october >>
Thursday, 31, 2002
Oh sigh....many a year ago, me and my little chums would have been careering about the cobbled twisty narrow streets of Stromness. We would be in fancy dress: no shop-bought plastic outfits for us - oh no! we wore our mum's black cheesecloth shirts, their bandanas, their black spangly chiffon numbers wrapped around us. We had pointy hats made out of some sugar paper found lurking in the christmas paper box. We had our faces painted by elder sisters..who took insane pleasure in making us look hilariously stupid (we believed them when we were told we looked scary beyond belief) We went around all the houses in the area, gathering up gluttons of sweeties. Of course we 'did' things: we had our neepy lanterns*...the skill in our neeps gained us rewards..as did the songs we sang.
'we're two peedie witches short and stout..we're ready for a treat 'cause it's halloween night'
also, we did 'devilment' (I did look this up on google, but it resulted in some rather, erm..unsavory hits)...this was the best bit about halloween - though I wasn't allowed to do it really....though, of course...I did. Firstly, you got your mixture: treacle flour and margarine were good. Ella, Debbie's mum, made excellent mixtures. You smeared it over doorknobs, cars, walls, cats and dogs if you could catch them. I remember once, I was maybe about 5, coming home from Granny's (we used to hide up at her house at Halloween so Mum's mini didn't get 'done') and the door was covered in margarine: great greasy blobs, still with the kitchen paper stuck to them that the 'devilmentor' had used, prudently, to apply their evil goo. I was terrified: I remember shaking in fear. This, all forgotten as soon as I was old enough to become a halloween terror too.
*..neepy lanterns...well: how do I explain this! Orkney, in days of old, Orkney was staunchly anti-Catholic. So, the neepy lanterns (turnip lanterns) were effigies: of the Pope. On Halloween, when we go around doing our Halloween things, we say 'penny fir me pop', and money is given depending on the excellence of the turnip carving skills on show. We call them 'pops'...which is derived from ,'Pope' On Guy Fawk's night, we carry our pops to the local bonfire: they have earnt us lots of money and sweeties and holes in our teeth. After a certain time, we all chuck our pops onto the bonfire, to burn up as effigies alongside that of Guy Fawks. Of course: we know nothing of this: its all raw-vegetable fun for us. But it shows just how hidden away, yet on the surface all of our histories and ancient hatreds are.
Wednesday, 30, 2002
peeing in the street is so common...do it in the snow instead....
sorry, dear reader, for my lack of posts over the last few days: I have been on a secret mission in Bulgaria, and so have been unable to log on to the internet. All is well now though..I am back. Tonight, I made Stan his favourite soup, French Onion. While it was doing its oniony thing, we made our halloween pumpkins. I'm so excited by the whole thing! We're having a competition to see who's made the best one: what do you think?
Sunday, 27, 2002
yum yum yum....this morning (having been up so much earlier thanks to the clocks going back) Stan insinuated heavily about me and my baking..'had I ever made those strange-sounding muffins?'. 'Negative' I replied, in my best drone. So, he went to sainsbury's in the pouring sunday rain, and bought me the ingredients....and my oh my! they are totally scrummy: another example of the vegetable:sweet conjunction - Chocolate and Courgette muffins you should try them..though if, like me, you own a Microplane grater - beware slashed thumbs (play in your head the violin screeches from Psycho at this moment please). thank god Gore Vidal lives in Italy...
Friday, 25, 2002
I have just read about this fascinating sounding book:Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. In it, it would seem the witches of the Wizard of Oz series of books, are portrayed in a rather different light. Is Glinda the Good, as good as she would have us believe with her twinkle crystal frizz hair and plummy voice? Dorothy, apparently, is portryed as a peripheral, and non too pleasant character. I shall elucidate you on all those questions tearing through your mind after I've acquired and read it!
Thursday, 24, 2002
to pleep
Orkney word #3:
to pleep is to moan - but not just any kind of moaning: it's that high-pitched, incessant whine. Strangely I'm often accused of this tonal crime. "Christine stop yer pleepin' or you'll not get liver & turnip on your birthday!" I am in the midst of making some biscuits - apparently one should takes one's time whilst making these crunchy beauties: hmm..well - they look ok, but they're stuck to the greaseproofpaper because, dear reader, I couldn't be bothered to follow the recipe. let that be a lesson to you!
Monday, 21, 2002
I watched part of The Blair Witch Project last night: as usual, my silly eyes watered with fear and terror like they did when I watched The Mothman Prophecies. I'm glad I didn't watch all of it again: I don't think I would have been nearly as composed at the end if I had. Stan though, true to form, is playing evil mind games with me. In one corner of our hall, he has stood a teddy bear, chillingly facing inwards to the corner like Mikey at the end of the film.
