where I lived had a photo montage of happy couples in McDonalds over Valentine’s Day.
From a UK perspective, it doesn’t seem very romantic. But I liked the enthusiasm, the sense of rising to the occasion. Rather than a slushfest, Valentine’s Day had become fun, cheerful even.
I didn’t take myself out for a McDonald’s that year, you may be pleased to hear. I did buy myself flowers. But I developed a liking for a sense of what a particular day could mean in a new context.
Walentynki. You can’t just buy it in the shops. But it’s what every relationship needs from time to time.
(Footnote: despite telling my colleagues that Dan and I don’t really ‘do’ Valentine’s, I returned home to a little parcel of Italian deli goodies that he had happily selected. There’s another good aspect of Walentynki - having your expectations changed. It’s a wise man that knows that a woman also appreciates the ‘way to one’s heart is through one’s stomach’.)
So, I salute Valentine perspectives with Peroni beer - and will save mention of the outcome of the other ingredients for another day.
February 14th, 2008
The wintry onslaught continues across Britain. Alison considers a writing career for the weather section of the Beeb…but wait! There are signs of an alternative weather front looming…
Never mind fog (although many do, of course, particularly those driving). What we want at the weekend is fug.
Fug is one of those words that suggests it’s a bit hot and stuffy, but we like it that way. It’s just what we need indoors when outdoors, we and our possessions are likely to be blown away in all directions.
Now that smoking is banned in public places all across the UK, fug is less of an option for pubs, which used to be a potential locator when there was lots of smoke. You can tell that those who described it as fug in pubs rather liked it after all.
Next option is cafes that fill up when it’s raining. A great example of a cafe that had the right level of fug is one a little below Snowdon. I once attempted to climb Snowdon with someone I knew from my gap year, plus a couple of friends of hers. We didn’t get very far up when really driving rain set in, and by the time we were back down, we were all completely soaked.
Thankfully, the cafe was just the place for having a huge pot of tea and full fry ups all round. No doubt we added to the fug by steaming gently as we dried out. By the time we had drained the tea pot, we were even mostly dry. A very happy outcome - I might even suggest happier than having reached the summit, although I’m sure that’s not really the spirit.
Meanwhile, the home fug is settling in nicely - probably my favourite sort. A little light soup making (though the soup itself will probably be reasonably ribsticking), a batch of sauce, some veg to add to the oven in a sec. In a while, I can add to the fug by bringing out a roast chicken, making gravy, that kind of thing.
You could describe it as steam. Even condensation. But that defeats the point. It’s happy steam. It suggests that the world is, for a little while at least, set at rights.
February 2nd, 2008
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