Seraphic Goes to Scotland

Punk Tridentine Mash-Up

2012-02-13T11:36:00.002Z

Mass was very beautiful, and I did not eat any cookies at the Cup of Tea of Peace.

However, at the Lunch of Excess, I definitely drank too much, and I suspect I ate too much, and I know I talked too much, and I slapped my Polish tutor for no good reason, and I listened to the wrong kind of story, and I did not drag the other girl to the drawing room as early as I should have.

Now I have a tummy-ache and a vague feeling I should make more of an effort to act my age. What a way to go on. Where's Lent? And where's my passport?

Will the Current Non-Scots Make a Run for It?

2012-02-08T15:34:00.000Z

The other day I heard something I was sort of expecting but not really expecting. A resident of Scotland, who was not born in Scotland, made a remark about thinking about taking a job south of the Border. I was surprised to hear this because this person really loves Scotland and never mentioned wanting to move South before. But then I got the context.

The Independence Referendum.

And once again I thought, "Montreal."

To recap what happened to the province of Quebec during thirty years of referendums on whether or not to break up Canada, English-speaking Canadians (and their businesses) starting pouring out of Quebec. They were replaced by immigrants, of course, mostly French-speaking, from various places the French French once controlled: Haiti, Lebanon, etc. From a Canadian point of view, this worked out well in the long run, for the immigrants had chosen to move to the-province-of-Quebec-within-the-G8-nation-called Canada, not The People's Tiny Republic of Quebec, and voted accordingly. However, Montreal certainly lost out to Toronto as the undisputed First City of Canada.

Not having the SNP playbook before me, I can't say for certain, but I have a good idea of what could happen to the population if Scotland separates from the United Kingdom and thus also, as far as we know, the European Union. First of all, the Poles and other Europeans will move south or go home. Next, a lot of English--bothered by two years of subtle and not-so-subtle anti-English propaganda, not to mention confusion over whether Scotland still counts as home--will quit their jobs and homes and move south.

Finally, the Scottish government, which will finally have its hands on Immigration, will work like hell to encourage migration to "the Best Wee Country in the World" because, theoretically, the more migrants you get, the more taxes you collect, and why rule over a Wee Country when you can rule over a Big Wee Country?

Since the obvious mass migration from Ireland in the 19th century, Scotland has largely escaped mass migration. There has been slow, gentle migration through the 20th century. Jews, Poles, Italians, Indians, Sikhs and others have all made their contribution to Scottish society without overwhelming Scottish society. American, Australian and Canadian tourists can still come to Scotland and find the Scotland their parents or grandparents told them about. (They are sometimes, however, a bit startled to find Sikhs running the tartan tat shops in the Canongate, but whatever. That's authentic Edinburgh.) They don't know the dark-eyed charmer beside them in the pub blethering over a pint of Deuchar's in purest Porty is named Morelli. How would they?

Coming from a Canadian city where 50% of the population was not born anywhere in Canada, I found it delightful to overhear an elderly married couple chatting in fluent Italian and then switching to fluent Portobello to greet a neighbour. A Scottish MSP of Asian descent was greeting on the news that he hates it when he is singled out at Scottish airports as he stands there with his white Scottish wife; I find it so incredibly sweet that he has a white Scottish wife. And elderly musician I know told me about a half-Polish Edinburgh singer; I immediately checked her website. The fictional Inspector Rebus, in case you didn't know, is a quarter Polish. And yet Rebus is Scottish right down to his last grump.

So I don't have a problem with migration. I migrated myself. And as far as Holyrood is concerned, I belong to an ethnic minority called "Canadian", which to any Canadian born after 1960 has to be a joke. Canada is officially multicultural; your ethnic is either whatever your non-Canada, non-USA ancestors were or, if they were so diverse you can't pick, your race. But so far Edinburgh is not like Toronto. It is still mostly made up of people with Scottish accents and whose parents and grandparents had or learned to speak English with Scottish accents.

But I do have a problem with mass migration, which now makes me feel like a foreigner in my own birthplace, as I literally cannot communicate with half the people around me on the street or in the station, and I suspect the reason why Scotland hasn't suffered it--since the Irish moved in and changed the face of Scotland forever--is because it stops at England.

So there you have it. That's what I think. I think that Scotland will slowly bleed out its born-in-England and born-in-what-is-now-the-EU population in the two years up to the Referendum, depending on how seriously anyone takes it. And then, if Immigration is devolved to the SNP, Scotland will recoup the lost tax revenue with mass migration. Edinburgh will no longer look like Edinburgh, but like London. And Toronto. And New York. And Paris. And believe me, there is nothing so monotonous as going from city to city and finding the exact same diversity.

I sure hope I'm wrong.

Update: By the way, mass multiculturalism breeds contempt for the host culture. If I had a quid for every time I heard someone tell me Canada "has no culture" or "had no culture before" his parents got there, I'd be a very rich Canadian indeed. It took me awhile before hitting on the obvious rejoinder, "Maybe you should travel outside of Toronto some day."

Now, Scotland has a very rich culture. I hope we're all agreed on that. Apart from all the other rich stuff it shares with the rest of the UK, it's got its own history and beers and foods and good habits and bad and dialects and Scots Gaelic and BBC Alba and dances and literature and old Jimmy Shand albums. And plaid. Lots and lots of plaid. Right.

So imagine my surprise when a foreign student, who was in a cranky mood, declared that Scotland had no culture.

She was standing in an Edinburgh dining room, before a very Edinburgh spread which included, if I remember this correctly, little meat pies chopped up into bite-sized pieces.

And I said, gently, for this was quite a young foreign student, "Perhaps you should spend more time outside Edinburgh University."

"Nobody in the West knows...!" 1

2012-02-03T18:47:00.003Z

"By the way," I said. "I see that that very important Polish poet died."

"Wisława Symborska," said my interlocutor like a shot. "She was a..."

And he mouthed a word that I had not hitherto associated with Wisława Symborska, of whose books I own exactly one, translated into English.

"Oh, was she?" I asked, mildly surprised.

"Nobody in the West knows this," said my interlocutor, and told me a lot of stuff I certainly didn't know.

The more you know, the more you know you don't know. And the more I learn about Poland, as one inevitably does when one sits down in middle age to learn Polish, the more surprised I am at what I don't know.

For example, of the approximately six million Poles who were killed during the Second World War, three million weren't Jews. They were Christian (or, in some cases, probably, post-Christian)Poles. And although I had known, since at least 1978, that Poland existed, I never knew that particular detail of Polish history. About the Jews, yes. About the Christian Poles, no. Three million is rather a lot of deaths not to know about, especially when Auschwitz is one of Poland's top tourist, er, destinations.

"Well, now that you have told me," I said to the ideological opponent of Wisława Symborska, "somebody in the West does know."

But the difficulty in telling other people in the West, in a Western language, of dissenting Polish opinions on the character of a recently deceased poet is that it could be considered detraction. So instead I will merely direct you to my latest best friend, Polish Google, and you can hit "Google Translate" if you would like to know what Polish Catholics, in particular, have against the celebrated Polish poet. If you don't, don't click.

Also learned today is that the Polish left loves Roman Polanski. But of course.

Candlemas Bonus

2012-02-02T14:43:00.001Z

How trad are we? We are so trad our Christianized pagan eternity symbol is only coming down now, on Candlemas, even though I am very tired of it and its needle-shedding ways.

However, it did give me a present in the form of the last, deeply concealed, gingerbread man. Bonus!

Habemus Disappointment

2012-02-02T13:31:00.000Z

I am definitely behind on my reading--more anon--but I have seen another film. This one was Habemus Papam, and it was terribly disappointing. In a way it was about disappointment, but I'm not sure that makes for a good movie, especially one that could quite easily be offensive.

Habemus Papam is a pope movie. As I watched the opening scenes, I thought about the number of Catholic writers and directors who get around to mining the mysterious, colourful, old Vatican for pagentry and pizzazz. (I once started a Vatican City online story myself, until I discovered that my readers knew one heck of a lot more about Vatican City than I did, and I lost my nerve.) And at first director Nanni Moretti seemed to be no different in this respect, in that he seemed to revel in the picturesque effect of a procession of elderly men in red cassocks and white lace. However, he was not particularly interested in creating a Catholic film. It is not a Catholic film. The story is not Catholic. The ending is not Catholic. It's a story about failure, selfishness and despair.

The film begins with the funeral of a pontiff--probably (but not necessarily, although real-life funeral footage was used) John Paul II--and quickly moves to the Conclave. St. Peter's Square is packed with nuns, seminarians and people like you and me. There are also a lot of anxious journalists, and Moretti correctly underscores how funny journalists can be when they are not given any information but have to keep on talking for the cameras.

However, Moretti seems to think that old men are, in themselves, funny, too, and he plays the Conclave for laughs. The lights go out as the Cardinals deliberate and pray, and one of the Cardinals falls down. The other men, who know firsthand how dangerous falling down can be, are very solicitous, and the Cardinal waves them away with old-man crankiness. This is one of many occasions in which a character says no to love.

The whole film is about saying no to love.

Incidentally, all the Cardinals speak fluent Italian, as they ought, since they no longer speak fluent Latin, although they are from all over the world, a point Moretti emphasizes. I was glad that an Irish one spoke Italian with a strong Irish accent, although disappointed that a cardinal named "Melville" was so obviously Italian. There is a moment of high drama, though, when we are allowed to hear the mental prayers of the assembled Cardinals as they beg God, in their own native languages, not to choose them as pope.

But God (or, rather, Nanni Moretti) does choose one of them, and instead of shedding a tear or two for his cancelled retirement and stepping up to the balcony in an act of love for the Church, the new pontiff has a complete mental breakdown and refuses to budge. The nuns, seminarians, you and I are all left in St. Peter's Square as the cardinal who had just announced "Habemus Papam" slowly backs off the balcony. "Habemus papam," but only the Cardinals know who.

And now we have a rather uncertain mix of tragedy and comedy, featuring Moretti as the psychotherapist Vatican City basically kidnaps, his psychotherapist wife, a fat Swiss Guard and a crafty Polish layman ("the Spokesman") who appears to be Secretary of State and who lives up to stereotypes about Vatican machinations.

Part of the comedy is that the Cardinals can't leave. As the new pope hasn't been introduced yet, the Cardinals--and the pope's psychotherapist--can't leave either. They play cards and bicker. Eventually the psychotherapist organizes them into volleyball teams, based on geographical regions. The other part of the comedy is the fawning love the Cardinals have for a man they just elected themselves, even though they can't see him. And, unfortunately, the adoration of the masses seems to come in for a kicking as well.

And that's where I get mad. I can see that an elderly man might--even after living his whole life for Christ and the Church--might feel overwhelmed by being chosen pope. And, let's face it, John Paul II would be a hard act for anyone but a Joseph Ratzinger to follow. But I can't see that an elderly man, who has lived his whole life for Christ and the Church, would be so untouched by the love of the faithful.

Love can be funny, I suppose, but the love Catholics are willing to offer to a man we might not know anything about, simply because he has been chosen to be our new papa, is not despicable. The decisions made by the man Moretti makes pope makes the generous, hopeful love of the people in St. Peter's Square ridiculous. And that's bad.

If you do see this film--which I do not recommend--watch how wrapped up in himself Moretti's pope is, and how little anybody moves him. Although the viewer hopes and hopes, Moretti's pope comes across as little more than a doddery old man, unmoved by the people around him--even those who have no idea who he is, but are simply kind (in the way ordinary Italians are) to an old man who appears to be ill. If Moretti is making a statement about the primacy of human will, it falls flat--just like the cardinal who trips in the Conclave.

***
A rather kinder review in the Guardian, of course.

***
By the way, it felt very odd to be watching this film in a cinema in post-Presbyterian Edinburgh.

The Maria Klementyna Supper

2012-01-31T11:50:00.000Z

So of course THE social event of yesterday evening was (arguably) a certain party celebrating the life and mourning the execution of Charles I. By long custom this party was restricted to men, and so even married men managed to evade the gentle bonds of domestic life for the evening.

One way to make women long to do something is to restrict it to men. However, I can assure you that I have never wanted to go to the annual Charles King and Mmm party. A cradle Catholic can take only so much chat about "Piskies We Have Known" and "Who Has Swum the Tiber" and "Whose Divorce Prevents Him From Being Ordained By Rome" to say nothing of stirring hymns to a dead Anglican monarch. Although annually B.A. rolls in at one AM wreathed in smiles and smelling strongly of spirits, my heart is not exactly seized by the hot grasp of envy.

On the other hand, the only way to respond to such male exclusiveness is to have an exclusive party of your own, so for the past two years or so, I have mentioned that on the night of the Charles I party, I would have a Mary Queen of Scots supper, and invite women only.

