Nunc Dimittis

Nunc Dimittis (James Laughlin)

Little time now
and so much hasn’t
been put down as I
should have done it.
But does it matter?
It’s all been written
so well by my betters,
and what they wrote
has been my joy.

Scott at erasing.org writes about driving through mountains in a very different part of the world, but so much of it could be written about the Scottish Highlands as well. Go read it for an idea of the actual experience, which I have neither the time nor skill to evoke as amazingly well as he does.

* * *

I might not have very much time to write till Thursday, which is the day I get kicked out of my hall room (and therefore have to pack up all the junk I’ve accumulated this year prior to that), the day I have the finals of a mooting competition that I’d rather like to win, and the day on which I’d have been flying back to Singapore, if not for the above damn competition, which I got told about way too late.

Scotland: Highlands and Edinburgh

This is how I’ll do it:

  • Us in Scotland, plus random trip fragments
  • How good it is, nonetheless, to be home

Scotland:

Was fabulous.

Jed was designated driver (well, more like only licensed driver), and went through periodic hell for our sakes on narrow single-laned roads (and one single-laned tunnel) with only the occasional lay-by and Jed on the edge of his seat muttering “The Scots are crazy” through gritted teeth to save us from collisions with oncoming traffic.

Luke was surprisingly successful navigator, champion of cheesy music (we burned some CDs to play. Some of Luke’s choices: Another Night, Eternal Love, When You Say Nothing At All. The pain, the pain.) on the car stereo, and incorrigible explorer of all things forested or clamberable.

I, er, researched stuff and snoozed in the back seat when I felt like it. And will fully acknowledge here and now that the collective efforts of Jed and Luke played a far more significant role in the success of our trip than my guidebook-thumbings did. Thanks, guys. :)

Day One: Started out from Durham, elevenish. Drove through Newcastle, shivered in fog at the border, couldn’t resist stopping for lunch and inane kicks in Jedburgh, which included places called Jedwater, Jedforest and Bonjedward, drove through Edinburgh and Stirling and spent the night on the…<resist…using…”bonnie bonnie banks”…Resist…Resist… >…shores of Loch Lomond. Had a humble and bloody awful dinner of miscellaneous Heinz canned concoctions, although Luke’s surreptitious inclusion of grapes in the chicken soup arguably provided a gourmet touch.

Day Two: Loved Glencoe. Hated Fort William. Got very stressed driving through Kyle of Lochalsh and Stomeferry, due to the earlier described road conditions; creep up to Jed and whisper “Passing Places” in his ear, and you might well meet a violent death. Photographed Eileen Donan Castle. Between here and Inverness I was asleep, but, er, I’m sure it was great.

Day Three: Lots of little stops to see Cullendon (I liked it. Newcastle John’s opinion, bestowed yesterday over the phone: “Michelle. It’s a field.”), Clava Cairns, the Bridge of Doulsie (where I fondled my first nettle while trying not to fall down a slope), Carrbridge, Glen More, Loch an Eileen and Dunkeld before reaching Edinburgh, where we said goodbye to Jed, who had to head back to Durham.

Day Four: I’m tired just thinking about it. Climbed Calton Hill. Little shopping stops along Princes Street on the way to lunch, which was Thai and excellent on Dalry Road. Walked the Royal Mile, popping in to St Giles’ Cathedral. And finally, the unleashing of Luke on the Salisbury Crags. I was perfectly happy with the idea of climbing, oh, a couple million metres, to Arthur’s Seat. I was less happy with struggling along the bloody Attempt Only With Sherpa route behind a gambolling Luke, along which my apparent fetish for thorny hillside plants was confirmed by my second nettle grope. Despite this, the view from the top definitely was worth the climb, and my fears about ending up as a pile of human haggis at the foot of the hills proved unfounded.

