Bagpipes and Apologies
MONDAY: Today's lunch is a homemade trout pate sandwich in a really really chewy rustic roll. I feel a bit like a cat, gnawing and tugging away at my yummy and fragrantly fishy sarnie. If only I could polish this off, give my face a quick wash, and go curl up in a sunny spot for a nap…but alas, I must resume my low-paid human existence.
In a story in a recent Guardian historian and piper Hugh Cheape claimed that Highland bagpipes were invented by the Scottish middle classes in the early 1800s, and therefore they could not have been played at the battles of Culloden in 1745 and Flodden in 1513. This is interesting news to me for the following reason.
As a "Heinz 57" -- as they call us melting-pot Americans with a zillion different nationalities and races in our background -- I suppose I've always considered myself to be a bit more Scottish than I actually am. After all, just because my father's father's father's father's father ad infinitum had a Scottish surname doesn't account for the fact that the Mitchell genes I've inherited have been diluted by my mother's genes, not to mention my mother's father's and mother's genes and my father's mother's genes and all of their various fathers and mothers, on and on throughout the infinite pyramid of genealogy -- and I haven't even taken all the adoptions into account. So that feeling of ancestral pride swelling in my breast whenever I hear the Scottish pipes may be no more than oesophageal reflux. Must have been the Marmite...
I first became excited about bagpipes when I was a young girl. As my father played the trumpet, cornet, and flugelhorn, and my big brother and I were both mutually inclined, I grew up in a house full of musical instruments. One night my father took my brother out to a music shop to see about buying a new guitar. They didn't return until after I'd gone to bed. When I awoke the next morning I told my mother about how I dreamt my brother was standing at the foot of my bed cradling a set of Scottish bagpipes and doing a stunning aural impression of a neighbourhood-wide cat fight. And my mother, with a tired but tolerant smile, told me that was no dream.
Since that time I've become acquainted with the wide world of pipes, especially the Greek pipes or tsambouna of my folk-dancing days and the wonderfully alluring Uilleann pipes of Ireland, both of which are played without blowing into anything. So I suppose my special appreciation of the Scottish pipes may be down simply to an admiration for a strong set of lungs.
WEDNESDAY: Ah, lunch! Lunch yesterday was a wonderful brie from the French cheese stall at the Continental Market last weekend. Sadly they'd run out of what I call "walking camembert", eg. a gloriously fragrant camembert that ages rapidly in the fridge, eventually bursting out and walking across the floor. But the same fromagerie's brie is a good second-best, perhaps not blessed with legs but at least with flippers. Today's lunch is a good strong cheddar with the olive tapenade I bought from a Greek stall. I have to admit it is nearly as good as my own tapenade, which is saying a lot.
I feel like I've lived in the UK long enough to become adept at the British art of apologising. And I'm not referring to the apology as an expression of regret and humility for having offended someone or done someone wrong. I'm referring to the custom of saying "Sorry" in situations where an American would say "Excuse me" -- specifically when trying to maneouvre past others in a crowded or narrow space. Obviously in the UK one finds more crowded and narrow spaces than in a lot of the United States; but the passive "Sorry" as opposed to the active "Excuse me" seems to require a certain amount of timing to execute it properly. For instance, in America, when trying to get past a group of oblivious people on the pavement, I'd simply say "Excuse me" as I push my way through, with my statement acting to alert others as to my presence. This tactic is used all over America, although there are some variations. For instance, an ex-workmate of mine from Detroit told me his family tend to use the more direct "BEEP-BEEP! COMIN' THRU!" as they barge through their obstacles.
But if a person says "Sorry" it really needs to be said either a fraction of a second after the apologiser passes by her obstacles (with a tasteful amount of regret implied), or else said somewhat timidly, as if interrupting a conversation, before attempting to pass. These are simply my general observations and not rules, of course, as sometimes I've witnessed both the obstructed and the obstructers dancing about self-consciously like mating birds, generating an entire chorus of Sorrys.
I've become quite comfortable with "Sorry". But what really irritates me is a phrase I hear over and over again in the library where I work. If I or someone else is slightly blocking an aisle of books and somebody else wants to get through, they often say, "Can I just squeeze past?" To me this is insulting, as if my massive 7-stone-9 girth is obstructing so much of the aisle that another person is forced to make themselves as thin as possible to "squeeze" past me, conjuring up visions of a rat flattening itself into a pancake in order to slip through a locked desk drawer full of biscuits. And when the "squeeze-past" requester happens to be the size of a three-bedroom house, I'm afraid that vision of a wafer-thin rat just flies out the window, and I'm left not insulted but trying to keep myself from bursting out laughing.
No, this "squeezing past" just doesn't cut it. "Sorry" is much better, although I think I'll stick to my very effective "Excuse me", especially when followed by a mildly grateful "Thanks" or "Cheers".
Or perhaps I'll start saying, "BEEP-BEEP! COMIN' THROUGH!"