"Oh nooooo!" cried a fifth of the Schola. (He was a fourth, but now the Schola has expanded, so he is only a fifth.) He is a fan of Mary Queen of Scots, so the idea of being excluded from her party rankled.

But the idea grew upon the Charles King and Mmm Party people, and various suggestions as to the guest list (e.g. the wives of their guests) were made, but then January came and went, and I didn't have the Mary Queen of Scots party.

For this year, though, I had a better idea. When Charles King and Mmm Day rolled around, I would have a party to celebrate his granddaughter-in-law, which is to say, Her Majesty the Queen Maria Klementyna, wife of James III (and VIII of Scotland or The Pretender, depending on whose side you're on). And as the wife of the exiled Stuart King was Polish, why not just invite all the Poles of our acquaintance? As B.A. would be out, they could all chat freely in Polish, and I could reap the linguistic benefits.

This struck a chill into the hearts of the Charles King and Mmm people.

"Which Poles?" they demanded.

"Our Poles," I said.

"But they're all young men," they cried.

"No, they aren't," I countered, but for some reason the very possibility of young Polish men standing around drinking gin in the Historical House before sitting down to soup, meat, salad and pudding caused loud and vivid alarm. Maybe someone's great-aunt ran off with a Polish airman in similar circumstances. At any rate, so violently did the Charles King and Mmm people object to young Polish men at the Maria Klemenyna party that one loudly appealed to my husband, in front of a lot of unmarried men, to forbid it.

This, children, is how patriarchy works.

"I guess I'd better cancel my Maria Klementyna party," I muttered to B.A. on the bus home after that occasion.

"You should have it," said B.A loyally. "Just invite women."

"I've cancelled my Maria Klementyna party," I wrote to the Charles King and Mmm people.

They promptly invited two of the young Polish men to their party.

At first I sulked. You'd never guess from 44 Scotland Street that Edinburgh hosts were that cut-throat. It's appalling. And I tried to think of some suitable revenge. A piper sent to play "Scotland the Brave" under the windows for two hours straight. An actress with a doll wrapped up in a baby blanket. A Cromwell-o-gram. But in the end I did the most sensible and effective thing of all: I invited my favourite Edinburgh women to supper and made chocolate meringue pie.

For three hours we talked female gaze and revolution.

B.A. got in at one, wreathed in smiles and smelling strongly of calvados. The ecumenical gathering had sung four hymns to (or about) Charles King and Mmm. But there had also been a number of lighter airs. One of them, a love song, was rendered, to piano accompaniment, by the guest-stealing host. It was to the heroine of a musical named, aptly enough, "Dorothy".

So all is forgiven although, really, it is not the compliment that I find so mollifying as the fact that my dishes were done by 12:55 AM, and I am sure someone else is currently up to his elbows in suds and dirty glasses.

:-D

Anglican Conversos?

2012-01-30T09:37:00.001Z

Well, well, well. It's that time of year again. Good Roman Catholic converts shine their shoes and sneak off to the homes of other good Roman Catholic converts to have memorial suppers for an Anglican king, i.e. Charles I of England. If that were not suspicious enough, what do you think they call Charles I, eh?

"Charles, King and Martyr."

What Charles was martyr for was not Roman Catholicism but, in fact, Anglicanism and the British monarchy. I do admit that Charles did not believe in executing a few papists every day before tea, as his detractors thought he ought, but that in itself does not make him a candidate for sainthood. Maybe we could declare him a "Righteous Protestant" and plant him a tree in Rome.

Speaking out against the cult of Charles I could get me into serious domestic trouble, but speaking as a cradle Catholic I have to say that I am just a teeny-weeny bit disturbed. Sneaking Anglican pat-TRIM-ony into Sunday Mass is one thing, but stealthily sneaking a post-Reformation English king into the Calendar of Saints is quite another. At this point, cradle Catholics can only look very confused and a bit worried.

("Ha ha," Low Church Anglicans will say. "Your problem now.")

Of course, it's great for ecumenism. In these here parts there is an annual Piskie service to commemorate Charles I ("K & M"), and half the congregation does not go up to communion, having long since converted to Roman Catholicism. But otherwise they are happy to pray for the intercession of King Charles with their old pals, have a snort afterwards and even--some of them--disappear into an exclusive gentlemen's club for lunch. Very much in the spirit of Vatican II, non?

Possibly I am chippy about this whole Charles-King-and-Martyr routine because before I married B.A. men, including one Muslim, a Jew and various atheists, were always trying to get me to convert to their religion. This is why I decided I really couldn't date non-Catholics anymore. The jury's out on whether I would have dated even a Ukrainian, because although Ukrainian Catholics are in communion with Rome, they are definitely not Roman and sometimes alter the Creed in their missals with a pencil. I am sure that if I had married that toothsome Ukrainian boy from De La Salle, I would be bored out of my mind at dinner parties, listening to him and his friends seethe against "Latinizing" and priestly celibacy. At any rate, I was very happy to marry a fellow Latin Catholic.

So you can imagine my joy when, yesterday at lunch, the subject of the Ordinariate was broached once again, with the information that any ex-Anglican convert can join and so can their spouses. This detail was doubtlessly emphasized to see if I would hit the ceiling, which of course I did. Going to the TLM, which I never did before I met B.A., is one thing, but joining the Ordinariate quite another. ...

I have rewritten the sentence that followed six times.

Very Homesick

2012-01-28T10:57:00.002Z

Oh UK Home Office, where is my passport? It is time for me to visit Canada. I wonder if you noticed on the news in what great economic shape Canada is compared to the UK? I hope this suggests firmly to your mind that I am not actually an economic migrant. By the way, a manicure in Toronto costs $15 whereas in Edinburgh I can't find for one less than £23. What's with that?

And, incidentally, if I do not go home and see my girlfriends soon I am going to have a nervous breakdown, and this would increase the burden on the National Health Service.

Cup of Tea of Peace

2012-01-25T13:13:00.001Z

Here is my latest in the CR. I was feeling all warm and fuzzy about the Cup of Tea of Peace.

The photo is a stock photo and in no way reflects the graceful order of the ritual, one in which no plastic bag or tray is in evidence. Our tiny kitchen is spotless. Also, our ladies unfailingly wear church clothes. Ours is a very old-fashioned Edinburgh scene. This CNS photo is très Anywhere-in-America.

It was not polite to say so in my article, but one thing I really cannot stand about the Novus Ordo--something that is not actually PART of the Novus Ordo--is being instructed by some layperson or other to turn to my neighbours and introduce myself. First of all, who is she to tell me what to do? Second, this is a fake, fake, fake, fakity-fake social interaction and incredibly embarrassing. It is a shocking contrast to the real interest and real warmth that follow Mass (in our small community, at least), once our communal, God-centered Sunday devotions have been completed.

I mind the Sign of Peace rather less as I was born shortly after it was and obediently made it like everyone else for years and years. I can't say I miss it, of course. Again, for honest friendliness and natural smiles, I much prefer the Cup of Tea of Peace.

Serious Homesickness Going On...

2012-01-24T16:21:00.002Z

Here I am in the National Library, waiting for two books I ordered. That is the problem with the system: coming to the library and waiting for over an hour for books, having forgotten to order from home. It's very annoying.

Also annoying is the fact that the Home Office has my passport because, as a matter of fact, I want to go back to Canada and visit my family and friends.

Seraphic: When I go back to Canada, I'm going to talk to girls for two weeks straight!

B.A.: Me too.

Assembled Men at Lunch: Ha ha ha ha!

Seraphic: When they get that glazed look, it means you should stop talking about Anglo-Catholicism.

But seriously, folks. We could use a healthy injection of women into our lovely little Trad Mass community. I am starting to lose my sense of humour. I can't even tell you when I last heard someone say the words, "I feel..." or "I want to make muffins. Want to come over and make muffins?" or "Do you want to go for a pedi this week?" I am not sure there are pedis in Edinburgh, though, except for the strippers at Tollcross.

(Why don't my Toronto pals visit Edinburgh en masse, bringing a pedicurist with them? That would be heaven. Time to buy another lottery ticket.)

There are women whose idea of the perfect social life is themselves surrounded by men and only men, but as much as I like men, it can be a bit wearying for girly girls like me. Having to be on Banter Alert so often and for so long is starting to wear out the humour batteries. One longs for humour that has nothing to do with exchanging insults. I'm beginning to get paranoid. And nobody here understand hugs. Nobody hugs. This is a nation without hugs. I want a proper Toronto pedicure and a hug, in that order. And a muffin.

Okay, now I hope those dratted books are in.

Pear Crumble

2012-01-24T11:53:00.000Z

Yesterday my kindly Polish teacher came over to see if I had studied while he was away, and although I had indeed studied, I did not have any eggs and had had no time to make pastry. Before he turned up I stood in the kitchen wondering how I was going to uphold the honour of Edinburgh hospitality when I was inspired to make a pear crumble, which is to say, an apple crumble, only with pears.

It is intensely easy to do, and my Polish teacher wolfed it down happily, so honour is saved and here you go.

Pear Crumble

4 Conference pears
About a heaping Tbsp sugar mixed with 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/2 brown sugar (packed)
1/3 cup butter
dash more cinnamon

Turn oven dial to 180 degrees centigrade or 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

1. Peel the pears and then, one at a time, slice them lengthwise in quarters, and then slice the quarters (still lengthwise) into further quarters.

2. One pear at a time, lay pear slices in a small casserole dish or pie plate. Sprinkle sugar mixed with cinnamon on each layer.

3. In a bowl, mix flour, oatmeal, brown sugar and cinnamon with a spoon, making sure to get the lumps out. Then cut in butter until the pieces are very small, and then put your clean floured hands into the bowl and squoosh with your fingers. Squoosh until the mixture looks like fat crumbs. And make sure you have squished any brown sugar lumps.

4. Carefully distribute mixture over the pears in the dish. Makes sure all the pears are covered. Put in oven.

5. Bake for about 40 minutes.

6. It can be eaten hot or cold. If hot, serve with milk, cream, yogurt or just plain.

For Auld Lang Syne

2012-01-21T14:44:00.001Z

Dear Grandma,

I hope you are well, wherever you are on the road to heaven. As you can see, I haven't forgotten that it is your birthday. If you are not beyond caring about stuff like this, I hope you are pleased and amused that I am living in Scotland.

I've gone to see your grandmother's house in Morningside, and we pop by William Street to see where your grandfather lived. There's a cake shop across the way now. Oh, and we went to Comrie after Christmas. It looks like quite a nice village, very pretty in the snow, and I wish we all still had the old house, whatever shape it would have been in by now. Do we have any title to the land, or did the council snaffle it?

However, I am sure that is not the sort of thing you think about right now. So I will just tell you that I am having a marvelous married lady time, and I thought of you yesterday during a party when after dinner we all watched an old broadcast of "The White Heather Club". You would have loved it.

What else? Well, I have a novel coming out this year, and I hope you would have read it, although frankly I don't remember you reading anything but those trashy "family sagas". I still haven't read a single "family saga" because Mum so put the fear of God into me against reading the paperback fiction she got out of the library that I still don't read paperback fiction. I am dying to read a Jackie Collins just to see how she makes all her lovely money, but every time I try I am seized by holy dread. Yet somehow A. managed to ignore the ban and thus has read every tempting volume on the étagère since she was six or so--not that Mum has been borrowing Jackie C. Perish forbid.

Anyway, since it is your birthday, I am thinking about you sitting at the kitchen table--in the old house and in the new house--smoking away like mad and drinking cups of orange pekoe. And occasionally complaining about Your Nerves, in which I still believe 100% because I have them, too. Did quitting smoking help? I consume quantities of bell peppers because that is supposed to help, too. And I have cut down on coffee in favour of green tea, panacea for all life's ills, apparently.

I am also remembering you striding down the street in your wedge-heeled sandals, your plastic shopping bag and glamorous red fingernails. I could never understand why your nails always looked so good, and mine always broke, but now that my nails are as hard as, well, nails, I assume it was anno domini. I'd love to get mine done, but here there aren't handy little salons on every corner, and most Scotswomen don't seem to wear nail polish. Perhaps for my birthday I will arrange in advance to have my talons painted scarlet and thus shock the stuffing out of everyone at Mass on Sunday.

By the way, I hope you have noticed that I always pray for you during Mass on Sundays. Where the missal says N, I plunk in you and Grandpa and Auntie as well as Grandma C and Grandpa C and Uncle C, which is the benefit, I will point out, of having Catholic grandchildren. If I were Presbyterian I wouldn't be able to pray for you at all, but just assume the Best or the Worst. Frankly, I would find that very stressful--presumption on the one hand, despair on the other. My Nerves!