Random trip fragments:

Along the way, Luke managed to:

  • topple a stack of Kaifeng’s video tapes (Cambridge)
  • break the glass in Terence’s beloved sheep photo frame (Nottingham)
  • break Jed’s cassette tape cover (somewhere in Scotland)
  • get chocolate ice cream on the sheets and in the bedside table drawer in our B & B (Inverness)
  • break an L-torch while demonstrating how (not) to use it (a shop in Edinburgh)

Memorable exclamations:

  • Wunderbar! (Luke, uttered frequently)
  • LUKE TAY!!! (An exasperated Jed, also uttered frequently)
  • You are obviously drawn to mediocrity. (Me, on Luke’s taste in music. Also uttered frequently, usually in abject aural misery.)
  • Oooooookaaaae (Luke, attempting to sound Scottish)
  • This would all look so much better if not for the CHEE-BAI sky! (Jed, when the weather wasn’t great. I should explain for those unfamiliar with the Chinese dialect of Hokkien, that the above adjective refers to female genitalia, and is generally used as a swear word rather than an attempt at description or simile.)
  • Do you really have to wear that garish jacket? (Me, on Luke’s jacket, which is white with bits of red and black, and I think it’s awful)

Home at last:

We got back to London early Sunday morning, after a rather unpleasant 9 hour coach trip. I’d intended to have a relaxing and solitary Sunday: unpack, have breakfast, get some of the sleep that eluded me on the bus, and then go for evening mass, which always tends to be more peaceful than morning mass. Food would hopefully be avoided, after far too many Scottish meals involving chips with everything.

I certainly hadn’t planned on going a bit mad with the rest of the hall choir singing I Will Follow Him (complete with “I love him! I love him! I love him! And where he goes I’ll follow! I’ll follow! I’ll follow!”) after morning mass, playing football in Regent’s Park (I now sport a massive bruise on my shin, thanks to Father John’s knee), cooking dinner for some hallmates (tricolore fusilli with chicken, bacon, capsicum, onions, and sweetcorn, in sun dried tomato and herb sauce. Canned peaches and pears for dessert. Father John drank all the syrup.), joining the usual TV room rabble for Have I Got News For You and People Like Us, having a characteristically whimsical phone conversation with Newcastle John, finally deciding to go to bed, wandering downstairs to have some peppermint tea, finding Interview With The Vampire on in the TV room, and enthusing about Sympathy For The Devil and then the beauty of Axl Rose with Noelia and Emma.

I got to bed some time around two. I had other plans for the day, but my hall got in the way.

Scotland: Final Update

The end is near, and more’s the pity, because it’s been a good trip. We’re in an easyEverything in Edinburgh, just in from our Highlands fling. We dumped our bags in the hostel, which is a charming backpacker place where every bed has a name (mine’s Trigger, Luke’s is Trainspotter), and headed out to see Edinburgh at night, eventually ending up here.

I’m not going to go into the details right now – my hand is a little the worse for wear after accidentally fondling a nettle earlier today, and it’s been a long day. We get back to London early Sunday morning, and I’ll probably manage something then, although I then have to start preparing for the finals of my senior mooting competition, which have conveniently been arranged for the day I was meant to be flying back to Singapore, at the time I was meant to be checking in, and I was only informed of this the day before I set out on this trip. This is obviously tremendously annoying in a multitude of ways, but I’ll worry about all that when I get back to London.

England/Scotland 2001: Snippets From Halfway

So much to write about, so little time trespassing in a Durham university computer room to write it…

I could write about Luke’s infrequent and reluctant observances of personal hygiene, or his frequent and enthusiastic attempts at cornball humour. There’s also his Sainsbury’s fetish.

I could write about our strange and irrational fascination with going to John O’Groats, despite knowing almost nothing about what is there, simply because we like the name. There’s the saga of the canned curry and accompanying naan. There’s the ongoing religious warfare. There’s our complete inability, even now, to bother making any plans whatsoever about Scotland.

I could go into daffodil ruminations – we pass fields upon fields of them in the bus (we’re National Expressing around), and the novelty of that strident yellow in the placidity of the English countryside still hasn’t worn off yet – but why are they there, and who plants them? Answers on a disgustingly touristy Sherwood Forest postcard…

I should definitely mention lovely friends who have borne our idiosyncratic impositions with patience and generosity. Kaif and Paul in Cambridge, Terence in Nottingham, Natalie in York and Jed in Durham: thank you, thank you, thank you. Apart from being wonderful, you’ve also saved us a lot of money, and that fact in particular really does make me love you more.

