Where to Stay in Glasgow

I went to Glasgow for the first time last fall to have a look around and to see kd lang in concert (more about her in another installment). It was a great trip. We stayed two nights at a hotel called Citizen M. This is a concept hotel, which I think works really well. The one in Glasgow looks like a black box from the outside. The interior hallways leading to the rooms are not plush and the first thing you notice is that the doors are much closer together than other hotels. The rooms are nicely appointed, small, high-tech, and they provide nothing more than what you need...with one exception. You can change the lighting color in the ceiling panel of the shower, which is enclosed in a frosted glass wall visible from all parts of the room. You can change the hue of your room from green to red to blue to lavender to gold. Hours of fun. And it's done with a universal remote control, which also controls the lights, the blinds and the TV. Each room has a very large picture window under which the bed stretches from one wall to the other. It's a bit awkward having the bed surrounded on three sides, but the mattress is very comfortable.




The common spaces in the hotel are decorated with sleek modern furniture, but not the sort of modern furniture that makes you think 'how the hell do you sit on that?! Is it actually to sit on, or is it a plant stand?' There are oddly shaped chairs, but there are also comfy sofas and benches. The color scheme is bold: white, black and red. There are several big screen TVs and big screen Macs in the computer area to use. There are coffee table books about art and music and pop culture everywhere and it's clear they are meant to be perused. And there is a lounge and snack bar which is comfy and inviting. 

Anyway, folks, if you ever find yourself in one of the cities where Citizen M operates, try it. I can't wait to go back to Glasgow and explore the city again, and I look forward to another stay at the same quirky, affordable, luxurious-in-all-the-right-ways hotel. 

Twitter: Screaming Into the Electronic Abyss

My two regular followers will notice something sort of new and perhaps unexpected along the left sidebar of this here blog: my Twitter updates. Yes, I've gone and done it. If you were unfortunate enough to have read a past blog entry called Social Networking and the Angel of History without blocking out the experience as a psychological defense, you'll probably be wondering what the hell I'm thinking joining Twitter. I was, in said blog entry, just the teensiest bit critical of the boring use of Twitter and other social networking sites.

Okay. So here's how it started. It won't surprise any of you to be reminded that I am a kd lang fan. And I have been following her on a fan forum for some years now. I learned that kd and her band have started using Twitter to upate their fans on her new album and tour. So that proved too absolutely tempting. It's easy and fast to make a profile and get started on this 'microblog' site. You have 140 spaces to say what you will. It is a good exercise in saying something concise and meaningful. There is something appealing to me about this forced use of poetic sensibilities. Of course, many users simply use texting abbreviations to pack in the most information (not all of it useful) that they can. So far, I have tried to abide by the no abbreviations rule.

Maybe it's because I am middle aged, or perhaps slightly past middle age, that I compare my life as a young teen (way back in the day) to what I imagine the life of a young teen to be like now. I work in a restaurant and many of the dishwashers, waiters and waitresses are very young. They will have cherished memories of stealing each other's phones and sending lewd text messages out in the name of the hapless victim. My cherished memories involving technology are about having a stereo and speaker system in my room that allowed me to tape record an album onto a cassette tape. My God! The freedom. This allowed me to have the very portable cassette tape of my favorite album, and what's more, it allowed me to make the highly prized mixed tape. Oh, yes indeed! With such advanced technology at my fingertips I could stop the tape, put on another album, check that the needle was set right, start the tape recording and lower the needle to the vinyl. How wonderful to make a tape that had different artists on it. At the time this was a staggering amount of musical freedom, it must be said. 

These days I couldn't be bothered with something as old-school as that. Now I simply adjust my iTunes playlists. But there was a time when the painstaking ritual of mixed tape creation was enough to keep me occupied for an entire afternoon (no wonder my homework suffered). I do wonder if the fact that back then you had to record things in real time meant that I have deep, almost tactile memories of what the experience was like, what my room was like, what the ritual consisted of, what it was like to remove the album from the cover and liner, how to flip a record over in your hands without touching the grooves, all those details. Today you can download a song anywhere and add it to your playlists within seconds. Do I remember where I was and what was going on and how I felt when I downloaded Ann Wilson's cover of Immigrant Song (arguably the best cover ever of that song)? Not exactly. But if you ask my memories of Blondie's Heart of Glass, I'll tell you all about our class camping trip and the little shop with the jukebox at Lake Sacheen, and how I developed an instant crush on Andy Davis when he said he loved that song.


