Halloween Part 2

When I was a child in Scotland it seemed that Halloween and Bonfire Night were two celebrations in one. Bonfire Night, on November 5, celebrated the discovery of, and the foiling of, the plot by Guy Fawkes, and others, to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.
A classmate did once invite me to a Halloween party and we played the traditional games: dooking (bobbing) for apples, eating treacly scones tied on strings and pinning the tail on the donkey, blindfolded.
But that was not the usual way we celebrated the season.
Preparations for Bonfire Night started in late October. There was indeed a bonfire to be built. This was long before these events were regulated and the local children scoured the neighbourhood for bonfire material; old tyres, tables, bits of wood, old rugs and rolls of unused wallpaper were collected for the funeral pyre of Guy Fawkes.
We made a Guy out of scarecrow material; old clothes stuffed with straw. He came with us as we foraged for the bonfire and we pulled him along in a hurlie (a wee cart.) “Penny for the Guy!” we shouted.
The pennies bought fireworks. On Bonfire Night, with little adult supervision we lit Roman candles, Catherine wheels, bangers, rockets and waved sparklers about with no care of personal injury or property damage.
The safest place for a bonfire is on the beach, but when I was wee, the bonfire was built on top of the brae, the communal drying green and so very close to our houses.
The Guy sat on the top and once the bonfire was burning, neighbours gathered and kept it blazing, tossing more rubbish on to it.
We cheered when the flames got to the Guy and devoured him.
Then we children started our ‘guising’ and knocked on neighbours’ doors. We were expected and welcomed.
We didn’t shout ‘Trick or Treat.’ We simply knocked and were invited to come in and perform for the treat.
We earned our treat. Those who could dance or sing did so and the reward was a few coins, a toffee apple or a piece of homemade tablet (fudge.)
We didn’t have fancy costumes and I wore my mother’s wrap-around-apron as my outfit. I had a false-face, which was a sixpenny piece of cardboard, secured behind my head with an elastic band.
It usually rained and the false-face was mushy on my cheeks.
Most children had a talent for dancing or singing, but I didn’t dance or sing or entertain.
My talent was to recite and bore.
My favourite poem has always been, “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” By Sir Walter Scott.
I‘d launch into:

The way was long, the wind was cold,
The Minstrel was infirm and old;
His wither’d cheek, and tresses gray,
Seem’d to have known a better day;
The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy

I’d start weeping when I got to “carried by an orphan boy…” The poor wee laddie carrying the heavy harp in the cold wind. I got my sixpence and went weeping to recite at the next house.

But on October 31 I will turn on the porch light and I will have a basket of candy.
I don’t want the wee ones to trip over their costumes climbing up my steps.
I’m not really so grumpy.

Halloween Part 1

I think I must be a Halloween grump.
I don’t have carved pumpkins by the front door; I don’t decorate my house with witches or tombstones. Spiders create all my cobwebs naturally.
I may have been traumatized by my first Halloween experience in US. We’d only been here a few weeks and on a visit to the bank to get cash (obviously pre-ATM days) a gorilla handed me the money!
Of course I recognized the teller’s voice, but I was scared of the hair and teeth. It was so far from the serious banking experience in UK, where the staidly dressed tellers sat behind grilles.
We were invited to a Halloween party once. I don’t enjoy dressing up so I just went as myself and painted my face with blue theatrical paint. I am, after all, a Pict and all I had to do was to clart myself with woad.
When we moved into the house, twenty years ago, I welcomed the children of our avenue and encouraged them to take candy from my basket. It was fun to guess who they were, underneath their costumes, but those children are now college students or newlyweds and all living elsewhere.
Now, I don’t know the children who come to the door and they don’t introduce themselves.
The wee ones come early in the evening and are sweet and cute. The creative young teens come later, but sometimes teens who are far too old to be knocking on doors for candy, come. They wear no costumes and are aggressive and greedy.
But I am a Halloween grump.
There will be a part 2. I might not be so grumpy then.