Cambridge

Combine gorgeous weather, unbelievably hospitable friends and a willingness to look touristy without feeling self-conscious, and you get a great first day of a holiday.

Lunch was by the river, on Trinity College members’ only grass courtesy of Kaifeng and Vikram. Relieved at avoiding the plebs, we of course engaged in highly cultured ruminations such as how birds reproduce. (eg. Luke, scrutinizing passing ducks, “But I don’t see anything sticking out anywhere!”).

Punting followed, unsurprisingly, with the punt starting in the capable hands of Kaifeng, then passing into the considerably less skilled but enthusiastic grasp of Luke (this part is mostly a blur, but I seem to remember a lot of “BRACE! BRACE!”) and finally getting into my admittedly least competent custodianship. Getting us moving was okay. I could do that. It was just maintaining any one direction that didn’t involve the banks, other boats or going backwards that was the problem.

Kaifeng then left for Brighton with some friends, leaving us his keys with the naive and oft-regretted instructions to “make ourselves at home”, and we biked with Paul to Grantchester, where we sat in deckchairs among flowering trees at The Orchard and had tea and scones and clotted cream and jam, and a theological debate.

I was charmed, not just by the immediate appeal of the place but also by its past as a haven for the Grantchester Group (Rupert Brooke, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Bertrand Russell, Augustus John, Maynard Keynes, Ludwig Wittgenstein). We went into the dinky little Rupert Brooke museum, and I felt a sudden affection for Bloomsbury, home to me in London these past two years, and home to the Bloomsbury Group (Virginia Woolf and Keynes were members of this too) eighty or so years ago. Most of the time, the area’s past as a place where great minds lived and worked is somewhat less on my mind than the fact that I’m half an hour late for an hour-long lecture, and I sprint around, oblivious.

But sometimes, it hits me. Charles Darwin lived down the road from where I live now, Keynes nearby at Gordon Square, George Bernard Shaw, fleetingly, at Fitzroy Square. When I try to list things I came here for, this is one of them, as remote and superficial and meaningless as the connection may be..

Off To North England and Scotland

I’ve popped in to say that I’m going on a merrie exploringge trippe around ye olde England and ye…er…bonnie Scotland with Luke tomorrow, and so updates may or may not happen for the next week. We’re sponging off friends in Cambridge, Nottingham, York and Durham, so Internet access should be easily available there, but once we hit Scotland it’ll have to be cybercafes, which we may or may not go to. There will, however, be many hours spent on National Express coaches, during which I’ll have plenty of time to scribble things down as I tend to enjoy doing on long rides, so perhaps some of that will make an appearance here when we get back.

We get back to London on the second or thirdish, I think. We only planned all of this yesterday, so we have no idea what we’re doing in Scotland or where we’re staying. What fun. :)

Meanwhile, tonight is a poetry reading at my hall, which should be interesting at the very least. I’m reading this, because I think it reads well and is easy to listen to, and because most of the poetry I’ve written myself recently is either too poor or too private to share. Got to run back for it now – I anticipate Artem the mad Russian reading William McGonagall, and I don’t want to miss it.

Hi, I’m A Walking Tourist Brochure

Life right now is almost the stuff of trite summer London tourist brochures, and it’s wonderful.

Monday was meant to begin with swimming, but ULU decided to close the pool for repairs till July on the very day I’d resolved to start a fitness regimen. The afternoon was Requiem For A Dream at the Prince Charles Cinema (admittedly not quite the feelgood hit of the season, but I loved it), me dragging ever-patient Russ with his gym bag around HMV, and overpriced chai and priceless conversation at Essence.

Dinner with various hallmates was creamy pasta, chicken kievs, Savoy cabbage garnished with bacon bits, fried onions and sweetcorn (my contribution), and peaches with Neapolitan ice-cream. We washed up to the sound of other hallmates singing Gretchaninoff’s Cantate Domino, in four-part harmony. Noelia sashayed downstairs, having embarked on intensive post-exam drinking much earlier in the day and now trying to recover from a hangover at 9.30 at night. Artem the mad Russian was laughing maniacally at Running Man in the TV room.