Of course I think about you at other times, particularly when I tie a scarf over my head to do the shopping, which goes to show how very important it was to be a granny. I still I hope I will have a chance to be a granny myself, but even if I don't, I have already achieved Glamorous Aunt. C's boy found my photo in the Catholic Register, and was beside himself with delight. He thought this meant I was famous.

Love always,
D.

Don't Look at ME

2012-01-20T11:56:00.002Z

Two exciting if embarrassing headlines in the Telegraph today.

370,000 Migrants on the Dole.

We'll Take Scottish Regiments to Form Our New Defense Force, Salmond Says.

First, I am a migrant, and I am not on the dole. I have, however, had a lovely free eye test--one of the goodies Scots (residents of Scotland) get that the English (residents of England) don't---and am registered with the National Health Service. If I could I would just go home to Canada once a year and take advantage of the much more comfortable and familiar Ontario Health Insurance Plan, but I can't. No more friendly old-fashioned family doctor for me. No easy access to NFP doctors, either. (Friendly person: "You could travel to Ireland!")

Incidentally, I would never have had to pay in Toronto what I had to pay for my spectacles in Edinburgh. What's that? I don't go back to Toronto, then, because I am married to a very nice, hardworking, tax-paying Scot, that's why. (Although you won't see that mentioned on my Visa Application. There he's simply a "Person Settled in the UK.")*

Second, Alex Salmond is not Scotland. I hope everybody remembers this. I am heartily sorry I did not vote Labour, but we--Scots and others-eligible-to-vote (e.g. Canadians) were all mad at them at the time. We didn't think Alex was going to use our anger at Labour as an excuse to break up the United Kingdom.

Incidentally, only residents of Scotland can vote in this referendum, so any Scot who moves south can't vote whereas an Englishman who moves north can. And I can. And my Polish worker pal can. As far as the referendum (etc.) is concerned, a Scot is not someone who thinks they are Scottish for reasons of ethnicity or surname or parentage or birthplace or whatnot. A Scot is someone who is a resident of Scotland, end of.

*Update: Also Edinburgh is much prettier, I admit. I don't think I could go back to Toronto architecture without serious anti-depressants. And the horror of Finch bus station. Ugh! And a landscape bereft of Young Fogeys!

Cheating on Muriel with Nancy

2012-01-19T20:26:00.002Z

I am supposed to be reading other things, in particular last week's Book of the Week, Muriel Spark's Loitering with Intent, but I have been cheating with The Mitfords: Letters Between Two Sisters (ed. Charlotte Mosley).

I cannot help it; I love Nancy Mitford so much. She was an oldest sister like me, though much more cruel to her little sisters, although admittedly none of my little sisters hang out with Hitler.

Here is a lovely website devoted to Nancy Mitford. Incidentally, she was not a Seraphic Single but an unhappy Married Lady having an Affair with an Unfaithful Frenchman. Really, for a guy with a Polish name, Gaston Palewski was a walking French Catholic stereotype, complete with excuses about why (after Nancy's divorce) he couldn't marry her, e.g. "You're a divorced Protestant." (He eventually married another divorced Protestant.) Nancy put up with this sort of thing for 30 years.

It is a source of pain to me that Nancy Mitford held torches for the Wrong Men for her entire life, but Muriel Spark didn't do too well in that department either, and don't get me started on Simone de Beauvoir. Why do smart women love such idiots? I think I'll go and hug B.A. He's in the kitchen, making spag bol. (I made the pud.)

Wikipedia Blacked Out

2012-01-18T11:43:00.001Z

Colour me miffed. I was looking up a University of Virginia sociologist, hoping to read about his take on the socio-moral world of liberal academia (e.g."Ratzinger is out to get us"), and Wiki blocked its own article. English-language Wiki is having a black-out today to raise awareness.

Apparently U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could threaten the freedom of the internet. Unless the U.S. Congress is targeting only images, e.g. pornography and jihadist snuff videos, then I must say this annoys me.

I am a moderate on "freedom of expression", since human beings don't have a natural filter against images and need protection from them, but I am a hardliner when it comes to the printed word. Images go straight to the reptile brain, but words are an address to and from human reason, and human reason is equipped to deal with them.

Even if a phrase is repeated again and again as a reason-numbing slogan, you don't need the talent of a George Orwell to rail against it. But you do need freedom of speech.

Some are More Equal than Others

2012-01-17T09:17:00.002Z

The reason why it is so reprehensible when British comedians tell jokes about children with Down Syndrome or other conditions that lead to intellectual disabilities is that such children, if identified before birth, are usually killed.

And I suspect their parents make the decision to kill them because of the jokes of such British comedians--and of all the jokes they heard in the schoolyard as kids--about such children. It may seem better to them to kill the children now than to face, day after day, the disgust of society for people born intellectually retarded.

And for a prime example of the attitude that the intellectually retarded aren't as worthy of life as everyone else, please see this link. H/T Mark Shea.

One great antidotes to fear of (and fear for) intellectually retarded children is the work of Jean Vanier of L'Arche. To walk into a L'Arche community is to be amazed by the power of love, and to read the work of Jean Vanier is to slowly become more human. We think of ourselves as human because we think, but it might be more accurate to think of ourselves as human because we love.

Meanwhile, there are at least three adults with intellectual disabilities in my small Latin Mass community. They are a vivid, perhaps even integral, part of the Sunday congregation. They seem unfailingly cheerful, and one takes up the collection.

Update: Somewhat related, Asians in Canada abort so many female "fetuses" that journalists are actually associating sex-selective abortion with Asians.

Edinburgh Zinger

2012-01-16T22:02:00.003Z

England-born Pillar of Parish to red-hot Scots Nat: So, I suppose you're looking forward to this year's Homecoming celebrations.

Scots Nat: Oh, aye! (Goes on at great length about Homecoming, which is a summer jamboree featuring a parade of the various Scottish clans.)

English Pillar: And I suppose you will be inviting the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom then.

Scots Nat (indignant): What do you mean!?

English Pillar: Well, the man's named Cameron, isn't he?

Border Agency Laugh for the Day

2012-01-14T11:54:00.002Z

I cannot leave the country because my passport is languishing at the Home Office, waiting for some nice person to put a sticker in it saying that I can stay indefinitely in the UK with my darling husband.

The bother, fuss and paperwork we have gone though has left me with a certain distaste for illegal migrants to the UK, to say nothing of those migrants in particular who pay (or persuade with honeyed lies) poor EU citizens (not just British women, but non-British women living in the UK) to marry them.

As the wife of a "person settled in the UK" (there is no separate category called "person born in Scotland of Scottish parents and Scottish ancestry" or even "British citizen"), I have had to apply for two visas. To get the first visa, I had to leave the UK for a few months and apply from Toronto. So I sat across the ocean from B.A. and cried almost every day. As soon as I got the visa from the office, I rushed back to my parents' and bought a plane ticket for that very night, which meant I got triple-checked at the airport, of course.

That visa was good for two years. And indeed I was not supposed to apply for the next visa until I had been in the UK for two years. The point is that the wife/common law partner/same-sex partner has got to prove that his/her relationship was authentic enough to actually last two years. And why do we have to do this? Well, children, citizens of some countries that I will be polite enough not to name (but go ahead and guess) contract sham marriages in the UK all the time just so they can live here and then bring their relations over, too. Presumably this two year thing makes it all a bit harder.

Fortunately for the UK, my husband and common human decency, I have not contracted a sham marriage. And thus I fully expect a very large sum of money--twice as much as the not inconsiderable sum of two years ago--to be charged to my credit card by the UK Border Agency. This will mean that I can live in the UK indefinitely. If poor B.A. cashes in his chips, I can stick around and look woeful.

In all the fuss and bother, in which I occasionally remember that 50 years ago once a Canadian woman married a British man she automatically became a British citizen, no problem, there have been very amusing moments. The first one was in the office of a British Asian immigration lawyer, who kindly surveyed Scots B.A. and Scots-Canadian me and asked, "Is this an arranged marriage?" We were asked this more than once, by the way.

Another one was studying the "Living in the UK" textbook and noting how much emphasis was placed on women's rights and children's rights. I had to memorize exactly how much children are permitted to work, and what breaks they must take. I also had to memorize the various benefits for which one can apply, which change according to your age and how long you have been unemployed. And then I also had to know what Christmas and Easter are.

I would say that as a Canadian of Scottish extraction I had a good head start on being integrated into UK society. But the whole concept is very amusing when you consider the large numbers of EU nationals, cheerfully unintegrated (although presumably celebrating Easter and Christmas) living and working here, and annoying Britons too afraid to say anything about the large numbers of non-EU nationals but confident slagging off fellow white people. If anyone ever challenges ME on my integration, I will look very stern and say "Of course I am integrated into UK society; I am learning basic Polish."

But of course another amusement is how absolutely crashingly blatant the exploitation of marriage and immigration laws can be. And I think Poland had better look out. Anywhere in Europe is going to look better than South Asia to those desperate to get out, and not all the Polish girls in the UK are the brightest crayons in the box. See, for example, this very amusing link. For a good laugh, scroll down to "hi i am male Pakistani national living in london uk as a international student."

Update: Oh ho! Further reading of the stream indicates not only other chaps with Polish girlfriends who are super-keen to work anywhere in the E.U. but hints that the Polish government is onto them. Two years residence in Poland and three years of marriage, gentlemen! And if you find writing in English difficult, just wait until you try Polish. Baw się dobrze!

You'll Have Had Your Pastry

2012-01-13T12:38:00.000Z

There is a phrase that is supposed to exemplify the meanness (that is, North American readers, the cheapskate quality) of Edinburgh hospitality. It is "You'll have had your tea." It means that a guest is invited to the speaker's home, but he or she had better not expect anything to eat.

My Edinburgh friends still find this ancient phrase hilarious, but my hungry Polish acquaintances rather less so. One poor girl consulted me after she had been invited (she thought) around to the flat of classmates for supper and then wasn't given anything to eat. This shocked her out of her Central European mind.

I say Central European, for her wounded feelings reminded me of two wonderful young Slovak nuns, usually as merry as music boxes, who were horrified when they were in some Canadian home and invited to "help themselves" to the food. Sister M thought this incredibly rude and seethed over the memory.

I tried to explain that "help yourself" is not contemptuous but merely a way of saying a guest is welcome to eat whatever and as much as she likes, but Sister M wasn't having any of it. Back home in Slovakia, guests must be waited on hand and foot, and they are not allowed to help themselves. "Help yourself", in her view, was ontologically evil. We had reached a cultural impasse, and I shudder to think to what Sister M would make of "You'll have had your tea."

These lovely young Slovak nuns were very good at making pastry, which didn't surprise me as one of my mother's 1960s cookbooks ruled that Central European women were superlative pastry makers. It claimed that central European housewives could roll pastry so thin that their husbands could read their newspapers through it. The rather unlikely image of a German or Hungarian husband looking at his newspaper though pastry while his aproned wife stood anxiously by ("Also, Gretel! Wunderbar! You have done it again!") rather seized my youthful imagination.

My mother is also very good at making pastry. But on the other hand, she should be, for she has been doing so for decades, and what I have discovered is that if someone attempts it long enough, she (and presumably he) can do it too. After years of trying and crying and being rescued by my mother, I can now turn flour, fat and a teeny bit of water or egg into tender, flaky pastry.

I can even--and this is why I am writing this post, it is all about me--make tender, flaky pastry without lard. Lard, my children, is what Canadian housewives depend upon for flaky pastry. A standard shortcrust pastry for a fruit pie uses butter and lard, which home in Toronto comes in box marked "Tenderflake."

However, my favourite British baking book does not believe in lard. It believes solely in butter. And this is fine, although this does not usually result in the sort of pastry that explodes with joy when you attack it with a fork, sending fine flakes of victory into the air. In fact, last week, when my Polish translator came over, he attempted to slice off the crust end of his piece of pie and found it necessary to use so much force that the pie fell on the floor.

"It is tough," he pronounced by way of apology, and somewhere in Slovakia Sister M felt a mysterious pain.

However, never say die. And never say "Just buy a £1 rhubarb pie from Scotmid, darling" because Scottish-Canadian honour is at stake where these pesky transparent-pastry-making, guest-worshiping Central Europeans are concerned. Let not any resident of the Historical House pronounce, "You'll have had your homemade pastry."

So this week, after staring uncomprehendingly at another email from Krakow, I made an apple pie and, mirabile dictu, although I once again used only butter and the pastry (10 oz flour, 5 oz butter, medium egg) barely held together, it was quite up to my mother's standard. In fact, it went above my mother's standard because there was not a scrap of lard in it, and yet it was flakier than the Jesus Seminar. Pure, buttery, flaky goodness, though I say so myself. The honour of Edinburgh society has been satisfied, and I almost drowned my poor translator, so many cups of tea did I pour him.