Public Transportation

I wish I could use it, but our local public transportation isn’t easily accessible to me and I find it to be dangerous.
Our local transit company, AC (Alameda County) has a fleet of fairly new buses. A Belgian company, ‘Van Hool’, has supplied these.
Berkeley has always been proud of the fact that not only is it a completely accessible town, but also has been a pioneer in the disability rights’ movement. So it’s a terrible shame, if not a disgrace, that my first and last trip on such a bus, recently, was nerve-wracking!
I no longer have the knees to climb the steep steps into the bus, but the bus driver lowered the steps so that I could get on more comfortably.
But once I was aboard my experience was terrifying! The driver started off before I had put my money in the box and I lost my balance. The bus was shoogly and unstable. (That’s probably redundancy.) I didn’t fall, but I did stagger about a bit, probably looking more drunk than spastic to people who don’t know me. I was very afraid of falling and hurting not only myself but also anyone else I might have fallen on. I’m particularly afraid of falling and breaking my teeth and having done so in all my life, I believe I have now more crowns in my mouth than there are on the thrones of Europe.
I clutched a pole to stop myself flapping about and potentially poking someone in the eye with my cp hand and saw that I had to hoist myself into a seat that was a step up. Seating for ‘senior ctizens and people with disabilities’ is in the MIDDLE of the bus, not directly behind the driver as was the configuration in the old fleet. So people who have mobility and balance difficulties have to access those seats usually while the bus is moving.
I didn’t feel comfortable or safe as the bus swayed north along Shattuck Ave and then west on Solano Ave. An elderly lady, holding her bags of groceries, fell on her back as the bus lurched to a halt. The driver didn’t come up the aisle to check on her. He didn’t seem to notice and ignored the concerns of the passengers who picked up the lady and helped her off. She was more concerned about her broken eggs than the possibility of broken bones.
My stop came near and I located the donger thingie to ding, but I couldn’t reach it. It was behind me and on my right side. No good. I called to the driver, but he chose to speed up and when I tried to stand up, the force thrust me back into my seat. I screamed at the driver to stop and let me off and he did so, but didn’t lower the steps so I could exit gracefully.
I believe this driver was an exception, but ought he to have been driving a bus?
Last year I met an AC bus driver at the gym and described the situation to her. She expressed sympathy and said that she and other drivers hate the buses. But they are under great pressure to be on time and to reach the terminus for their scheduled break. If they are late, they often have time only for a bathroom break and no food.
I’ve participated in a letter writing campaign to AC Transit and copied, as many others have, to a Berkeley bi-weekly newspaper, in which I’ve seen letters describing ‘Van Hool’ as ‘Van Hell buses.’
I’m not the only one who fears to ride the bus.

Scots Language Society

I have always enjoyed writing in my native dialect, The Doric. I heard it before I learned to speak English and I could call it my ‘comfort language.’
An article I wrote a few years ago explains this in more detail; “Speak Bonnie Noo.”
I’ve written a number of articles and stories in The Doric which have been published in the Banffshire Advertiser (The Buckie Paper, AKA, ‘The Squeak,’ and in the newsletter of the Buckie and District Fishing Heritage Museum.
A few years ago I joined the Scots Language Society. I think the Society has very few members outside of Scotland.
I’m chuffed tae bits that last year the Society published a story I wrote.
I’d been telling the story for 40 years and wrote it as a piece for Susan Ito’s writing class at UC extension. But it just didn’t work in English.
The story was about a visit from Canadian relatives and despite our sincere efforts to make them feel welcome and comfortable, it was a laughable disaster!
I heard the Doric voices in contrast to the Canadian voices and realised that was what the story was about. There were two extremely different cultures and expectations.
“Scottish Hospitality” was published in The Doric, in the winter edition, 2006, of ‘Lallans,’ the journal of the Scots Language Society.

Here’s a short excerpt of me reading this story.

Customs’ Duty Puzzle

Background to the question: as part of my personal clearing up after myself, I decided to offer my Dad’s war time (WWII) medals and certificates to the Buckie & District Fishing Heritage Museum.
The museum agreed to accept them.
On October 3 we took the package to the UPS store and arranged for expedited shipping.
The shipping costs, including the packaging and insurance were $99.91. This included tracking the package as it was scanned at each UPS depot.
We laughed at the notation that delivery was to a remote area. Buckie is not remote!
On October 10 UPS arrived in Buckie, with the package, plus a request for 20 pounds and 59 pence for freight charges.
Freight charges from where? We had already paid for door to door delivery.
I called UPS customer service. They say charges are from UK Custom services.
Why? The medals are of no commercial value and will not be resold. They were a donation.
Of course, I will be contacting UK customs & excise, but if anyone who reads this and who knows about current custom procedures, I’d appreciate information.
I’m going to bed humming, “The deil’s awa wi the exciseman.”