The point of this saunter down memory lane is to say how quickly things change.  Back when I was interspersing Heart, Fleetwood Mac, and Blondie songs on my cassette tapes, I could not have conceived of a world where I could broadcast my every thought and action to literally tens of people.  I could not conceive of a world where I could send a friend a song using an electronic device. Here's the rub. If I could have conceived of a world in which these things happen, I would not have suspected that one day I would find all of it a little underwhelming. 

That's where we are now, folks. Paris, London, Social Networking...boring. To quote the Pierces 'nothing thrills us anymore. No one kills us anymore.' Celebrities? Really boring. I got so fed up with the inane and/or constant tweeting that I dumped Annie Lennox, Kathy Griffin, and even (gulp) kd lang. Yep. I ditched them, axed them, blasted them off the page, stopped following them. And these are people I genuinely like and still have an interest in. But I just can't be bothered to scroll through their cryptic crap, their persnickety palavering, their political pontificating. Bah. Boring. One can only take so many admonishments to join this or that rally or attend this or that show. And, seriously, one can only take so many references to the movie Harold and Maude, with or without banjos (sorry kd). 

And if that's how I feel seeing other people's inane posts - how must they feel looking at mine? Doesn't matter. I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5 followers. Is there anything good about twitter? Yes! My partner is funny. I like her posts. Creepy Query Girl posts links to her blog, and I nearly always click through to read her. She blogs about her writing life and she's funny and inspirational. I keep up with the latest Rachel Maddow stuff. I follow Heart, my hometown girls. They only tweet the essential info. I also follow The Selby on Twitter so that I get little reminders to check his site. If you like photos of interesting people and their homes, you'll like his blog. But as for me, I can rarely think of anything interesting to post. I do feel sometimes as if I am screaming into the electronic abyss. However, as mentioned before, the challenge of 140 spaces to say something meaningful is there and waiting.

Demolition is Fun

Hi all.

Demolition is a lovely word. I got rid of a built-in bookcase which took up too much space in our wee sitting room, and was, in fact, completely useless. It took a bit of muscle to get it out of there. I thought for a minute it might actually have doubled as a bomb shelter, so soundly was it constructed. Alas, the club hammer and pry bar proved too much for it in the end.


Do you know what I found had fallen behind and under the bookcase? Some neatly typed notes from the local Temperance Committee, circa 1952. I think that lends some credence to my notion that the interior of the house has not been updated since roughly the stone age. At any rate, I'm sure you'll be happy to know that the ladies were working diligently to 'counteract the superstition that the coming of a New Year must be celebrated in whisky.'

Alas, the whisky industry outlived the Temperance movement. Actually, the bookcase outlived it as well. Let's drink to that.

Before

After. 

Notice the fireplace just to the left of the former bookcase. Can you guess what happened to all that scrap wood?

What's Cookin'?

Christmas at Dalbeattie 2010

Well, folks, the Holiday Season came and went without a post. And do you know what? According to the stats section, it was the busiest time yet for traffic to this blog. I was amazed to find that we've had visitors from the following nations in addition to the US and the UK: Canada, China, Columbia, France, Netherlands, and Slovenia. Welcome one and all!

The reason I haven't posted is that I hit the pavement looking for work...and found it. I produced a little flyer advertising my kitchen services to local restaurants in the event they needed emergency or temporary help. A couple of local restaurants responded and I worked various shifts for them. One of the owners sang my praises to friends who own the Anchor Hotel in Kippford (four miles from our little village) and pretty soon, I had a regular job doing prep and starters. I have found it's very helpful to have a background in kitchen work, because you can almost always find a job. Given the economy and given the fact that my data management skill set needs updating, kitchen work seemed a good option.  Americans, I'm pleased to say, are seen as industrious, positive, and hard-working. So even if the average Brit is baffled by our politicians, they have a general fondness for the average American. And America is widely regarded for it's friendliness and customer service. The customer service is sadly lacking in many places in the UK, and I'm not sure why that should be as the people are generally polite, friendly and love to go out to eat and drink. You'd think it would be a customer service dream.

What is the food like, you ask? Not as grim as you've been led to believe. I have found that the UK is a 'foodie' culture. The old stereotype of totally overcooked meat and veg is outdated. With the mix of cultures in the UK, the average Brit probably has a better grasp of ethnic food than the average American. There are many amazing restaurants in the UK. But you want to know what's on the menu at a pub/hotel, don't you?

