:: Diary of a Global Nomad ::

:: Saturday, August 31, 2002 ::

Dissertation blues... I have not been in the mood to blog. I can read and read but I am not too fussed about writing - afterall I am spending hours writing up my essay. I can always type essays straight off in English no problem but with this dissertation I had to write it first on... paper... and then type it. This might sound like a fairly simple task for someone who is used to typing lots of essays, but the catch is that I am typing in Cyrillic and I STILL don't know the keyboard and so spend hours and hours one finger typing - like six words an hour! It is almost done, and then I hand it in next week when I am in Bath. I took the day off today, if I had to type today my eyes would have gone square, not to mention my legs gone numb with the weight of my dictionary that tends to sit on my lap.

My special treat for the day was packing all my things for Bath. Oh yes! Basically all my clothes, handbags, shoes, books, bedding, cushions, throws, curtains and nik-naks all had to be gathered together and packed into one space before they get put into my Dads car on Wednesday. This is how it works in my house... my Dad drives down, which takes 10 hours, and me and my Mum fly down! It works pretty well, I get really badly car sick and the prospect of even an hour in the car makes me really queasy. And at least this year my Dad only has to drive from Scotland to Bath. In my first year at uni he drove from Helsinki all the way through Finland to Turku/Åbo, ferried across to Stockholm, drove down through Sweden and Denmark and another ferry to England's east coast before driving to the west. Then he had to come back, and it is a long way! Second year my sister was also going to university and so he hired a van and drove from Germany to Bath then up to York. Demanding daughters, us?! Hmmm, well we must get it from somewhere and so I turn to my Mum.

My Mum is the queen of shoes, handbags and clothes... This must be where I take it from. Now that the majority of my clothes are packed up (minus my Winter clothes, which are in layover from Moscow, and my Summer clothes, which will remain here now that Winter is well on its way) I realise just how much stuff I have. It is crazy. I already have a whole load of things stored in Bath and so when I graduate and gather it all together I have no idea how I will get everything all in one place. Oh, it's not worth thinking about. It will have me coming out in a cold sweat about maybe having to throw something away. Let's think about something else...

I'm going to the cinema tonight. I'm going to see Insomnia and I'm really looking forward to it. A night off, away from The Moscow Metro and all its glories. Tomorrow though, back to the grindstone!
:: Fiona 8/31/2002 06:26:00 PM [+] ::
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Time flies when you are having fun. It's just one of those things. Time also flies when you are busy emptying boxes, throwing things away and finishing off ones dissertation. Unfortunately, they are just some of those things also. And so here I find myself having not blogged for nearly one week... shock horror!

Since my last blog about Scottish humour, I have indeed come accross more of the insane stuff that floats inside peoples heads this far north but I thought ít was too much information to let on... if you want to see it you should come up here for yourself! The ideal opportunity for this would be during the month of August, when the Edinburgh festival is on. Now as you should all know, Edinburgh is the capital of this dear little country and it is very cute in a typically Scottish way, with men in kilts and castles dominating the local skyline. It may not be as hip an cool as its little big brother Glasgow (on the Burberry handbag to people ratio Glasgow is far cooler) but it tries very hard to jump up and down and grab some attention, other than just the usual Japanese tourists who pit-stop there in the midst of their tour of the UK, with open mouths and clicking cameras of course. In terms of coolness it pipped Glasgow's post in bagging Scotland's first Harvey Nics (the famous up-market London department store, which just opened its Edinburgh doors last week) but the real jewel in the crown is the Edinburgh festival...

The festival is a culmination of Scottish cultural events, which also opens its doors to the freshest talent worldwide, from every field. There is the International Festival, which although corporate sponsered and a tad on the stiff side offers an amazing array of ballets, operas and classical concerts. Then there is the film festival, book festival, childrens festival, bla bla bla festival and the Fringe festival. This would be the most famous, with all the less-classical and alternative stuff, such as street theatre and stand-up shows etc... If you want to see Scottish humour, take yourself to Edinburgh this month, make it past the whords of tourists and English people who just 'Loooove the festival dahling', sit in a churchhall / bar somewhere and soak it up... I warn you though, us Scots can have s cick sense of humour and I heard somewhere that in one show a few years ago these two crazy Scottish guys poured IRN BRU (bright orange, sticky, 2nd fizzy national drink) over an English member of the audience - you know, just for a laugh!