I spent the rest of the night in my room, listening to the CDs I’d bought at HMV (Copland, orchestral works; Sibelius, Symphony No 2 and Jascha Heifetz playing the Violin Concerto in D; Yehudi Menuhin playing the Beethoven and Mendelssohn Violin Concertos) and trudging through Underworld, which is getting increasingly tedious two thirds of the way through, and eventually put me to sleep.

* * *

Tuesday was for reading. I spent three leisurely hours in the UCL library, now almost empty because everyone has either finished exams or is studying outside on the grass. I joined them there later, with my little pile of books (Steppenwolf, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, Made In America, Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).

Next stop was Waterstones, when summerness had started to be a bit of a pain in the arse. I’m a Waterstones skimmer and Borders reader, so the next hour was spent without really committing myself to anything, but flitting from section to section. Sputnik Sweetheart, English Passengers, The Death Of Vishnu, poetry by Kenneth Patchen, Arthur Rimbaud (in translation), the new Seamus Heaney, Nigella Bites, a book about Francis Bacon, and after Francis Bacon I felt like going back out into the sunshine, so I did.

Back at home, we went through the draft copy of our hall yearbook, ostensibly to check for errors (we corrected “bollix” to “bollocks”), but more so that we could scribble comments like “Let’s go, grrrls!” and “Phhhhwwwwoaaaarrr” under people’s entries.

* * *

Wednesday was time for some practicality again, and the afternoon was spent with Luke trying to plan our upcoming jaunt up the UK, which involved a fire alarm at Borders, brochure hoarding at the British Tourist Office, the recently shrunken fiver lunch at Belgo’s, the grass at Soho Square, swing dancing with Jitterbugs at the Notre Dame, and the generally loony exuberance that is Luke’s company.

* * *

And today? Today is gorgeous and zingy, and it’s all gonna be great.

Poem: Persimmons (Li-Young Lee)

In summer, when supermarket fruit sections here finally come alive with ruddy strawberry red and the succulence of peaches, and everything looks vibrant and celebratory instead of apologetic, it’s a great time to read Persimmons, although I can’t actually think of a bad time to read anything written by Li-Young Lee. Who is, by the way, one of the writers on my wishlist. :P

Yo La Tengo!

It’s wonderful having friends you can impose on. :)

I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One is finally on its way from Django, after months of unsuccessful attempts to snap it up before other people every time a second-hand copy became available. Many thanks to Russ, whose credit card and good nature came in very handy when I realized I hadn’t paid my credit card bill for a while, and couldn’t use it.

Hardly Hedonism

FREEDOM.

And now the hedonism begins. No fits yet, Mum, hedonism my style is ridiculously tame.

Friday was lots of Japanese food (girly lunch at Ikkyu with Victoria and Jolene, exorbitant dinner at Yo!Sushi with Russ, Gareth, Matt, and assorted friends of Gareth and Matt), some forgettable pub in Soho, and the ever-reliable Gallery at Turnmills, which yielded an excellent set from Anthony Pappa, and further addition to the growing body of evidence that my hair is too butch (picked up/groped by: 3 girls versus 1 guy. No fits here either, Mum, this cold bitch never reciprocates). Getting accosted and followed by Eurotrash from Tottenham Court Road to my doorstep while walking home alone around 5 am after parting with Russ and Gareth was rather unsettling, and, I suppose, more Mumfit-worthy, but thankfully he didn’t try to follow me in.

Saturday was quiet and practical. I woke up at four, did extensive grocery shopping and laundry, cooked a cabbage-dominated dinner aimed at stopping exam-related scurvy in its tracks, and spent the rest of the evening making a sprawling Things To Do, Places To Go and People To See list and reading the Hieronymous Bosch book I bought in Madrid last year and hadn’t got round to looking at yet. Incidental music: Dan the Automator hijacking Xfm, Modest Mouse, and Elgar. Some time after three, I put on Joyzipper (a band, not a sex toy), curled up with Love In The Time Of Cholera, and eventually drifted into sleep, refreshingly dreamless after a week of three nightmares.

And there you have it. Hardly hedonism.