1. Chesterfield Library has the 5th highest circulation in England, though the most recent data were from before we moved here, so I would not be surprised to learn that my library habits have bumped it up a few notches.
2. The blue whale’s heart pumps 5 or 6 times per minute, pumping 10 tons of blood through 1 million miles of blood vessels. And more than I ever wanted to know about the southern right whale’s reproductive organs. Thanks, David Attenborough!
For literally years now, I’ve been wondering what British people say when they’re hyperbolizing about a sure bet. For instance, I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that our weeks of dry weather will be broken at precisely the time I’m walking to and/or from town tomorrow. But seeing as the Brits don’t actually have dollars or, until recently, anything worthy of the name “doughnut,” they must say something else. Kind of like how Americans turn on a dime whilst Brits turn on a sixpence (never mind that these don’t actually exist anymore).
We were watching a show on the teevee last night in which one of the presenter-type people described someone’s pulse as “going twenty to the dozen.” Apparently this is a British expression meaning really fast, as in twenty events occur in the time it usually takes for twelve such events to occur. The Internet tells me that some people replace the “twenty” with “nineteen,” “forty,” or even “ten,” the last for reasons known only to themselves. And then it tried to tell me that the American equivalent is “hitting it a lick,” an expression I don’t think I’ve ever heard before.
I vote instead for “going like gangbusters,” though I’m pretty sure I’ve only heard that one from my dad, and then usually reserved for when he’s talking about this one time when a high-school friend of mine was so frustrated with her mom that she abandoned our hiking group entirely and ran up Silver Star Mountain in flipflops.
I obviously ran with a very rebellious crowd.
So we took my mom to this place called Calke Abbey (not actually an abbey—a country estate built on the site of one). Its claim to fame is that when the National Trust took it over, it was in such a state of disrepair—mold, ceilings caving in, falling plaster—that rather than trying to return it to its glory days, they just stabilized it enough so it’s safe to walk through and marvel at the diminishing fortune of a once-grand country house.
Personally, I hate stories about people forced to close down or move out of the homes their families have occupied for hundreds of years. No matter how many shenanigans they pulled or peasants they exploited along the way. I get the same feeling of poignancy I do when I see a little old man carefully selecting a candy bar at the grocery store. Or like when we found out that the previous occupant of a house we were thinking about renting was a widower who lived there alone for 30 years, and then there was a dartboard hanging in the shed.
A dartboard! In the shed! What are you trying to do to me?
Anyway, Calke Abbey. Did I take pictures of anything interesting? Of course not!
Okay, I did take this one of an old-timey shower:
I sure did not take a picture of the house’s showpiece, the state bed. Back in the days when you spent a year’s income on fitting out some private rooms worthy of the king or queen just in case they happened to stop by sometime, you needed a state bed in which the monarch could receive visitors in the royal bedchamber. (It seems like most of the stately homes we’ve been to have the rooms but never did get the visit.) This particular state bed was a wedding gift from the royal family to the owners of Calke Abbey in 1734, but even they never managed to make the trip.
This turned out great for me, though, because it was never taken out of the box and completely forgotten about until the National Trust unearthed it 250 years later in mint condition.
It’s much better looking in person than this below picture, but you get the idea. Stephan even liked it, and he doesn’t like to like things.
Well, Internets, it looks like we have a bit of catching up to do. My favorite parents have barely just left after visiting for three weeks (mom for all three, dad for one), so we’ve been quite busy keeping them entertained. You know how it is with parents.
If you are very good, I will probably tell you more about all of the exciting things we did, but to whet your (metaphorical) appetite: this wee lambkin, let me show you it.
I don’t know why Stephan focused all of his harassment on normal, less cute lambs nearby, but there’s no accounting for some people.
My nighttime brain has a mind of its own. I don’t ever sleep through the night, so most nights, at some point, a completely unprompted thought will pop out of my semi-consciousness with great urgency. The super annoying part is that I can’t fall back asleep until it’s been addressed, no matter how ridiculous, but I’m usually too asleep to actually do anything besides lie there until I drag myself out of bed 30 minutes later or pass out from sheer exhaustion.