Separatism Sucks

2012-01-12T11:11:00.000Z

Well, well, well. I could not believe it. Once again there I was watching a fat man on TV jonesing to break up a wealthy, democratic, historic nation. Yes, just when I thought I was safe from separatism, I moved to Scotland. And let me tell you, Alec Salmond's performance last night on TV was snatched from my blog post of yesterday: "Thatcher, Thatcher, Tory, Tory, Thatcherite...." Not so subtle, Alec.

I spent my childhood worrying about this b.s., and I hope David Cameron has thought to call up Canadians on the subject of Quebec. I can give him names. (Honestly, Prime Minister, email. I can give you names.)

In short, Canadian politics in the 1970s and 1980s was haunted by the dreams of a cabal of French Canadian politicians who felt that they did not have enough power running a mere province and wanted to run their own country instead. Their push for separatism was supported by some very nasty impulses, such as the age-old resentment of the French-speaking quebecois for the English-speaking Quebeckers and the racist belief that the REAL people of Quebec were "pur laine" (pure wool), 100% descended from 16th and 17th French settlers. Anglos and immigrants were, in short, mudbloods.

Not all French Canadians in Quebec were thrilled with the idea of this cabal dragging them out of wealthy, peaceful, quietly powerful Canada. A French Canadian friend of mine, born in Montreal, told me that as a child he used to weep as he listened to his father and uncles screaming abuse at each other downstairs. The separatism issue divided families. The Jews (English-speaking) left in droves.

Ah yes, the Jews. Separatism, with its racist undertones, rather rattled minorities, and it certainly rattled big business. Although cosmopolitan Montreal was itself rather against separatism, businesses began to close their Montreal offices and hightail it down the highway to Toronto. The traffic on the 401, let me tell you, was one way.

My friend's "federalist" (you might say "unionist") family left Montreal when they awoke to find threatening graffiti spray-painted on their house. Off they went across the border to Ontario, where--when I last checked--500,000 people have French as their first language and yet thrive. French Canadians have always lived across Canada, retaining their language and religion (which they practise more outside Quebec than in) if they want to. Meanwhile, just as Britain has had Scottish Prime Ministers, so Canada has had French Canadian Prime Ministers. Other than the odd racist mutter from cretins, there is no drawback to being French in Canada. Au contraire.

However, racist nationalism is a powerful force and referendum followed referendum because Quebec kept saying "NON" to independence when its leaders wanted it to say "OUI". I remember watching a particularly agonizing referendum, in which the separatists got drunker and drunker as they realized they were losing, and when Jacques Parizeau was asked why they had lost, he said he blamed "Money and the ethnic vote." All TV-watching Canada gasped, and a few more Jews packed their bags.

That's what separatism looks like, people--when it doesn't look like Yugoslavia.

On and on until, blessedly, the separatists gave up. But they gave up because--and this is one way in which Scotland differs from Quebec--Quebec has a lot of immigrants and immigrants couldn't give a toss for separatism. They aren't "pur laine", they don't cry over the battle of the Plains of Abraham, and they are more likely to be spat on by a"pur laine" franco than by an anglo. They like their Canadian passports and their strong Canadian dollar, and they want to keep them.

Meanwhile, the Quebec governments had had decades to try to get Quebecers to vote "OUI". They used the press, they used entertainers, they used academia, they used school textbooks. And this, my darlings, is probably what Alec Salmond will do with his two year run up to 2014, the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn. Not so subtle, Alec.

I will point out a few more things. First, I am a migrant myself, so I am naturally conservative and really don't like the idea of a 300 year old union breaking up under my feet. Second, the break-up of the Union is to be decided upon by five-point-one million residents of Scotland. The English, Welsh and Northern Irish will have nothing to say about it. The Union flag is about to be made an anachronism, and there is nothing the average Briton can do. How does that feel?

I know exactly how it feels because I've been there, and it sucks. In the end the Rest of Canada got so frantic about not being able to do anything that a whole bunch of us, from sea to sea, flew or drove to Quebec on the eve of the (please God) last separatist referendum and had a huge rally in Montreal to beg the French not to leave. This rather startled the French who had been told for decades that the "English" hated their guts. And then they toddled off and voted "NON" for the third time in a row.

One last point. One hell of a lot of Scots fought and died under the Union flag. I think this whole nonsense--which THE MAJORITY OF SCOTS DON'T SUPPORT (but who knows what they will do after two years of relentless propaganda)--spits on their graves.

Update: Here's Jacques Parizeau's (top photo) concession speech. Ah, how I remember watching this on TV, and the horrified voices of the commentators.

The Hungarian Constitution

2012-01-11T17:25:00.001Z

Here it is. It is long, so take some time. I shall be giving it a good read over the week. There is some astounding stuff in there. Catholics nervous of certain innovations in their own societies will be pleased.

H/T Mark Shea.

The Iron Lady

2012-01-11T11:52:00.000Z

There is no-one so disliked in Scotland as the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The anger that name inspires here never ceases to surprise me, just as I am constantly surprised by rioting on what turns out to be quite a violent island. Canadians pay so close attention to what going on south of the border that we tend to miss what is going on just across the ocean.

I was reminded of Scots antipathy to Mrs Thatcher when I expressed an interest to my husband in seeing The Irony Lady. B.A. looked uncharacteristically dour, and I guiltily remembered that B.A. is not just British but Scottish. So I expressed my interest to an English friend, and then she looked uncharacteristically dour, and I guiltily remembered that she is not just English but left-wing. I was pondering courting scandal by asking an ultraconservative Polish friend if he wanted to see the film, but then the day was saved by an Englishwoman of our parish who admires Meryl Streep.

So off we went to the film, in a very comfortable cinema in Morningside, and sat in relative emptiness to see what La Streep would make of Thatcher Thatcher Milk Snatcher. And I must say I was impressed. Either Streep is a shiftshaping alien or movie make-up has truly come of age, because one moment she was Margaret Thatcher in her 80s and the next she was Margaret Thatcher in her 40s, and both looks were completely believable. This wasn't frightening, but it was almost supernatural, and when you think about it, Meryl Streep and Margaret Thatcher both belong to the class of women who are so good at what they do, the fact that they are women is almost immaterial.

Actually, the notion of being beyond gender was alluded to in the film. After a dinner party, Amanda Root kneels at the feet of the aged, Alzheimer's stricken Baroness Thatcher and tells her how much she meant to women like her, in that she showed them what they could be. And Streep-as-Thatcher is impatient with this idea, since she had never been interested in being but in doing. Amanda Root looks rather embarrassed and awkwardly gets up. The inference is that she thinks Baroness Thatcher is rambling, but as a matter of fact, this strikes brilliantly at the heart of I-wanna-be-the-first-woman-whatever-ness of little girls, which I happened to share.

Oh yes, I do recall being tremendously impressed by photos of Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher because they were proof that there were women with way more power than my smirking male Grade 7 teacher. I was puzzled that the feminist columnists who wrote screeds in the Toronto Star didn't like Thatcher.

"Thatcher did nothing for women, of course," wrote some woman or other after Thatcher resigned. Never mind the sufferings of the miners or the rejuvenation of the British economy or the dead British and Argentinian soldiers or the liberated Falklands Islanders. Because to a certain kind of woman, the be all and end all of women in politics is what they might "do for women." But even this attitude, I admit, is better than the little girl fantasy of being looked at dressed in a great skirt-suit and admired by all for being The First WOMAN Blah-blah-blah.

To her very great credit, Thatcher never seems to have had the little girl fantasy and probably would have found it absolutely revolting. As she is portrayed in the film, she has a set of principles that she sticks to, and a party she sticks to, and a husband that she sticks to, and who sticks to her despite the fact that she is rarely at home and loses track of where he might be. All the scenes with Dennis Thatcher are tremendously affecting and made me want to rush to the phone and ask my husband how he was.

The film also made me feel very guilty for my current butterfly existence and challenged me to work harder on my writing, since that is the career I have. It also, despite the smooth, plump men making remarks about grocers' daughters, tempted me to join the Conservative Party.

As a Canadian, I can not only vote in the UK, I can run for office---the reason why Rex Mottram, Brideshead fans, had to be Canadian, not the American Waugh so obviously wanted him to be. Aelianus was very excited by this idea and proposed I eventually take over the Conservative Party in Scotland, such a ludicrous and thankless task that nobody would mind even my foreign accent.* But as a matter of fact, I don't really see that the Tory party stands for anything I believe in, and thus it would be a rather pointless way of alienating my mother, whom I assume sprayed coffee all over her computer screen when she read the above paragraph.

*"Pardon me," says Seraphic, on the way to the film, to a local woman at the bus stop. "Could you tell me what the time is?"

The local woman looks at her watch and mutters something.

"I'm sorry?" asks Seraphic.

"It's 5:15," says the woman.

"Oh thank you," asks Seraphic, rather nonplussed. She left the house at 2:30, so it can't be much after 3. Also, the sun is still in the sky, and in Edinburgh in January the sun has long since gone to bed by 5:15. She watches the woman get on the Rough Bus and wonders (yet again) if the trouble was her "Yank accent." Well, c'est la vie. It's nothing to the stress of being an anglophone at a bus stop in Montreal.

Update: What fascinates me is how hated Thatcher still is today, without having been a dictator or suppressed freedom of speech or killed political rivals or any of that. She gives the impression that she didn't care how much she was hated, and that just blows my mind. I suspect most women hate to be hated, and we are so often all about being liked.

Book 1: Hotel du Lac by Anita Brooker

2012-01-09T13:03:00.004Z

One of my New Year's resolutions is to read a book a week, and last week's book was Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner. I had read this book many times before, but this time I read it with strict attention.

I found this copy in a used bookstore in Edinburgh after a bibulous lunch in an excellent French restaurant. B.A. was in the front room, browsing the first editions, and I was in the back room, giving reading advice to a youth. I picked up Hotel du Lac and enthused that it contained one of the finest descriptions in English of women's experience in the 20th century. The youth looked profoundly uninterested in women's experience and bought Vile Bodies instead. So I bought Hotel du Lac myself and took it home to check my sweeping and drunken pronouncement.

Hotel du Lac contains one of the finest descriptions in English of women's experience in the 20th century. I am glad it won the 1984 Booker Prize. You would not know this book was written in the 1980s because it doesn't date. Characters, emotions, landscapes and houses are described in meticulous detail, but without reference to technology beyond telephones, hired cars and airplanes. It is a story of the 20th century and of women.

The story begins with a Swiss view, and looking at the view is the heroine, a very observant and thoughtful woman who writes romance novels for a living. It is a mystery why, exactly, the heroine is at this first class hotel, so late in the season. We are told, early on, that she is in some disgrace, but we do not as yet know why. The story is told almost entirely from her point of view--male voices interject twice or thrice--and she doesn't want to think about the disaster.

Instead she observes the other guests at the hotel. They are primarily women, and as the unspoken question of the novel is "What sort of woman do I want to become?", it is important to notice what kind of women they are. There is an elderly and profoundly deaf widow, who lives for visits from her neglectful son. There is the scornful, bulimic trophy wife of a wealthy aristocrat. There is a deceptively young and charming mother-and-daughter team of shoppers. The lives of all these women depend on, or were set up by, and center on men, and yet all these women are in exile from men. And as Edith thinks about her life in London, we see that there, too, she has observed how women's lives revolve around their interest in men.

But Edith Hope, our heroine, is no different. When an attractive businessman appears in the hotel, she takes as much charged notice as the other women do, and when he engages her in conversation, she perks right up. She also takes a lot of comfort in writing to a mysterious man back home. Really, Edith does seem to share my view that men are the caffeine in the cappuccino of life.

But Edith has a curious morality around this. At one point she explains that she actually believes in the love in the romance novels she writes. And thus she is disgusted by the trophy wife and the shoppers, who scheme for male attention, whereas she pities the widow, who merely loves her son in vain. And yet Edith's affair back home, about which nobody but the man knows, is quite immoral and rather bad for Edith. Her surname is Hope, but what she hopes for most would be a tragedy for someone else. We are left wondering if Edith is any better than all the women who police each other and compete with one another for men.

And I suppose this universal female war is where Hotel du Lac does not ring true. Edith does not have a single female friend in whom she can trust. The only human beings who elicit feelings of complete trust in Edith are very young men in subordinate positions, e.g. Alain, a waiter at the hotel, and her gardener.

In my experience, most women are very interested in men, for all kinds of complicated and sometimes selfish reasons, but most are also capable of deep and selfless sympathy with other women. Although women in Hotel du Lac do make temporary social bonds, as women are normally so much better than men at doing, nowhere do you see one with a true female friend.

That said, I think I would still recommend this book to Single woman, in particular, about a woman whose youth has ended (that she is 39 is one of our discoveries) and is tempted to settle for less than her dreams. This is the exact temptation Edith faces, more than once, during the course of the story.

Fifty-one to go.