Keep off the Grass!

We share our urban environment with a variety of wildlife. I like and respect them all. After all, they were here first. My nocturnal neighbours are possums, skunks and raccoons. The spiders decorate my garden.
But the raccoons dig up the grass in the back garden, the skunks have sprayed my cat, the possums wanted to set up home in my dryer in the laundry room.
There was no reasoning with them, but we compromised with the spider that created a huge web on my washing line. Spider gets to keep the space and we’ve used a clothes peg to indicate how much of the line I can use.
We made a sign for the raccoons to tell them stop digging up our grass. We put a net over the grass. They made a hole in the net and dug the grass anyway. We need a bigger sign, I think.

Our Personal Columbus Day

Richard and I arrived in Berkeley on October 12 1978. Richard had recently gained his Ph.D. in Cambridge, England and had been awarded a NATO fellowship to study for two years in the EECS department of UC Berkeley.
We arrived at SFO on a balmy evening, a huge contrast to the cold wind and rain we had left behind as we took off from Heathrow. But it couldn’t have been only the weather that made me fall in love with the Bay Area immediately the plane taxied to the gate.
Perhaps it was because I am prone to fall in love at first sight. I fell in love with Richard as soon as I saw him and we’ve been married 34 years. So I fell in love before we collected our luggage and I simply knew that I had come home.
The following day was Columbus Day and we had no idea that it was a holiday. We wanted to notify our parents that we had arrived safely, but neither set had a telephone so we decided to send a telegram. The Post Office was closed, of course, but someone directed us to the Western Union office on University Avenue.
We walked there from the Durant Hotel to send “Arrived Safely. STOP Weather nice. STOP,” or something similarly absurd!
We walked all the way back to meet Richard’s mentor, Professor Lotfi Zadeh, for lunch on the campus.
When I walked onto the UC Berkeley campus, I felt as if I’d run away to join the circus! There was the spotted man with a gas mask, performing tai chi movements; there was the man who couldn’t sing, standing on a box, with a microphone, singing off key.
Nothing made sense. It still doesn’t, but it’s home

Clear up after Yourself

Mum died in January 2000 and Dad died in April 2002.
They had lived for the over fifty years that they been married in the same house that Dad grew up in. His parents had also lived with them, as was the way of traditional fishing families, so when I went back to Buckie to sell the house, I had to dispose of the possessions of several people.
Dad and his parents had lived in the house since 1924. They didn’t believe in disposing of anything! I even had to throw out a bottle of Milton (antiseptic) that had belonged to Granny and she had died in 1968.
How sad it was to arrive at the house and not have Dad there to welcome us. I wanted to say the house was empty but that was not so! Every surface was covered with stuff, even piles of the local newspaper that Dad used to save for me to read whenever I visited.
There was no time for reading, or even much reflection, on this, my last visit to the house.
I almost didn’t have a house to sell. The fifty year old gas fire in the kitchen had been shut off and a sign, “DANGER! DO NOT USE!” had been attached. The Estate Agent, who had visited the house earlier, noticed a strong smell of gas and called the gas company. In all it’s fifty years that fire had never been serviced!
I felt very guilty for living so far away, but knowing how stubbornly independent he was, I doubt he’d have let me help in anyway.
I remember, whenever I visited him, I’d say, “Let’s clear out a cupboard, make a start on living without so much clutter.” He would humour me, promise to take the bits and pieces to the charity shop, but everything we took out was back in the drawer on my next visit.
He could never face the task and cheerfully said that I’d come and do it for him, but only AFTER he’d gone! He chose to ignore the fact of my physical difficulty: I don’t drive, I can’t carry things downstairs while holding on to a hand rail, I can’t stand for too long and I have not been able to kneel down for over 20 years.
Richard came to help me, but he was chairing a conference a week later and we didn’t have the luxury of time to make choices of what do with other people’s memories and things that were special to them.
When I lived in Cambridge, England, I worked in the Archives Centre, of Churchill College. There were the private papers of Sir Winston Churchill, including his weekly laundry lists.
I teased Dad that the piles of papers covering the chairs would be equally worthy of archival attention.
But, while Sir Winston had secretaries to take care of his stuff, Dad only had me.
I had to throw away his life.