I, although perhaps a tad on the nervous side, shall be going next week for a few days. It's the tail end of the action when everything has all but died down but it will be fun nevertheless. I have galleries to visit, and a few shows to see. I'll let you know how it goes...
:: Fiona 8/20/2002 11:05:00 AM [+] ::
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Today my Mum asked my brother how he had slept last night?! His reply was "like a log" to which my Mum quirked back with the question "What, did you wake up in the fireplace?!"

This is a typical example of Scottish humour, fast sharp and something that has me baffled, despite being Scottish myself. There are hundreds of examples of this but, as is typical, they have gone straight out of my head. I will leave it thus at that for the moment.
:: Fiona 8/14/2002 06:53:00 PM [+] ::
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Today would have been Elvis' birthday, or perhaps it still is his birthday if indeed the King lives on!

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a big Elvis fan or anything... It's just that the only place in the UK that Elvis ever actually made it to is my local airport and so I thought I would promote my little corner of the world with this little-known fact. Basically the King was flying to an airbase in Germany to do a concert for some GI Joes or something and his plane needed re-fueling, so they stopped at the first convenient European airport coming from North West (most transatlantic flights make this route due to jetstreams and stuff), which would be Prestwick. He de-boarded, stepping on British soil for the first and only time, and he stayed for forty minutes or so before he left again. Highly exciting.

Prestwick Airport and die-hard Elvis fans in and around Scotland take every opportunity to remind us of this fact, it has become a bit of a sore point for the English Elvis fans and indeed I heard on BBC Radio Scotland today that some crazy guy at the University of Lancaster had been writing a thesis on this subject. Closer to home though, actually at the airport one can have a drink at the Graceland Bar. Great. The memories are fading though, the airport is losing its former glory and not even Elvis can save it from the inevitable...

Once upon a time we used to use this airport to actually go places - North West Airlines used to fly to and from here to Boston, a flight I took when I was seven en route to Disney World - and I also once flew from here to Toronto. Nowadays it is mainly a cargo airport, for charter flights and for the ubiquitous Ryan Air, which is a sure sign that the airport is a secondary airport... Who am I to complain though?! Should I want to fly to other secondary airports across Europe I could do so for ridiculously cheap prices. It is tempting. Each time I see one of those blue and yellow planes fly above the estate I am sorely tempted to go and book a ticket to Oslo... Scandy-land!

Today though my thoughts have not been about fleeing to Sweden but about Elvis. Long live the King!
:: Fiona 8/13/2002 11:06:00 PM [+] ::
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My sister found this article for me. It's about Moscow, how it has changed since the Communist times.

What can I say about it?! Hmmmm, well the writer obviously was on drugs when he wrote this. Naturally Moscow has changed, and for the better. That goes without saying. However the writer portrays the new Moscow as if it were paradise, which it quite blatantly is not. For anyone having followed my blog through some of my bleak days they will know that this man was obviously wearing pink shaded, or rose tinted glasses. There are a lot of them (Russianists) out there. Take this quote for example: "Moscow in the summer is wonderful. Baking dust and heat, and the intense, shady green and blue of birch forests and sparkling rivers encircling the city. The world's best ice cream and the cool of the world's best metro system. Moscow State University, up on the hill, its majestic spire shimmering in the haze." Errrrrrrr, hello?! I agree that the ice cream is very good but the metro is far from cool - it's like going down to Hell for a visit riding that thing in the Summer, air con has not yet been introduced - and the rivers are murky brown not blue and sparkly. I reckon this guy was probably only there for a weekend, stayed in a nice hotel and swanned around the nice BBC offices before going to a bar where the women would fall all over him because he was a foreigner, he then goes on to talk about service with a smile... Ha ha ha!