Sexy New Ex-Anglicans

2012-01-05T09:46:00.000Z

I was vastly entertained and relieved when Hilary linked to yesterday's post, for Hilary has been very sick indeed and if she is back to trashing what she calls Novus Ordoism, she must be on the mend.

As a matter of fact, my post was not about why we need Anglicans in the Church but, again as a matter of fact, we do need Anglicans in the Church.

In my younger days I was very sniffy about Anglicans, but that was because I found their gorgeous Gothic churches, their trained choirs, their beautiful mediaeval-revival artwork and their sonorous Jacobean prayers such a temptation. I was growing so unhappy, as I got older, with our ugly building projects, "Sing a New Song", our crudely hewn felt banners and Father What a Guy making things up as he went along. I did not know then, as I know now, that the glorious High Anglican aesthetic was, to sum up, a rip-off/partial preservation of mediaeval English Catholicism.* The reason why Anglican art attracted Catholic me so much was that it was Catholic.

(The local High Church Anglicans claimed they were Catholic, and from the Catholic point of view they weren't, but their aesthetic certainly was. Apparently little old Italian ladies used to attend services at St. Mary Mags in blissful ignorance that this church did not have the blessing of Rome.)

So here we have a bit of a miracle. When, between 1962 and 1972, Catholics threw our glorious chasubles and statues and altars to the side of the road, some Anglicans and some of their American and Scottish branches, the Episcopalians, crept out and gathered them up. Although the liturgical innovations of Vatican II did, unfortunately, affect many anglo-papalist Piskie parishes, they did not dump their patrimony (which was mostly our patrimony) on the side of the road. Instead they started shedding the doctrines of the Christian faith and that, my cherubs, is why the Anglicans have been trickling across the Tiber in a steady stream since the 1960s. It's not our fantabulous felt banners.

God can bring good out of evil, and out of the Reformation came the preservation and refinement of what was very good about English (and Welsh) Catholic music and art up to the mid-16th century. Some 16th century Catholic artists, like Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, managed to carry on being Roman Catholic and compose new works for newly Anglican patrons. But, you know, the music of Tallis and Byrd are more likely to be heard today in a Piskie Church than in a Roman.

My post-Piskie husband grew up singing Tallis and Byrd in an Anglo-Catholic, vaguely anglo-papalist, Scots Piskie church, and so when he realized Canterbury was on a one-way doctrinal death-spiral (my words), he started to attend Masses held by university Catholic chaplaincy. I will not wound you with his tales of Catholic chaplaincy. Poor old B.A. offered it all up and thought more about whether he was worthy to become a Roman Catholic than whether our cheesy music would eventually kill him.

Fortunately, he found out about the Extraordinary Form (then called "the Indult Mass") and found at his local Extraordinary Form community a small band of fellow post-Piskie musicians. Like him, they had been well-trained by the Anglican musical tradition and also had been very active in altar service, choir service, tea service, and exchanging robust views with Father This and Canon That, Archdeacon Here and Bishop There. And so they get along swimmingly and sneak little bits of Anglican patrimony into our Sunday Masses, usually at the very end in the form of the kind of hymn that makes old British soldiers cry, e.g. "O Valiant Hearts."

And there B.A. was, the only 30-something bachelor in the entire local Trid Mass community, when I came along and snaffled him. So perhaps I may be forgiven for finding his reception by the Church of even more moment than the receptions of such other ex-Anglicans as Blessed John Henry Newman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and Muriel Spark. For one thing, those luminaries do not provide a fine baritone to the Missa Cantata on Sunday mornings. And I must admit that it was with a great sigh of relief that I settled into B.A.'s nice Trid Mass community and took back my Catholic liturgical birthright. Anglican churches no longer hold any temptations for me.

We need Anglicans because we need their aesthetic patrimony, which is, to a great extent, our aesthetic patrimony, paradoxically preserved better by a strain of the English Reformation than by those liturgists who trod so heavily upon the heels of Vatican II.

*Evelyn Waugh said something like this, but he did not mean it in a complimentary way. His attitude was, why settle for a pale copy when you can get the real thing? My attitude is, yay! A copy!

Treasures Old

2012-01-04T11:37:00.002Z

Someone has asked me for five points to explain--without alienating anyone--why the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is superior to the Ordinary Form. I'm not sure I can do that because EF vs OF is one of those inherently divisive things.

It's funny--I've been to or stayed at theology schools that invited Eastern Catholic priests to come and celebrate the Byzantine rite, but there was absolutely no talk of inviting a Latin Catholic priest to come in and celebrate the Latin Rite in the Extraordinary Form. I suspect this is because Roman Catholics of a certain stamp find Eastern Catholics awesomely foreign and therefore no threat whereas they find Roman Catholics who love Latin just too close for comfort.

So instead of talking about superiority, I will merely riff on what I find compelling about the Extraordinary Form.

First of all, when every Western saint after Gregory the Great writes about the Mass, the Extraordinary Form is more or less the Mass they are all talking about. If you want to see roughly what they saw, and hear roughly what they heard, to an Extraordinary Form you must go. (This is such a given, it blows my mind that I never thought to seek it out while I was in theological studies.)

This is participation in the hermeneutic of continuity, and it points to the truth that the Catholic Church isn't just Catholics alive today but all Catholics in history. We aren't just in communion with the Catholic living but with the Catholic dead. Our tradition doesn't go back to Christmas Day 1961, when the Second Vatican Council was convoked. Neither does it skip over 1,900 years, going straight from embryonic (and mostly guessed at) post-Pentecost liturgies straight to "Sing a New Song."

Second, anyone who says the Ordinary Form is the same as the Extraordinary Form isn't being intellectually honest. The differences are literally stultifying. If you have never been to an EF, and you find yourself at one, you are staggered by the strangeness of it all. You (usually) don't understand the language, you don't understand exactly what is going on, and you don't understand where you should be in the Missal--just like with the Byzantine rite. But you do understand that something seriously important is going on because of the silence and attentiveness of the adults around you.

Third, there is something to be said for this unsettling lack of comprehension. We are celebrating the mystery of faith, so it might be helpful to really experience mystery on several levels. If English is your first language, liturgical English isn't very mysterious. It is everyday, mundane. And our current idiom isn't, like, you know, particularly glorious. The Anglicans got their liturgical English in Shakespeare's day. We got ours in the Beatles'. Lucky old us went from "In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominem" to "He loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah."

Fourth (but related), to really see something, you need some distance. In an art gallery, you have to stand back from the painting. In studying the history of your own day, you have to wait until time passes before you can truly understand what happened. The Extraordinary Form provides this distance. We stand or kneel well back from the altar, and we silently pray and watch the gleaming movements before us. Our intellects consciously penetrate layers of language. We veil the Tabernacle and other holy things or beings, like brides; our Mass is veiled with Latin.

(Personally, I feel sorry for the altar servers. They are so close and so busy, they must miss a lot. However, perhaps their experience has its own spiritual delights. If I ever get my hands on the servers' handbook, with its cute 1950s cartoons, perhaps it will explain them.)

To tell you the truth, this distancing works with other languages, too. Before I first came to Scotland and married into the EF--rather as Latins marry into the Ukrainian Rite--I used to go to my city's German-language Mass. Martin Mosebach, who is German, thinks the Mass sounds terrible in German, but anglophone I like it very much. It skips over my everyday experience into something stately, mysterious and even ancestral. The only time, at home, that I spoke German was at this Mass, and basically the only German phrases I speak with any confidence now are the responses to this Mass. Herr, ich bin nicht wuerdig dass Du eingehest unter mein Dach... By the way, there's nothing like a German-English missal to show you how far off from the Latin the 1971 translation was.

The other great thing about the German Mass, and here we go into point five, is that I can't understand anything EXCEPT the Mass. If the priest riffs on his Oma's apple pie during the Canon, I have no idea what he is saying. If he litters his homily with quotes from Readers' Digest and recalls them during the Eucharistic Prayer, I don't know. I am thus blissfully free from the verbal tics priests of all nations stuff into the Novus Ordo to fill it out or make it "meaningful". Listen, nobody distrusts the Novus Ordo more than the priest who constantly strives to make it "meaningful."

So point five is that with the Extraordinary Form what you get is 100% Mass with no additives. It is pure, uninterrupted ritual--except for the homily, which I believe used to be at the end. There is no fear of contemplative silence. The EF is full of silence. It's really wonderful. Why hordes of Catholic teenagers abandoned their very meditative faith to take up non-Christian mediation and ritual is beyond... Wait. When did that happen? During and after Vatican II, you say?

But I don't want to blame Vatican II. No. Very few Trids do, in part so we don't get confused with the SSPX, although many (if not most) of those in the SSPX are very nice, very faith-filled, if very stubborn people. No, as usual, we blame liturgists like Annibale Bugnini* and his minions. However, I see that I am about to fall into the trap of critiquing the Novus Ordo instead of merely praising the Usus Antiquor, so I will end this post.

Update: I'm new on the scene, but I don't understand the fuss over whether or not Bugnini was a Freemason. I can think of other, much more exciting and ominous conspiracy theories. Has anyone looked to see if he has a KGB file?

Update 2: Well, hello, Hilary's readers. Don't confuse stuff Auntie Hilary says with stuff Auntie Seraphic says. I find fights over "My liturgy is better than your liturgy" intensely boring. Someone asked me to write up five points proving the EF is better than the OF, and I didn't want to do that, so I wrote about what I like about the EF.

If I wanted to get really specific, I'd tell you why I like my parish EF best of all, but as this has a lot to do with people who assist at it, it wouldn't illuminate the EF in general.

Seraphic Off the Sauce(s)

2012-01-03T18:44:00.002Z

Well, here it is January 3rd, and since Christmas I have managed to avoid all alcohol except a glass of champagne and a glass of red wine this past Sunday. Yay, me!

I have also been watching what I eat although in my 5 years of no longer caring I have forgotten the caloric content of everything and so wrongly chose a cheddar scone over the butter croissant in that teashop in Bridge of Allan.

Incidentally, a certain American sandwich shop made famous by a certain male calorie counter has come to Britain, and the family partook of their sandwiches in the ancient town of Falkirk. Poor B.A. didn't understand at first how it worked, but he enjoyed the novelty of telling a smiling person what vegetables and sauce he wanted on his turkey sandwich.

It might be interesting to write a book called "Burning Fuel: Losing Weight While Driving Through Scotland". However, we took back the rental car today, and five days is not enough time to collect material.

You may be thinking that it is terrible vain of old Seraphic to be thinking of her figure, but actually that is not my first concern. No. My first concern is the scary scary C word, and it turns out that the leading causes of cancer in women are (A) too much alcohol and (B) being overweight. A, incidentally, can lead to B.

On New Year's Eve, I read online all about cancer and diet, and B.A. pettishly told me to stop it. I stopped wailing after that and just read silently, but I still managed to annoy B.A. with my expressions of abject horror.

Now I know why Scottish doctors and nurses are so obsessed with how much everyone drinks and how much they weigh. Jeepers. Basically if you like your wee dram and your mince pie, you'll die in one of forty horrible ways, most likely before your 65th birthday.

So I had my last pie on New Year's Eve and fitting this was in Dundee, where the average lifespan (male) is only longer than that of a Glaswegian junkie. Thank goodness B.A. now lives in Edinburgh, where you can find vegetables if you get out there and look. Five a day, people!

I have been less successful about half an hour of exercise a day, although walking around cathedrals and up and down the high streets of market towns probably counts for something. Today we had to push and pull our rental car out of the mud, so that probably counted, too.

Meanwhile the one side effect of abstemiousness so far is that I got hiccups in the middle of my glass of champagne and then again after my glass of red wine at dinner. In short, my tolerance for alcohol has hit bottom again.

New Year's Resolutions

2011-12-31T10:36:00.002Z

We are leaving soon for our road trip to Dundee, but I have a moment to blog. All that comes to mind are my New Year's Resolutions, so here they are. Maybe I will keep them if they haunt me online.

1. Resist Scottish drinking habits. I have not taken a drink since Christmas, I am proud to say. It helps that my sister is here, and after a week of wine every day, she said she couldn't drink it any more. So now only B.A. has wine with dinner, rather like the head of a Scottish household in 1840. Obviously it is next to impossible for a non-alcoholic to turn down all drinks in Edinburgh society, but I have a plan.

2. Resist Scottish eating habits. I shall not eat "prepared foods" or anything containing more than a smidge of white sugar six days out of seven. Absolutely no more pies, sausage rolls or crisps. Crisps are evil.

3.Exercise 30 minutes a day. Och. To think once upon a time I used to start my day with half an hour on the tread mill and then half an hour with weights. Then I ended my day, three times a week, in the boxing gym, doing the circuit three times. Those were the days. Now I can barely be pried from the computer.