Standard menu items for starters include soup, pate, crab on toast, smoked salmon, fried brie, garlic mushrooms. Their sauce for prawn cocktail, what most Americans would refer to as shrimp cocktail, is a marie rose sauce (mayo, ketchup, worcestershire sauce) which is a bit creamier and less spicy than the cocktail sauce I'm used to. It's basically Thousand Island without the chunky bits. One of the more popular starters is nachos. As in America, it seems to be served in a variety of ways, but I think I can safely say, they don't  have the same sense of what standard salsa is like. For example, the freshly made salsa where I work is an absolutely gorgeous deep red with tomatoes, herbs, and red onions in it. It seems to get its color from a sweet chili sauce, which is definitely an asian touch. It tastes wonderful and it would be familiar to the British palate as they do have a love of Asian and Indian foods here. But it really isn't what an American would think of as salsa. It's more like a chutney. Aside from nachos as a starter, there is very little Mexican influence on the mainstream restaurants here and Mexican restaurants are few and far between.  I've daydreamed of opening a little Mexican food stand. I could call it Nacho Mama. I know. It's an old one, but a good one.

For mains there are the usual fish and chips (most often haddock), steaks, burgers, and salads; you will also find steak pie (often a dish of beef stew with a square of puff pastry on top), curry, pork medallions, lamb cutlets, sea bass, and a fair amount of duck, pheasant, and venison. And they don't hold back on serving sauces and gravy. Delicious. Comforting. And definitely not dreary. What's the difference between the English pub food and the Scottish pub food? In a word, haggis. If you come to the Anchor and order the smoked duck salad starter, your strips of gorgeous duck breast will come on a bed of greens lovingly tossed with walnuts and a light vinagrette and topped with artistically placed deep-fried haggis balls. Arranged with special care by yours truly. Or if you are very into haggis, you could order the haggis fritters: two slices of haggis, battered and fried topped with a lovely gravy. What kind of gravy? No idea. Or if you are not into haggis but you are into deep fried things, you could order a deep fried mars bar. Sadly, that does not come with gravy. Not even chocolate gravy. 

This is my home version of a starter from work: tower of smoked salmon, cucumber and prawn. Christmas Eve lunch.

Also this fall we said goodbye to an old friend, Lily (1994 - 2010)

Kirkcudbright is 'Dy-no-mite!'

Kirkcudbright, a recent destination for one of our famous day trips, is a lovely, arty town located at the estuary of the River Dee in Galloway.

First order of business: I had to learn how to pronounce the name properly. It is most definitely not pronounced how it looks: kur (to rhyme with fur) KOO (to rhyme with fu manchu) bree (to rhyme with tree). So that's kur-KOO-bree, emphasis on the KOO. I guess I should apologize for the title of this post, then. Sorry. Sorry Kirkcudbright. Sorry Jimmy Walker of Good Times fame. Sorry.

There are several noticable things about Kirkcudbright. The ruin of Maclellan's Castle dominates one end of the town, where Castle Street and Cuthbert Street meet. I didn't think the castle was particulary nice to look at, but see a nicely drawn town map here.

Another noticeable thing about the town, something I haven't seen much of in the UK, is wide streets. They aren't as wide as Salt Lake City's streets, or the streets in Las Vegas (which you need to file something akin to a flight plan before you cross), but they are very wide for British streets.

Kirkcudbright has one of the more interesting WWI memorials I've seen. It is a statue of a man with a sword and shield protecting a small boy. Usually they are just a stone pillar with names on them. Something interesting to note is that the WWI memorials in these little towns have a lot (I'm not kidding) of soldier's names on them, about twice as many as WWII. I'm always moved by seeing those lists of names, especially when in a very small village. I look around and think my God, nearly all of the men from this little town were lost. And then twenty years later, another world war. It is sobering.

Another thing you notice is that the town does pride itself on being home to a lot of artists. I think a town that promotes the arts is a very good town indeed. In keeping with the arty feeling, the citizens seem to have agreed that it would be really cool to paint their houses interesting colors, so you do get that seaside town feeling when you look around.

Here are a few pics of Kirkcudbright. Enjoy. 

Click for the larger pic and you'll see the house near the end of the street is purple

This lovely church was turned into several private flats

You better not misbehave in Kirkcudbright

 

 Loved Ones Lost at Sea

'To The Glorious Dead: 1914 - 1918'

Fishing boat in Kirkcudbright Harbour along the river Dee

 You are not allowed to drive your car into the harbour

Beachcombing in Galloway

Standing on the beach looking back at Carsethorn, The Steamboat Inn, and shrouded Criffel.