Nighttime Brain is a delight, as you can imagine. Typical thoughts it thinks include:
WHAT WAS THAT NOISE? Definitely someone breaking in. Oh well. So tired.
Forgot to sign off Skype. Hope no one calls in the middle of the night.
WHO IS THIS OTHER PERSON IN MY BED? I DON’T RECOGNI… Oh. Stephan. I’m married to him. Okay.
What was that noise? Don’t worry, brain: every single one of those stairs creaks. They would never make it up here unnoticed.
What if our visa extensions aren’t approved? How did we end up with all this stuff? WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?
Where’s my phone? Hope I don’t need it in the middle of the night. Oh well. So tired.
Go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep.
OMG STEPHAN HAS FOUR ARMS.
Remember about this time last year when I got my UK driving licence? I’ve driven, oh, maybe six times since then.
What can I say—I don’t have many places to go, I prefer walking when possible, and I have a really nice husband who (mostly) uncomplainingly goes grocery shopping with me every two weeks. I’m trying to be better at life, though, so we now employ the To-Or-From Rule, in which I do exactly half of the driving.
My one teeny, tiny residual issue is, surprisingly, not roundabouts: it’s the so-called “meeting places.” The roads here, they’re not so wide, seeing as many were laid out hundreds of years ago with no regard for the needs of 21st-century vehicles. This means that there usually isn’t any additional width for parking, so cars parked down even one side of a two-lane road significantly decrease the available driving space.
So there you are, driving along in your relatively over-sized car, minding your own business, when you suddenly find yourself squeezed in between two lines of other cars, one stationary and one very much not, that are a great deal closer than you prefer.
If you are Stephan and you are sitting in the passenger seat, you may find this proximity a little unsettling.
But here’s the thing: doesn’t this just mean that I’m a really supergood driver? To consistently drive that close to other things and not once hit them?
That’s what I thought.
01. The English and Then British Monarchy. As exemplified here by this gorgeous portrait of Queen Anne.
02. Blue Staffordshire Bull Terriers. I saw one in town the other day, and I would really like to have one to live at my house. It’s like I keep telling Stephan: I just need something to nurture!
03. Curb Your Enthusiasm. There’s a new television channel here that, as far as I know, only plays American shows, and HBO shows in particular. So we’ve started at the very beginning of such favorites as The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. I especially like Curb Your Enthusiasm because Larry David reminds me of my dad, in his perplexity that people sometimes respond to social situations differently than he might.
04. Buying Local. This here Crooked Spire represents Chesterfield, where I live and where I’ve recently been making an effort to buy things from independent, locally owned shops.
05. oh comely. My new favorite magazine: British (buy local!), virtually ad-free, focused on life things instead of buying things, a joy to read, and a delight to behold.
06. Moral High Ground, Maintenance of. Achieved solely by exercising more often than Stephan does.
07. Yellow Flowers. Specifically the forsythia and daffodils that are springing up all over our flowerbeds. This is our first spring in this house, so I really have no idea what to expect flower-wise.
08. Emilíana Torrini. Specifically her single “Jungle Drum,” which features in that Iceland video I told you about last week. Just you try not to dance.
09. Foxes. I haven’t seen our neighborhood one with the hurty foot (Elsie) for quite some time, but I’m nevertheless enamored. So dapper! So spry! I’m waiting to knock a few more books of the list before reading David Garnett’s Lady Into Fox.
10. Chatsworth House. And its multitudinous associates, tangential and otherwise: Bess of Hardwick; Mary, Queen of Scots; Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire; Joseph Paxton; the Mitford sisters…
Note: Give me a few days, and this list will have changed completely.
Great news, Internets: it’s almost my birthday! The way we know this is that today is actually my brother’s birthday.
Of course, he and Stephan have a hilarious joke amongst themselves regarding how, since they were born in the same hospital five days apart, chances are high that they were switched at birth. At this juncture, my third-grade self would like to point out that this idea is so funny that I forgot to laugh.