Saturday, 19, 2002
to be in a poots
Orkney word #2:
when some one is in a poots, they are said to be grumpy, moody, generally in a bit of a bad mood. Some folk have pootsy faces: Jennifer Capriati is a good example of this (sorry Kenny!). If someone has a bit of a propensity for sulking, we say they are a pootser..ie: 'tsk! that Christine Groundwater is a right pootser..' I think its time to get excited about halloween: stories, folklore etc. I could tell you about Stromness's Guy Fawks Night tradition - but you may hurl eggs at me for my heresy. Instead I could tell you about 'Racheal the Cat'. Racheal (yes - I know - its how it was spelt 18th century Orkney) was a farm girl, around whom strange things were like to happen. She was implicated in various 'misdemeanours'..all of which pointed at her being a very strange kind of human. It was alledged she was a shapeshifter - though Orcadians at this time had no word for this - she changed into a cat it was sworn in court. I have copies of the trial documents - I must try & find them, thought I think they are snaffled away in an attic in Stromness. Then of course there is the witch of Brinkie's Brae who advised Sir Walter Scott on the best winds to buy. Do you have any interesting witchcraft stories about where you live? tell tell tell!
Friday, 18, 2002
Thursday, 17, 2002
oh - and I haven't had many requests for food-type things: (I am frowning really hard right now) - except for Sara, with her Lavender Icecream and Lesley and her frankly disgusting fixation on Brain recipes
Wednesday, 16, 2002
what is this all about?
are they Blair Witch practice dolls, seeing as Halloween's round the corner?
Thursday, 10, 2002
Ick! must go and scrub all this make-up off. Stan says I look like a doll when I have lots of make up on - I think a transvestite is closer to the truth. Why of why oh why do these make up counter women not exercise control? Why must a visit to them end up with lime green eyeshadow slithered right up to my 'nicely shaped' eyebrows? and with coloured mascara on my 'lovely long eyelashes'? it was when she oohhed and ahhed and said how wonderful the limited edition ('only two or three left in stock love, then that's them gone' - like I'd fall for that!)lipstick looked after tickling me to death with her pointy little lip pencil that I began to suspect her of some dark motive. You could plainly see the LINE of the pencil around my 'beautiful lips'. So I said yes, indeed I do look gorgeous, bought a tin of bastardised talcum powder for £18 and walked slowly and with purpose towards the accessories area of the department store. Where there are mirrors. And big fake-fur hats to hide behind while surreptitiously removing the worst of the damage. But - maybe....I'm as stuck in a make up rut as the ladies one sees exiting the bingo halls of Glasgow, Bristol, Livingston and Cardiff everyday with their eyeshadow and orangey-red lipsticks bought with their plumped youthful faces in mind, not their older yet characterful lips and eyes and skin. So maybe I would be dressing my face for my age if I were to embrace lime shimmering highlights on my browbone...or maybe I'd look like my friend Debbie and I did when we got our first make up sets. They were cunningly concealed to look like record players and had nail varnish you could peel off, and lipstick that smelt like jelly. We were seven I think.
Tuesday, 08, 2002
poor crystal.....
Tuesday, 08, 2002
wonderful! I have my brand spanking new phone in front of me (I took it with me wherever I moved today - I love it so), and as I can have a colour piture on the screen, I naturally chose the cutest and fluffiest snap I could find...
I watched liquid news tonight: they were talking about how a would-be day-time tv presenter, one Esther McVeigh, is being turned into a new uber-horror breed - the celebrity female Tory...it sounds rather like a very kinky XXX site - the sort I seem to get 'lifetime free passes' to in my hotmail inbox 49 times a day. Good God! are there no depths Iain Duncan Smith (IDS - sounds very much like the sort of thing one sneaks to the Genito-Urinary ward with in the dead of night) won't plumb?
Monday, 07, 2002
for some of you out there... mm..mm..mmmm....we have just had slices of nigella's jewel cake (beetroot cake) and it is truly scrummy: moist and earthily sweet. Yum: next time though I will use a finer grater so the cake is more bloody and less splattered with ruby.
Saturday, 05, 2002
ooohhh!!!! we are getting so excited about our new mobile phones. I have always been so sniffy about them, declaring myself to not want to be contactable...but in the face of the cutest little silver squiggle, I have relented. Oh joy! Stan and I will now spend our evenings beeping and making polyphonic oinks to each other rather than talking. Oh the modern world....
Sunday, 06, 2002
It's a beautiful day here - more Orkney June than Glasgow . Very strange indeed. Stan's off out on his bike (ie, tight lycra) with his chum Brendan and I am contempating making a banana loaf. I have a recipe here i'm going to try out soon: its by the raven-haired finger-licker Nigella Lawson, and is called "Ruby Jewel Cake", though its main ingredient is beetroot. I imagine it's lovely (moist and succulent) she drawls, and in the same way as carrotcake and the as-yet untried Courgette and Chocolate muffins, a strange conjuction of tastes which makes for a delicious whole. I wonder what the cake:vegetable equivalent of Surf n' Turf would be?
Wednesday, 02, 2002
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