4. Blog less. And thus, paradoxically, write more.

5. Do housework every day. Sigh. What dramas of sin and redemption to which that little resolution points.

6. Read a book a week. A real, printed book. I write much more than I read, and that cannot be good.

A happy Hogmanay to all!

Driving Around Scotland

2011-12-30T19:46:00.002Z

Brief pause in blogging activities as B.A., Pirate, Pirate's mother and I drive all over Scotland. Never mind ghosts and Nessie: the round-abouts are truly terrifying.

It is nice to see that the ancestral village is thriving, though. Nice tea shops.

Just a Catholic

2011-12-29T10:33:00.001Z

Oh dear. I seem to have caught the attention of some militant atheists, two of whom are divided between thinking I am sweet and harmless if deluded and dangerous and deluded, as I am an "apologist for the Catholic church."

I have three thoughts on this, which I will relate in chronological order. The first is that militant atheists make me nervous. Being noticed by a militant atheist blog has resulted in unpleasant comments of the "Catholics are hateful, ignorant bigots" variety, which--since I now live in a country where anti-Catholic sectarianism, political rather than religious in nature, leads to physical violence--are particularly galling.

They also remind me of my childhood. I went to a Toronto Catholic school, and the school yard was well dotted with children whose parents had fled atheist regimes. Not everyone remembers this, but the years 1945-1989 really sucked for Christians, usually Roman Catholics or East Orthodox, across central and eastern Europe. The 1970s really, really sucked for the Chinese of any religion and quite a number of people of Hong Kong showed their enthusiasm for the eventual departure of British colonialism by hightailing it early to British North America. Catholic Vietnamese also ran like hell.

To this day I remember the reluctance of K.D., when she was a new kid, to tell us all where she had come from. She had come from the atheist Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and if you grew up in the SFRY, your parents carefully taught you not to tell strangers your business, particularly if, like K.D.'s father, you refused to join the Party because you were a Christian.

Then there was S.H., who came to us from the atheist Social Republic of Romania. R.W.'s parents had come earlier, from the atheist People's Republic of Poland. Eventually to the parish church came Father A.B., who--after the People's Security Police murdered his pal Father Jerzy Popieluszko--was whisked by his bishop out of the People's Republic. Down Shepherd Avenue East, at the Hungarian Catholic parish, a Hungarian bishop was recovering from years in prison courtesy of the atheist People's Republic of Hungary.

There is no tale to tell of M.W., for she got out of Hong Kong while the going is good, although I suppose it may be of interest that her entire family converted to Roman Catholicism after arriving in Toronto. There were no Vietnamese kids in my class, although the schoolyard resounded with teachers yelling "Bryan Ng, you behave," etc.

To this day, people who gave up property and risked the lives of their families to flee atheist communist regimes to Canada gibber with rage when they see casual references to Soviet chic on tip jars and t-shirts. Toronto and Montreal are heavily populated with people who thought it an absolute miracle that in Canada they (and in "they" I include Orthodox) could send their children to Catholic schools, and that in Canada parents, not the state, had the last word over the philosophies into which the children were taught/indoctrinated.* My Catholic school was careful to teach us historic Christian principles of anti-racism and, in the tradition of Vatican II, brotherhood with people of other religions. So far as I know, none of the ex-Warsaw Pact or Asian parents kicked up a fuss.

Anyway, let's just say that any Christian with firsthand, or in my case secondhand, knowledge of what atheist regimes are like for Christians, are a little nervous of atheists denouncing Catholics and other Christians as enemies of the state, decency, reason, the People, etc. Traditionally, Canada has been a safe place for Roman Catholics and other Christians, somewhere we could live without being denounced and having our parental right to choose the manner in which our children are educated violated.

The second thought is that "bigot" is the new "racist". When I was a teenager, pro-choice activists had a little ditty that they chant over and over again to the raggle-taggle band of teenage pro-life activists I hung out with: "Sexist, racist, anti-gay/Born-again bigots go away."

The fact that half of us were girls and a good chunk of us were Asian, South Asian and black never made a dent in the enthusiasm of the pro-choice grown-ups to chant this slogan. Less obvious to them was that only some of us were "born-again" Christians; we were mostly Catholics, and the "born-agains" were exhibiting a high degree of contemporary tolerance by hanging out with us Catholics so often. As for anti-gay, we were against premarital sex of any old kind, so we were certainly consistent.

I don't remember having a seizure over any gay person, but I certainly was shocked to the core of my sheltered and romantic heart when a pro-choice girl announced to a reporter "As a sexually active teenager..." Now sexually active teenagers no longer have the power to shock me, although I--now sexually active myself with someone who will never leave me and whom I will never want to leave--still feel sorry for them.

The third thought is that I was never trained to be an apologist. I did my MDiv at a school that looked down on apologetics and was more interested in systematic theology. I was surprised by this, for I had a romantic, anachronistic belief that the Jesuits were the shock troops of Catholic intelligentsia, but I happily went along with it and read Bernard Lonergan until whole new channels were burned through my brain. I left all that apologetics stuff to able men like Peter Kreeft and, unfortunately, upstart morons like Tony Blair.

No. I'm not an apologist for the Catholic church. I'm just a Catholic. The Catholic church is not, as Catholics--conservative and liberal--have to repeat again and again--a gang of old men in the Vatican. The Catholic church is all Catholics, millions and millions of us, most of us living in Asia, Africa and Latin America, half of us women. The most important people in Catholicism are not the pope, the bishops and the priests, but the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the saints and the martyrs. We Catholics are defined not by our political involvement, though as citizens of countries we have the responsibility to be politically involved, but by our relationships to the Blessed Trinity, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the saints, the martyrs, our traditions, each other and the world.

So those are my thoughts on the militant atheists who are adding their voices to the century-old complaint about Catholic schools in Ontario, using the word "bigot", which now carries the same emotional power as their predecessors' word "papist". Who knows what their co-non-religionists in the Warsaw Pact countries called us? Well, actually, my old classmates KD, SH, and WR probably do.

I don't have time or space to get into the history of publicly-funded Catholic schools in Ontario or, for that matter, Scotland. For that you'll have to actually read a book or two.

Comments delay today, peeps.

*This may be more de jure than de facto, however. There has been a lot of fuss recently about a Toronto high school teacher in the ex-Protestant school system teaching his sexuality-based philosophy in class time, and I know of one secular private school in which the only way to get an A from one English teacher, in the 1990s, was to parrot his enthusiasm for Ayn Rand.

Julie & Julia & Seraphic

2011-12-28T10:42:00.001Z

My Nearest Neighbour Angela loaned us her Julie & Julia DVD, and we watched last night after Pirate had been put to bed. It was a trip.

The scenes with the blogger were eerily familiar. First, I did not have a nice, supportive husband when I started blogging, but I have one now, and he makes a lot of the same soothing arguments the husband of Julie the Blogger makes.

Second, Julie the Blogger sets up an impossible task for herself, has extreme highs and lows, rants, self-doubts and has meltdowns. At one point she collapses and sobs on the kitchen floor, and I was astonished because I did the exact same thing myself on Christmas morning 2009 when I failed to make the traditional family Christmas morning bun correctly.

Third, Julie the Blogger obsesses on "the readers" or "my readers" at the expense of her husband, whose expression clearly reads "What about me?"

Fourth, well...

Julie the Blogger: I want to be a writer.

Husband: You ARE A writer.

Six hours earlier my husband had dragged me away from the "How to be a Writer" section in Blackwell's with the same words.

The harder Julie the Blogger cried, the harder I laughed because that was, as they say, my life up there on the screen.* Except for the 65 phone messages from Random House, CBS, Viking, agents, et alia. Also, Nora Ephron has not turned my blog-book into a screenplay.

Nora Ephron is the genius behind all the greatest romantic comedies of recent American cinema. If someone told me that Nora Ephron had signed on to turn anything I had written into a screenplay, I would kiss their feet, the happy feet of the messenger. And if Nora, being a genius, said, "This book is too slight on its own, and we must splice it to Julia Child's autobiography," I would merely be struck with awe at her brilliance.

This decision made the film a very good film indeed because, alas, a neurotic 30+ year old blogger in 21st century Queens (or Edinburgh) is not interesting enough to carry our interest for 90 minutes. Julia Child in 1950s Paris, on the other hand, certainly is.

And in the scenes with Julia Child, we are transported to a world away from 21st century Queens, a world of confident 40+ women who are "too tall", but nevertheless manage to marry attractive men, and who are loud and eccentric and jolly and American and are rewarded, not punished, for it. It is also a world where you have to work your butt off to get anywhere, and success does not come on a plate or, rather, from the great good luck of having caught the attention of a significant number of blog readers.

Julie the Blogger won fame during her year's cooking and blogging toil. Julia Child worked for years on Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julie the Blogger had a few disappointments. Julia Child got serious grief and misunderstanding from publishers. Now, I understand exactly how Julie the Blogger felt, but with Julia Child, I felt that the publishers' misunderstandings were serious affronts to the universe.

The film is unfairly weighted, perhaps. Julie the Blogger is played by Amy Adams, who is an excellent actress but not Meryl Streep, and Julia Child is played by Meryl Streep. Julie the Blogger is an ordinary if talented 30 year old in a dull and stressful job, and Julia Child is an extraordinary 40+ woman married to a man with a job good enough that she doesn't have to work. Julie the Blogger lives in an age where turning 30 is a crisis, and Julia Child lived in an age where being an adult was still acknowledged to be better than being an adolescent. The clothes--the glorious French clothes of the 1950s!--reflect this.

Nevertheless, how very strange that in this film an educated woman in the liberated 21st century comes across as a tearful basketcase whereas her much older counterpart in the 1950s simply hums with confidence and courage. The only time the latter breaks down is when she reads that her sister is pregnant, and we understand how much it hurts her that she, who also married late, has not had a baby. This is a sorrow rather more deep than a cancelled dinner with a retired book editor.

If they haven't seen it already, Julie & Julia is a must view for bloggers, other writers, cooks and women feeling fragile about having survived past the age of 30. Not only is it an interesting film, with lovely period shots of 1950s France, it provides an admirable example of a woman who found both love and success relatively late in life.

Incidentally, the husbands are not figures of fantasy. The two (or three, if we count Julia Child's brother-in-law) remind me quite a lot of good husbands I know.

Caveat: If you watch this with a British person, expect repetitions of "What about Elizabeth David?" Elizabeth David was an Englishwoman who wrote about French cooking in English a decade before Julia Child did, but I think the film deals with this by constantly harping on the fact that Child's book is "for Americans." As I can tell you firsthand, there is a big, big difference between recipes for Britons and recipes for Americans and Canadians.

*This, incidentally, is not good. As the New Year approaches, I shall ponder how to become more Julia, less Julie. No offense to the real-life Julie. Here is a defense of the latter by the Globe and Mail's Kate Taylor.

Update: I can't leave this film alone today. Here is Roger Ebert's review, which I find remarkable in that it sulks over what Ebert thinks are underdeveloped male characters. Ah ha ha ha ha! Welcome to the Female Gaze, boys, when it is not directed upon YOU.

Incidentally, this is what nice husbands are like before the hurricane of female obsessions: they back away and wait out the storm. MEANWHILE, I will point out that both husbands initially had much MUCH MUCH more important jobs than their wives. Julie wanted to be a writer; well, her husband was an actual magazine editor. Julia wanted to do something; her husband was an American diplomat. In short, the men brought home the bacon, and their wives cooked it up in a pan, and never ever ever let either one forget that he was a man. But at the same time, Julie and Julia had their own interests and wanted to be public personages in their own right, and THAT, dear Roger Ebert, is what the film is about.

Taki Christmas Decoration

2011-12-27T10:52:00.000Z

One day when I was disguised as Lady Marchmain, down in the Grassmarket with the Edinburgh University Tweed and Tie Brigade, one of the Tweed and Ties turned to the others and said, "Do you like Ta-kay?" Possibly the only response was "I don't know, you silly boy, I've never takayed," but what I said was, "Oh! Do you read his magazine?" This was met with a blank look, so I gathered not. Taki is the most amusing very rich old man in the world, and this is what he had to say, in both the Spectator and his outrageous online magazine, for Christmas this year.

Post-Christmas Cold

2011-12-26T12:42:00.000Z

Blah. Cough cough wheeze. Maybe I will find my nephew and get him to play me a tune on his new toy bagpipes. So far the only tune any of us can get out of the bagpipes is "The Dying Sheep", but it is good for a laugh./I have done nothing all day but write emails to absent Trids. There are very few people in the cold universe who could care less that Edinburgh Trids actually found altar servers for Midnight Mass, and those are the people to whom I write long, detailed emails.