Galloway is a wonderful place for beachcombers. In one visit to Kippford in June, we doubled the size of our collection of sea glass. Just the other day at the beach at Carsethorn, we doubled it again.  Even found a chunky blue bit of glass. I wonder if sea glass just isn't a big deal here. The beaches all over Puget Sound are usually picked clean. I made some truly wonderful finds in the non-glass areas as well. We'll have a bit of show-and-tell just below.

And in a bit of related news for you, I have started a new blog.  This one is dedicated to beach-combing pics with a little bit of info thrown in. It's a work in progress, but there are already pics posted. Please join in the fun. I'm looking to promote it and improve it.

A bit of an Oriental ceramic piece, smooth to the touch

 

 

 

 

Wonderfully faded Dutch ceramic piece, no bigger than a ten pence.

Blue row boat.

It's all about the blue.

Village Life 2: The Sounds of Dalbeattie

respice prospice.
learn from the past - look to the future.

I notice sounds here in the UK even more than I did in the States. I think this is because everything is so new to me. I have to pay close attention; I have to listen well, particularly here in Scotland, in order to understand what people are saying to me. The accents and indeed the vocabulary is very different from England and from the States. It takes a bit of getting used to, and I admit, if someone is a fast-talker I miss about half of what is said. I listen for key words and tone of voice, and look at facial expression to capture meaning in context; failing that, I look to my partner who very kindly translates for me. I am usually understood when I speak (though not always). I think this has more to do with speaking in a slow, western drawl than with the overall mildness of my accent. In fact, the very notion of my 'mild accent' is beginning to erode. It took me a while to admit that I even had an accent; my denials were met with guffaws. I switched to espousing the idea that, although I might have an accent, it is without question a very, very mild one. This was met with bemused looks, and pats on the head. Of course I have an accent. It is a western drawl of the North American variety. Okay. Fine. Let's move on.

By far the most pleasant sound we encounter is the friendly banter between locals that we hear from the downstairs café. It opens at 9am and by 9:30am a group of regulars are in and chatting. We can't make out what is said but we hear the tone, cadence and accent. It is punctuated with much laughter. To my ear it sounds roughly like: hee hah hoh ahhh, oh aye HAHAHAHAHA! It's like a babbling brook of friendliness. It always puts a smile on my face.

And that last bit (oh, aye HAHAHAHAHA!) is standard and oft heard in Dalbeattie. As is the greeting 'HiYAHH.' Emphasis on the drawn out YAHH. It's not like a karate chop (HIYA!!) like Miss Piggy is famous for; and it's not as clipped as the greeting I commonly use (hiya). Anyway, we think it is a local custom. We haven't heard it said like that anywhere else.

Another local custom is for the young of the village to hang out at The Cross on Friday and Saturday nights, into the wee hours of the morning. They chat, shout, sing, and slurr incomprehensibly as the night goes on. Living in noisy Canterbury with 40,000 college students was good practice for living at The Cross. To be fair, there isn't much in Dalbeattie for the young to do on a weekend, and the fact that they are out (in good weather) singing and laughing instead of texting or playing video games or creating teen pregnancies is something to be glad about. However, I must admit to sometimes praying for a rain shower that lasts from 11pm to 3am. They tend to scurry away when it rains. Which should be most of the winter, I would think. The sound of rain is a lovely thing in itself.

Because we are in the center of town where there are restaurants, small supermarkets and pubs, we also hear the early morning delivery trucks roll in. We hear the drivers operating the tailgates and moving racks of things around as they make their deliveries. It's the sound of commerce; this, in a small town, in a difficult economy, is a welcome sound. Doesn't bother me a bit. Not even the especially loud 4am delivery truck.

One of the most soothing sounds of Dalbeattie is the rushing of the burn. Note: burn is a Scots word to mean small river. The burn flows right through the center of Dalbeattie towards the River Urr. We like to walk along the bank and listen to the water. And there's always Dalbeattie Forest with it's chirping birds and chattering red squirrels. The forest is adjacent to the town, and once inside, it's amazing how quickly the sounds of human endeavor drop away.

The sounds of Dalbeattie range from the friendly banter of locals to machines of commerce to the soothing sounds of nature. All within a small radius, a ten minute walk.

on the bank of the burn

aprapos of 'HiYAHH' this is the only bit of graffiti i've discovered in Dalbeattie thus far.
note the artistic shadow of the camera and my hand.
for comparison purposes, see my past blog entry about graffiti, the peace of wild things.