As far as brothers go, though, Matt’s pretty swell. He understands the necessity of singing at the top of one’s lungs with the windows down while driving around on back roads. He knows just about everything there is to know about pop culture and his sense of humor is, really, top drawer. He is the first person to care about what’s going on in your life and the first person to help you out when you really need it.
He also never tires of me telling him to “sell [his] car and buy one” in response to his showing any interest in something he doesn’t currently own (a suggestion originally attributed to our mutual father). And since it’s his birthday, I’m not even going to mention the Cisco’s Restaurant Incident of lo, these many years ago.
Happy birthday, Matt! I miss you!
Matt at 15 months with Mom, Grandpa, and Grandad—do you think any of them are related?
Matt rowing us out on a rafting adventure—who knows what that tether back to shore is for, PARENTS.
Matt and me with the the two cousins from Mom’s side nearest our age. See that shirt Matt’s wearing? I wore it for a few years in high school before passing it on to that pipsqueak on the far right there.
Fast forward! Me and sincerely super-excited Matt at Christmas 2 years ago.
Best picture ever—at the Enchanted Forest for Matt’s birthday 4 years ago.
Classic Olan Mills (that I can’t be bothered to Photoshop the destruction out of at the moment). Yes, we were always this nice to each other growing up. I believe the word you’re looking for is “cherubic.”
I have a slight obsession with heraldry, which started about the time that I moved to England. This coincidence in timing is probably because certain English people care a great deal about their and/or other people’s rights to use coats of arms and whether they are using them correctly.
Who knows where all the rules came from, but suffice to say they are ridiculously complicated and prescribe every imaginable configuration. Are you a widow who’s also the heir to a title because you’re an only child? There’s a rule for that. Are you the ninth son of the first son of a living title bearer? There’s a rule for that.
There are rules for what colors you can use and when to use them, what animals go where and what position (attitude) they can be in. There’s even a special language (mostly English with healthy doses of French and Latin) used to describe exactly what the arms look like. The Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom, for instance, looks like this:
And sounds like this:
Quarterly, first and fourth Gules three lions passant gardant in pale Or armed and langued Azure (for England), second quarter Or a lion rampant within a double tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland), third quarter Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland), the whole surrounded by the Garter; for a Crest, upon the Royal helm the imperial crown Proper, thereon a lion statant gardant Or imperially crowned Proper; Mantling Or and ermine; for Supporters, dexter a lion rampant gardant Or crowned as the Crest, sinister a unicorn Argent armed, crined and unguled Proper, gorged with a coronet Or composed of crosses patée and fleurs de lis a chain affixed thereto passing between the forelegs and reflexed over the back also Or. Motto ‘Dieu et mon Droit’ in the compartment below the shield, with the Union rose, shamrock and thistle engrafted on the same stem.
The rules and styles of heraldry also vary widely between the countries that employ them, but since I don’t live anyplace but here, I don’t really care (and the English system is quite enough to sort out!).
Here, look at these:
A quilled funeral hatchment with excessive mantling (the frilly bits adorning the helmet at the top of the shield), circa 1692. This would have been displayed on the coffin and later in the church of the deceased arm bearer.
The fantastic arms of the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, home to introduced reindeer (crest), and native fur seals and macaroni penguins (supporters).
The marshaled arms (multiple arms combined into one shield—in this case quartered ad nauseam) of George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, 1st Marquess of Buckingham. Aptly described by most scholars as “completely redonkulous,” this was presumably an exercise in grandiosity and not intended for everyday use.
this is my blog where i write about things. i live in england with this one guy i’m married to, but i haven’t always.
(katie + stephan)
i sometimes take pictures like this one:
(5-year anniversary iceland trip)
i collect shiny things at magpieing.tumblr.com.
i'm currently reading:
The Blind Assassin
by Margaret Atwood
Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace
Njal's Saga
aka Burnt Njal
Les Misérables
by Victor Hugo
(58 of 101 books)