Christmas Mission Accomplished

2011-12-25T21:44:00.001Z

Have successfully completed Traditional Canadian Family Christmas in Edinburgh, complete with tree, popcorn strings, gingerbread men, two Masses (Midnight Trid, 10 AM N.O.) Christmas morning bun, autumn vegetable soup, roast turkey, roast potatoes, curried carrots, green beans with red pepper and almonds, and Alaskan trifle. Even though I am completely exhausted and have come down with a cold, I had hysterics only five times. Result! Merry Christmas to all!

Christmas with Mum over the Ocean

2011-12-24T14:14:00.002Z

I can't do all the baking by myself. Waaaah!Waaaaah!Okay, breathe. One batch of cookies at a time. Breathe breathe....

Ontario Government Bullies Catholics

2011-12-23T11:15:00.002Z

Okay, I am not really sure how this happened. One minute I was in the high school library, reading in Time about how this terrible plague was wiping out homosexual men, and the next I am reading about Catholic schools being forced to by the government submit to a female impersonator's take on reality. There are expressions for situations in which a very, very small percentage of the population rides roughshod over the majority of the population. "Bullying" has become the latest Orwellian slogan, and I see it has even dethroned the slogan "choice."

Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart

2011-12-21T09:22:00.001Z

Actually, that's just stuck in my head. Last Christmas and the Christmas before, we watched a LOT of Christmas videos on telly. Frankly, I found that video confusing. Were they at the chalet for two Christmases, and did George steal Andrew's girlfriend or vice versa? Here is my latest article in the Catholic Register. My Christmas column tradition is to write about last Christmas this Christmas. This Christmas should be suitably heartwarming as there is an actual child in it. By the way I am not enjoying the new Blogger template. It does not seem to understand the "new paragraph" concept. Grr.

So We're "Civilians" Now

2011-12-20T22:23:00.000Z

Somehow the bishop's ten year sexual relationship does not make me feel better about it all.The guy isn't on trial for sexual assault of children. The guy is on trial for possessing kiddie porn. It is against Canadian law to possess kiddie porn. I can't even imagine what canon law might have to say about it, although I am relatively sure canon law is very much against bishops having one night stands, ten year sexual relationships and, oh yeah, homosexual sex relations. I cannot even imagine what this defense is all about unless you now get a free pardon in Canada for being just an ordinary elderly gay guy with a steady boyfriend and kinky fantasies. I see that the lawyer thinks his Disgrace should get brownie points for having awarded millions of Canadian Catholics' money to victims of clerics with even kinkier fantasies. Let he who is without sin and all that, but GOOD NIGHT! Does the humiliation never end?Oh yeah. And we are assured that his Disgrace's partner is not another cleric but "a civilian", which presumably means one of the laymen to whom his Disgrace is or was a shepherd. We have strong words in Scotland for such maltreatment of sheep. Meanwhile, I'm sure Canada's gay community will be oh so thankful for the straight line being drawn from the bishop's photo collection and his, hmmmm, lifestyle. sarc/off.

Georgian Suburban Villa Party

2011-12-20T10:10:00.009Z

I come from a family of seven, so I rejoice in house guests. It seems a bit strange to live with just one other person, even the nicest, most amusing person in the world. This is one reason why I rejoice in dinner parties and look forward to Sundays, when I see all kinds of people who share our complicated beliefs, values and thought processes.

But our social life is otherwise a contrast to my childhood, where usually the only house guests were my American uncle and grandmother at Christmas, and there was wine at dinner only twice a year. I suppose you really don't have time and room for house guests when you have five children, especially when the older ones are climbing in and out of the dining room windows and the younger ones are rubbing mashed banana into the furnishings.

And then in the Historical House there is the strange blending of generations. I remember growing up according to a strict hierarchy of children, teenagers and adults, in which everyone was friends solely with people their own age, deferred or avoided those older and avoided or quelled those younger. However, on Saturday I found myself being instructed in the feminine art of pierogi-making by a young friend whose early-married mother is the exact same age as me.

On the other hand, my nephew Pirate is most definitely a child, and he is treated like one. Was it Waugh's Peter Pastmaster who was made to learn from a very young age how to make cocktails for his mother's guests? Really, I cannot see Pirate in the Peter role. I shudder to think what he might do to a lemon.

Meanwhile, his mother seems to be thriving in our atmosphere of spontaneous dinner parties. Houses full of amusing adults are as much or more fun than houses full of lively children---probably more if you are a childless adult, or have only one child, yourself.

And that brings me to my warning that blogging will be much more intermittent for the next week, for there are greater familial demands on my time than usual. I am all admiration for Mommy Bloggers because frankly I do not see whence they snatch the blogging time!

Pray for Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T08:47:00.008Z

Of your charity, please pray for Christopher Hitchens. He has died.

One of the more difficult Christian teachings is the edict to love your enemy. To be frank, some enemies are a lot more lovable than others. Of course, some enemies are also a lot more lovable than some friends. Given a choice between Chris Hitchens and one particular porn-surfing Canadian bishop, I'd pick Hitchens ten times out of ten.

When he wrote about Catholicism, Christianity and faith, Hitchen came across as a bit of an idiot. But for all that he was a good writer and a brave man.

Pray also for his brother, the devoutly Anglican Peter Hitchens, that he may be comforted for his loss.

***
Update: For a weird trip, read the comments after the Daily Mail obituary. They are full of his fans wishing the arch-atheist a great time in the next life and imagining him telling St. Peter he doesn't want to come in, and giving God a hard time, etc. It's the bizarre third-way belief in which there is no extinction but there is also no hell and everyone not a sex-killer just ends up at the cartoon "pearly gates" or in "the next dimension."

Similar sentiments at Canada's National Post, only some guy or gal is calling his fans on their "RIP" and "wherever he is" remarks.

Update 2: By the way, I don't know why atheists (or voidists, since so many supposed atheists nevertheless seem to believe in continued identity after death) think "facing the void" is so much braver than facing the choice between an eternity of love and of damnation.

Update 3: Peter on Christopher: http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2011/12/in-memoriam-christopher-hitchens-1949-2011.html

Update 4.(Boxing Day): And hello to readers of the Canadian Atheist. You must have been disappointed by this rather irenic post. As a matter of fact, the word "seraphic" can be used to convey the idea of being happy and peaceful (e.g. "a seraphic smile"), which could also be ironic, at least some of the time. It was chosen for its alliterative properties. As for the Bird of Paradise, the germs of Edinburgh have certainly flown up my nose, and I am feeling pretty ill, if that's of any comfort to you.

Update 5. I have been trying to get my mind around why an atheist blogger would ponder this post for 30 seconds, let alone link to it. Why be that ticked off? And it occurs to me that there are two suggestions that might really annoy a militant atheist 1. that being a militant atheist does not in itself make them braver than everyone else, a sort of Milton's Satanesque "Non Serviam" hero of reason; 2. that being a militant atheist does not in itself make them smarter than everyone else. Really, it doesn't.

The whole idea of "voidist" is to distinguish between people who don't believe in God (atheists) and people who also don't believe in continued existence after death (voidists). Meanwhile, it would be nice if atheists actually read, say, St. Thomas Aquinas, on who and what God is, and stop taking potshots at the old man in a nightgown in whom they think Christians believe. God is the very ground of Being. There is method in our metaphysics.

Update 6. Thank you very much. Actually, I look young for my age, but yes I am that well educated. If you pick up a book you will discover that very many Christians, including Roman Catholics, are well-educated. One even better educated Canadian Catholic was Marshall McLuhan. And there are several Roman Catholics on faculty at the University of Toronto, most notably at St. Michael's College, where McLuhan taught. Amazingly, people can go to university for years and years, rise to the top of their fields and, like Alaisdair MacIntyre, become convinced Roman Catholics. Charles Taylor of McGill University is also a Roman Catholic.

Christmas is Coming to the Historical House

2011-12-16T07:54:00.005Z

My nom de blog is Seraphic McAmbrose. I live in the Historical House. Family is winging itself to me from across the ocean, so as of this evening my household will consist of my husband, my sister, her son, my Polish tutor and me. How 18th century is that?

I hope my nephew likes Scotland, since we are removing him from his friends for three weeks. Personally I would hate that, and as he is only seven he can't have a gin-and-tonic to soften the blow.

I also hope my sister rents a car upon arrival. I can't drive, B.A. can't drive, but my sister can drive. I anticipate much driving about Highlands with my husband, my sister, her son and possibly even my Polish tutor, if he fits in the car. He's kind of tall.

My nephew would probably like the Highland cows. Also the stags. And the usual dogs in the park. And the new panda bears in the zoo. I am trying to remember what I liked when I was seven, and I think animals were rather high in my estimation. I also liked plays, so I must remember to buy tickets for the panto. Oh, and I think I liked castles, and there are lots around, so that's lucky.

And of course there is the dungeon downstairs. My nephew is keen on dungeons, but he doesn't believe there is one in the Historical House, possibly because that would be too good to be true. However, the former wine cellar would make an excellent dungeon, as he will discover.

As for parish life, I am not sure where he will fit, being seven. Normally my menfolk are absorbed into the Schola, made to sing and rewarded with gin. My nephew doesn't sightread, however, and I don't know if he sings. He certainly can't drink gin. Oh, I mentioned that.

And then there are food issues. Obviously seven year olds like cookies, but what else do they eat?

"Darling," said I over the phone to B.A., "I think you should get some breakfast cereal for the child."

"I'm sure he buys his own, darling," said B.A. "You should let him sort that out."

"Darling," said I, after a pause. "I mean our nephew, not the Polish tutor."

"Oh, I see," said B.A.

We have agreed by mutual consent that my Polish tutor (current beneficiary of the McAmbrose/Młoda Polska Emergency Temporary Rehousing Scheme) is The Bairn and our nephew is The Wean. B.A. doesn't really like the expression "Wean" (pronounced "Wayne") because, he says, it is native to Glasgow, not Edinburgh. But it seems fitting that the Polish tutor, who comes from the east, gets the East Coast term, and that the nephew, who comes from the west, gets the West Coast one.

A Strange Obsession

2011-12-15T08:39:00.006Z

Dear Britain,

Yesterday I made a pumpkin pie with a tin of canned pumpkin I finally found in Peckham's shortly after American Thanksgiving. The fact that the canned pumpkin was there for American Thanksgiving, not Canadian Thanksgiving, still rankles, and I think it is time we had a word about your obsession with the USA.

First of all, the USA threw you off like an overbearing girlfriend in 1776, and your attempts to get them back did not work. I appreciate that you have a lot of colonial guilt these days, but the 13 Colonies did quite well under the Hanoverians, and then they did even better after independence, so please don't worry about it. Besides, the rebels did some very nasty things to the loyalists before they escaped to Upper Canada and Lower Canada, as Canadians have never forgotten.

Second, there are better countries with which to compare yourself. For example, let me introduce you to a little country called CANADA. The "founding peoples" of Canada are (or were) officially the English, Scottish, Irish and French, all of whom you may recognize as founding members of post-1066 Britain. We have a Queen, a Prime Minister, a Parliament and little provincial parliaments rather like the Scots Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. The Union flag is all over the shop, stuck in this provincial flag and that provincial flag, in this Boer War memorial and that War in the Crimea memorial and these First and Second World War memorials.

Oh, yes: Crimea. A Torontonian was in the Charge of the Light Brigade. Thanks for remembering.

We practise English Common Law, except in Quebec, where non-criminal stuff is dealt with according to a code civil. By the way, all Canadians were British subjects (or "citizens" as you now say) until 1947. That Queen I mentioned is also your Queen. Like in Australia, which you also seem to mention 100% more often than Canada. I wonder if Australia is a fellow G8 nation....Good golly, no it isn't! We are.

Third, I realize that you used to rule most of the world, but surely it is undignified to gaze unblinkingly at the folks who have the power now. Celebrating American Thanksgiving, which is entirely native to American east coast and has exactly nothing to do with Britain, really takes the pumpkin pie.

My Scots husband has come in to say that this obsession is not a Scottish but an English thing, which gives me food for thought, particularly as the British institution most obsessed with "America" appears to be the England-dominated BBC.

At any rate, I am inviting you to start considering Canada as something more than a Ray-Mears-wilderness-fantasy-holiday-magical land. You have a problem with snow; we understand snow. You have a problem with Scots separatists; we have been dealing with French separatists for generations. You were all gung-ho for King and Empire until 1947; we were all gung-ho for King and Empire until 1947. You have become an increasingly multicultural society processing thousands of immigrants; we have been processing thousands of them since 1608. You were pressured by the USA into fighting the war in Iraq; we successfully kept out of the war in Iraq. You have Scottish bankers who ceased to act Scottish; we have Scottish bankers who still act Scottish, and therefore Canada is in a lot better financial shape.