Call me a cynic but this writer's version of Moscow is far different from mine, and I would take it with a large box of salt. Sure, I will admit that I never saw it during the Communist era and it surely must be a far better Moscow BUT it is far from the land of hope and glory. These mega pro-Russian people really get on my ****. AGH! It seems like even outside of Russia there will be no escaping from them, those who live for Russia and can't quite see its flaws although there are an abundance of them. Hmmmmm. I never cottoned on to the whole Russia love affair, I will admit. Still, I do have somewhat of an affection for it (I did actually stay there for six months without running away) and so with this in mind I want to say to these daft folk to get off your high horse. If your heart bleeds for these Russians so badly, why don't you move there and become a Russian yourself!

Always good to have a rant on a Monday!!!
:: Fiona 8/12/2002 09:41:00 PM [+] ::
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My sister is home for the weekend, which makes the family complete. We are the unit we always were, five of us. Mum, Dad, brother, sister and me. Chaos. We are a bit of a rabble when we all get together, it can be highly entertaining although it is tough to try and get a word in edgeways. This may be why it is quite rare for us all to be in the same house, town or even country at once!

I am number two of three, in the middle of a big brother and a little sister, who is only a year younger than me but who acts/thinks she is older than me. My sister and I get on well, but we don't see each other all that much so that could be why. She is very different from me, is more settled than me and our tastes differ tremendously (at present she is watching Jerry Springer and is talking back at the TV, which is something that drives me nuts - I hate freak shows. Oh, and she can pick up spiders and flush them away, whereas I run like a mad chicken if I so much as see one of those eight-legged freaks) apart from the whole Scandinavia thing... Well, Finland, which isn't Scandinavia as we all should know but is Nordic, who is splitting hairs though?! L loves Finland, warts and all. She loves the sausage people, is a big fan of Mika Hakkinen (is now in mourning that he retired) and is counting down the days until she goes to Helsinki at the end of this month. This though may have something to do with her Finnish boyfriend W, who she will no doubt marry before I even start to contemplate that M word seriously. As I have said she is way more settled than me, much less of a fruitcake and quite sensible - eeeeek! She can talk though, oh boy! That is one thing that we all have in common.

My brother too. I think my brother M has to be the funniest funniest man in the world. His humour is crude and very often sick, but when I'm around him my stomach is always almost splitting and so I don't mind. Laughter is a good cure for anything - I was tired and cranky during the 12+ hour flight from London to HongKong and my brother kept me entertained pretty much the whole way there with his imitations of Anne Robinson, of Weakest Link fame and his chinese jokes. Anyway M, he's a bit of a homebird, which is where he differs from me and my sister, and has stayed here in the south west of Scotland. I think he should ditch it all in, move to London and be a Comedian (although he loves the States, his humour I fear is too un-PC) but he is too attatched to his life here, and his Safeway supermarket fettish. He studied at Glasgow (only forty mins away) then bought a house in the town next to my home town, and is in his element now that my parents are home because he gets fed all the time - about time too, he is so skinny and he weighed less than me the last time we checked, or he made me endure the scales humiliation (I'm not that big but I am heavy, sigh). Being the first child, he can be a bit spoiled and relishes in the fact that he can get away with blue murder. My Mum is in mother hen mode at the moment, and wanted to make us a cake - how Martha S! I wanted it without raisins but my brother wanted it with, and there was no question over how was to win... Him. I'm not bitter about this, most of the time it is a standing joke that he is the 'prodigal son' and the apple of my Mothers eye bla bla and so we all laugh as we always do when we around him. That is when we are not crying...

It's all high flying emotions here. I think M feels it is his duty as a big brother to make us cry and he tries so hard. He is mad at the moment because two weeks have passed and he hasn't made me cry yet (I'm tough after Moscow though and so long as he doesn't touch my Burberry Handbag I'll be fine. It used to be boyfriends he would always attack but him being pathetically single he can't say a thing, claws...). He moved on to the next, much easier target - L, the sister - and at dinner tonight there were tears. We were eating potatos from my Uncles garden, where my Dog is burried and he pretended to find a Chloe (that was our dog) hair. Gross. You should have seen her face collapse. Totally unrealistic but she bites every bullet AND she lets herself get wound up about her private affairs. there are always tears and laughter.

It's all a game really, sibling rivalry and affection. I am in my element. I wish we were all children again and it could go on forever but alas on Tuesday L goes back to York and in September I am heading back to Bath. Not long until Christmas though...
:: Fiona 8/11/2002 10:09:00 PM [+] ::
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The South West of Scotland has a lot of good and bad to offer. I shall start with the bad, and work my way up to the good...

Unfortunately society is having to deal with an influx of what can only be called 'Neds'. Neds are the west coast of Scotland equivalent of London's Garys and Sharons. For those confused right about now, I shall enlighten you... These are the people with intentionally greasy hair, multiple earings and quite often a child born a few years before the legal age of consent. They are dressed in kappa 'easy access' (ie, with popper buttons down the side) sports trousers, sports jackets and the flashest of Nikes even though they have no intention of going anywhere near the gym and would rather loiter around shopping centres, housing estates and parks with a bottle of Buckfast, Mad Dog 20/20 or Merrydown - all of which are cheap alcoholic drinks - and make a nuisance of themselves. They sneer at people who are not like them, or are maybe happier than them, and have been known to ask such things as "Whit yoo doin' that fur?!" when people open doors for them. Actually that did happen to me, and I had to bite my tongue and not yell out "manners, you cretin." Neds are a real pain in the backside. I am being a total snob in saying this, but one has to admit that it is true. They are ignorant, narrow-minded and a real drag to have to share a space with. The worst of it is that more and more people are turning to ned-dom and my home town is being down by the kappa brigade. What used to be a quaint little seaside town, where the Glaswegians and people from forther afield would come on holiday is now an embarassment. Long gone are the glamourous people. The problem was that Ayr became a haven for retired people, dying a death and so the young people moved on to... well, Glasgow... leaving only a few levelheaded people behind, but mainly it is the downright ignorant population that remain and so life in Ayr revolves around them. Long gone are the nice shops, hello to the dozens of £ shops. Baaaaah. Not to mention the abundance of chippies. You want a deep fried pizza (yes, that is right a pizza in batter fried) with chips?! No worries, just choose from one of about a hundred. The west coast of Scotland has the worst rate of heart disease in the world, and we wonder why?! It can be really disheartening to see all these miserable, fat and depressed people and it does not make me overly proud It's just a bit naff really. I don't deal with neds too well, and I worry for the future of this region.

Fortunately the worst hasn't happened yet and there is still has some diginty to the area. There are still little niches of what I like about Scotland - the Scotland that is portrayed in all the guide books, the one with mist and mountains and fairies. And not to forget there still is the glorious history of Robert Burns. Robert Burns you ask?! He is our national poet, a hero, and he hails from Ayrshire. He is probably most famous for Auld Lang Syne, the song sung by the English speaking population the World over at New Year, but my favourites are his poems that are based in this area as they mean more to me. At school we were always made to learn these poems and songs by heart, and had to recite them in competitions, and so I have a bit of a soft spot for Burns. My favourite would be his epic tale Tam O'Shanter, which starts off:

When chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neebors neebors meet,
As market-days are wearing late,
And folk begin to tak the gate;
While we sit bousin, at the nappy,
And gettin fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

Basically, it is about Tam, who likes the drink a bit and after having been in the town selling his wares at the market he heads to the pub whilst his wife Kate sits at home getting mad. At the pub he gets rather drunk and then has to endure the journey home, where strange things happen. This extract is just the first verse, the very beginning of the scene setting but it then continues for pages and pages, and musters lots of emotions - fear, anxiety, terror, excitement. It is an amazing piece of work, and you should check it out here.

Living in the heart of Burns country, with Burns cottage only just down the road in Alloway and with Scotland's equivalent to Disneyland next door to it (The Land O' Burns Experience or something...) I am bombarded with my culture all the time. It is great, Burns is a real gem. Reading the works of this skilled man I am proud to say that I too come from Ayrshire, I mean... Who else in the world could write a poem dedicated to a Haggis?! It's great.
:: Fiona 8/07/2002 12:08:00 PM [+] ::
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I live in the South West of Scotland, about five miles in-land from the coastal town of Ayr (which I guess one could call my 'home' town if we were being pernickity, and I have no idea how to spell that word as so forgive me for that) in a lovely little place called Sundrum Castle. Don't get me wrong, although quite a little princess (ha ha) I don't actually live in the castle, just a stone throw away from it, but I do have access to all the grounds and the tennis courts etc.. It is a great place to live, it epitomises - to me anyway - everything that I think Scotland should be. It's green and lush yet dark and misty, there is wildlife oozing from every pore of the ninety-six acres of land with its river, waterfall, fields and forests... and there is a castle with a flag flying the Soltaire (the blue flag with white diagonal cross that makes up a third of the Union flag that more people would recognise)!

I used to hate this place - Sundrum - in my early teens because it was 'so boring'. By this I think I meant 'so quiet', in that there were not many people to entertain me, or at least people my age other than my sister. I didn't have a driving license and the drive to the main road, where I could catch a bus into the metropolis that is Ayr is a good two miles of enclosed tarmic through a dark, and somewhat creepy wood. This being Scotland, the mystic place where fairies and elves wander the woods, not to mention the many ghosts, I was somewhat terrified of this wood in the dark. With Scotland being quite far north it can tend to be dark a lot in the Winter, and even in the Summer the clouds make it dark and gloomy and so fate had it that I was stranded, resenting this place for being so out of the way.

It is only now that I have come back after many years away do I realise what an amazing place this is and how priveliged I am to stay up here. It is wonderful, an idyllic abyss only just tucked away from the high-paced world where people can let their children and dogs roam and run about fields, without the fear of them being run down by a car, or whatever. There is also a sense of community among the residents, which I witnessed on Sunday evening at an Estate bar-b-que. Some might think it is a bit sick in a way, or a bit twee that once a month we have an estate day where activities are organised but I assure you now that it has calmed down, with new people arriving and the community growing to a size where it is not quite as easy to live in one anothers pockets. I look back to my bitter, angst-filled teenage years when my parents first bought the property and I remember how bad it was then - a few parties a weekend and such a high consumption of alcohol that there was talk of applying for a private bottle-bank for recycling. It was crazy, claustrophobic and almost in the leagues of a weird sect. Yikes. These days it has calmed, the excitement dimmed, the first generation of Sundrum dwellers having moved on and more families moving in. Sunday evening was nice though, and it was nice to meet up with some of my parents friends again and eat some good food after my long walk in the afternoon. Good old Scotland!

:: Fiona 8/06/2002 06:15:00 PM [+] ::
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What a life! What a way to spend a Sunday morning... sitting in the sunshine (I believe it is the first sunny day Scotland has had this Summer, no seriously) reading the Sunday supplements. Fantastic. It is good to catch up on all the things I missed whilst away and a newspaper that lasts all day long, with glossy magazines and interesting articles ranks up there as one of the finer things. Washing, ironing and unpacking boxes from various walks of life would not be so nice, but they also have to be done. Shucks. I have been spending my time just 're-adjusting' to life back in the West and although I am still wading through boxes I keep falling in love with just about everything so it is fun. I am manically crazy with joy over finding my old school uniform (at the time I velieved it to be torture but what a good idea), my old diaries from when I was in my early teens (how pathetic), old photos and forgotten about clothes and gadgets and stuff.

Then there is the joy of a newspaper delievered every morning by the postman, and TV programmes and a... duvet. Bliss. Am spending my time reading, vedging and sleeping. Oh, and visiting relatives who want to hear all about the perils of Russia. I'm beginning to sound like a broken record. It is what I do best though, talk, so I guess I don't mind.

Later on I am going to walk the boundaries of the Estate with my Dad, catching up on green air and no doubt falling in mud and having a few arguments with a few trees and bushes that pop in my way as they always did when I was a child. I am so excited, will ditch all my city ways for a moment and will be the country girl I once used to be before I realised that trees don't talk back, ha ha! It will be so nice to see trees that aren't birch or pine, but real British hundreds of years old oak trees, and it will be refreshing to walk along the river that runs through the estate, to see its waterfall and muster up images of Highland Spring (that's the mineral water that British Airways use incidentally) adverts from TV.

Yes, I managed to re-find my blog, which had disappeared. Don't know what is happening with blogger but my blog went walk abouts in cyber space and all my archives have gone a bit manic too. Fingers crossed it continues to at least semi-work...
:: Fiona 8/04/2002 12:09:00 PM [+] ::
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Now I cannot even get onto my blog, huh!
:: Fiona 8/01/2002 08:43:00 PM [+] ::
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