I don't want to sound like the cheesed off, stay-at-home loyal brother in the story of the Prodigal Son here, but frankly, DADDY BRITAIN, you have a lot more in common with Canada than you do with the United States. Perhaps you should send Stephen Fry to drive across British North America and do week-long BBC specials about the Canadian people, not just their landscape. And if you must indulge in an autumn harvest festival, why not get the canned pumpkin on the shelves in October?

With filial love,

a Canadian

Speaking Polish

2011-12-13T07:02:00.029Z

The Men's Schola-Altar Service Alliance had so much fun on Gaudy Sunday that I am torn between the natural desire to write about it and the prudential suspicion that I should not. Not everyone loves Trids, and it would not be fair if, through my writings, Trids became notorious for boozing, dining, joking, singing Jacobite songs, making outrageous puns, telling wife jokes, extolling aestheticism and friend-joshing. Personally, I have a very great admiration for ascetics, and if I were a widow, I would become an ascetic myself. This would be probably through necessity, but never mind that for now.

What made this Sunday different from most other Sundays was that I had arguments with three Polish men before my first drink of the day. It might surprise them that these were arguments because they may have regarded them as normal conversations. For an example of a normal conversation with a Polish man, see the following:

Marketing Director in Krakow: And this is Father Wiktor.

Seraphic: Miło mi poznać!

Father Wiktor: Bardzo mi miło. Why do you speak Polish?

Seraphic: I do not really speak Polish, but I am learning.

Father Wiktor: It is stupid to learn Polish. (He picks up Polish translation of my book.) Is this good book?

Seraphic: Why, yes, I think it is a very good book.

Father Wiktor: Ha ha ha! So you are praising yourself!

I know not all Polish men are like that, so don't get the Polish Anti-Defamation Society on my case. But meeting Father Wiktor, who strongly resembled Charles Bronson, reminded me of "Canada's Most Famous Divorce Lawyer" (c. 1975) and his opinion of the two factors most likely to break up a marriage:

A) that the wife be even a day older than her husband,*

B) that the Canadian wife be of Anglo-Saxon or Irish descent and the husband a Slav or Hungarian.

I suspect this lawyer is madly out of date, but (B) is still good for a giggle when considering what I perceive to be the contradictory conversational rules of Anglo-Saxon Canadian women (being nice to the point of hypocrisy and beyond) and Polish men (aggressive battle of wits). If a Canadian lady doesn't feel up to an aggressive battle of wits, it is best to send an email. However, if her email is not well-received, she might have to defend it in person, e.g. outside the door to church fifteen minutes before Mass.

It was outside the door to the church fifteen minutes before Mass when I had my first Polish argument of the day. A tall blond Pole loomed up, B.A. sped through the doors, and I was stuck with Young Poland's outrage that in my email explaining why I don't like to discuss Israel at parties, I had somehow impugned the honour of Eastern Europe. Takeaway line: "I...and my best friend...often complain...that Americans...think a lot of CRAP...about what Eastern Europeans think."

"Well," I said, conscious of the various quiet respectable people squeezing past us into the church, "I agree that there is tension in North America between North Americans and Eastern Europeans over perceptions of what Eastern Europeans think."

The tension that came to mind was a colleague's suggestion in the CR that the Poles collaborated with the Germans against Polish Jews (N.B. they didn't) and the avalanche of angry mail from Polonia** that followed.

Anyway, that embarrassing conversation ended when the tall blond disappeared into the church. But then a darkly smiling mid-sized brown-eyed youth appeared before me. This time the conversation was about an email concerning scholarship and university politics. Takeaway line: "You think I am so INNOCENT that I didn't KNOW that? Ha ha ha! ALWAYS you do this!"

Between Poles I had had a chance to mentally shift from instant Anglo-Saxon Canadian politeness to Anglo-Saxon British irony.

"If," I said, hoping that the various quiet respectable people squeezing past us into the church weren't wondering why Mrs McAmbrose was having an intense conversation about innocence with a man at least [many] years her junior on the doorstep, "you think grading isn't to some extent arbitrary, you are an innocent."

And so to Mass. After Mass, during the Cup of Tea of Peace, I perceived a middle-aged stranger with a cup of tea at a table. After a calculation of the social permutations (very important in the UK), I decided it was dignus and justus to say, "Hello! Is this your first time here at this Mass?"

"Hello," said the middle-aged stranger in a familiar heavy accent. "No, I have come since Wednesday."

I thought this strange, since there was no Trid Mass on Wednesday and I didn't see him on Thursday, but I continued brightly on.

"And when did you come to Edinburgh?"

"Wednesday."

"Ah! And where do you come from?"

"[England]," said the middle-aged stranger in his heavy Eastern European accent.

I hate it when people do that. I once asked an American girl where she was from, and she said "Cambridge." "Cambridge, Massachusetts?" I said brightly, and she said "No, Cambridge University."

"People from our parish come from many places," I said craftily. "We have many POLES...and a Croatian..."

"Ha ha ha," the stranger laughed with friendly scorn. "Where are these Poles? I have not seen any Poles."

"Well," I said, smiling in anticipation of Polish conversational victory, "there are TWO over there!"

He swung around to see, and I called one over. But then I made the mistake of going into my "Miło mi poznać" routine.

"You speak Polish!"

"I don't really. I am learning Polish."

"Why? It is stupid to learn Polish."

"For business reasons."

"Ah!"

This met his approval, until he realized that the business endeavour was actually in Poland.

"That is stupid, to do business in Poland! Ha ha ha!"

"Well," I said brightly. "I'll go away so that you two can speak Polish together."

*I am many days older than B.A.

**Polonia is all Poles living outside Poland.

The English and Others Deciding on Scottish Marriage

2011-12-08T21:58:00.002Z

The Scottish government is accepting statements outside of Scotland, possibly because those in Scotland who oppose the end of marriage as we understand it outnumber those who don't. In short, the traditional Christians (and others) of Scotland have been betrayed. Hmm. Will the SNP be getting my vote in four years? I strongly doubt it.

If you have five minutes, please tell the Scottish government what marriage is. Go here first and then fill in the form. You don't have to live in Scotland after all.

Seraphic in a Hurricane

2011-12-08T15:36:00.006Z

It's a good thing I scheduled my "Life in the UK" test yesterday, for life in the UK today means 90 mph winds and the police advising everyone in central belt Scotland to stay home.

I am very sad about this because I was looking forward to going to Mass for the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Occasionally, however, the wind screams loud enough to be interesting. It blew out the strips of insulation B.A. had wedged around the sitting room window, and that was interesting, too.

Having read a persuasive essay on anarchy today, I feel vaguely resentful of well-meaning police warnings, and think we should all go about our normal routines. If we keep indoors, the hurricane will have won. Meanwhile, I have already made an "In Canada" speech to poor old BA, my earthly protector, etc., who advised me to stay indoors.

"In Canada," I said, "if we stayed home when the weather is bad, we would never go outside."

"Yes, but snow is not as dangerous as 90 mph winds," said B.A. or something like that and read me the latest news on fallen trees, a toppled wind turbine, various road closures and bus delays.

The sky is an interesting mix of light and ghastly grey. The trees surrounding the Historical House are rocking vigorously back and forth. The problem with going outside is that branches might snap and fall on our heads if we walked to the bus stop, and then in Edinburgh there is the perennial problem of shingles and masonry being whipped from elderly buildings.

Normally I wouldn't mind at all a nice cozy evening at home, watching the telly as the wind buffeted the House, but I hate missing Mass. This is not because I am extraordinarily devout or holy (au contraire), but because the feast of the Immaculate Conception carries with it a party atmosphere, and I like to see people. The great drawback of working from home, as a married childless woman, is that I don't get to see people. Poor me. Sniff, sniff.

Well, must do the laundry. Goodness, the sky has gone purple.

Update: Thanks for all your concern. We went anyway. Gracious! B.A. scrambled in as I paid the cab driver. The sanctuary was all lit up, and the wind howled and hurled itself against the little wooden church as it if were after the priest. There was the grey-haired MC, two university-age altar servers, four of the Men's Schola, and five congregants, including me. We were 13 people and a guide dog. And it was a perfectly lovely Missa Cantata--organ music, singers, stately rose-sprinkled chasuble, clouds of incense, beautiful gestures.

Of the 13, at least 4 rode their bicycles. I thought this absolutely mad.

"How could you?" I gasped at a Scholar.

"Took the cycle paths."

"But what about the trees?"

"Wore our bicycle helmets."

That made sense. If they really do save you from the pavement, they probably save you from some falling branches, too.

"Cycle paths," said B.A. "More like psychopaths!"

Nostalgic for the Liturgies of the 80s

2011-12-07T21:59:00.003Z

Now that I have passed my "Life in the UK" test, I can get back to writing like I have nothing to lose. As a matter of fact, that's the secret to boxing, too. If you, for one second, clamber through the ropes thinking "But what if I get my nose broken?", you're in the wrong place.

Anyway, here is my latest article in the Catholic Register. My last one inspired a vigorous response, so have a look for that in the Letters section.

Much apologies for not driving the Inner Child back to "the bodis-riper" for quite awhile. We'll get there. I think the toll of writing 87,000 unpublishable, misspelled words has got to me, if not her.

Studying "Life in the UK"

2011-12-06T09:36:00.004Z

I have to correctly answer 18 of 24 questions about the UK very soon, or pay another £50 to try them again. The questions could be such things as "What was the cost of a TV license in 2006?", "What year did the government invite West Indians to settle in Britain?", and "What does GCSE stand for?", so I will not be blogging today.

Don't ask me how I feel about having to write this stupid test. My mother's grandparents and all their grandparents were all born in the UK, all Canadians were British before we were stripped of that in 1947, and I don't think being able to memorize random details in a textbook proves that I have become an integrated member of British society.

It's too bad the questions don't really reflect my daily life in Scotland. These are questions I would enjoy:

1. What is "the Cooncil"?

2. What is a football strip?

3. Why might you not want to wear a green and white shirt in Glasgow on 12 July?

4. What measures of beer can you order in a pub? (Choose two.)

5. The following is a poem by Robbie Burns. (Choose one.)

6. What is Culloden? (Choose two.)

7. Where in Scotland are people unlikely to know how to drive in snowy conditions?

8. True or False? Gaelic is a language native to Edinburgh.

9. True or False? There are more murders per capita in Scotland than in England.

10. Scottish people are most likely to complain about these things. (Choose two.)

Update: Hmm... So far "My husband takes care of that" is never an option in the practice tests. Possibly I'm not as integrated as I think I am. Did you know that 3/4s of women with school-aged children in the UK work for pay? Golly!

Update 2: Women over 18 are allowed in betting shops! What the...!? In three years I've never seen a wifie in a betting shop.

Baby By Baby

2011-12-03T12:24:00.003Z

Well! The Youngest Parishioner has just received a baby sister, so he is no longer the Youngest Parishioner but the Youngest Future Member of the Men's Schola!

I am very excited by this news. Welcome to the Newest Baby Trid!

The Youngest Future Member of the Men's Schola is a very sunny fellow, so hopefully his little wee nose will not be put out of joint by all the attention his sister will get. I think I will lavish him with extra Church Lady attention when next I see him, just in case. Men are so sensitive, especially before they are two.

Midnight's Children's American Children

2011-12-02T10:37:00.012Z

<-- Young people of today! Do not take flirtatious writers over-seriously! Just eat your dinner and laugh at their jokes!

Okay, it is a bit of a cheat to exploit Salman Rushdie's title because I have not read Midnight's Children. I have read The Satanic Verses, though, and the secret is just to force yourself through the first puzzling chapters. Then all will be made clearer. It is a brilliant book, I remember. It's a book for people who have such zeal for literature that they don't merely want to be thrilled and entertained for a few hours but to grapple.

There are readers like mountain climbers. They need a book that is a challenge. They enjoy saying to others, "You know, I actually finished Ulysses" or "I read Clarissa in uni, and I thought it would never end. But Lovelace, though, eh?" Rushdie is most definitely a writer for that kind of reader.

He is also sixty-four years old, so it is not remarkable that he would think twice about a romance with a New York socialite in her twenties. And I have not linked to this gossipy fluff perhaps unworthy of the Telegraph to giggle at Sir Salman, but to ponder the idea that it is somehow wrong to gently dissuade an admirer over Facebook. If it was where everybody could see it, okay, not good. But if it was a private message, why not? Faster than a letter, and less easy to forward to the universe than by ordinary email.

I think Sir Salman's Facebook message, which this twenty-something made public to the universe, is actually a model of dissuasion. And it seems that he really did wish to remain friends, as he invited her out to various dinners later. He must have genuinely liked the girl without wanting to leap into bed with her, which I think rather nice.

(British men in their 60s are perfectly capable of saying you look gorgeous and hot without wanting to do anything about it. At a party last weekend, one of them, a devout Catholic who knows my husband, stole the place beside me--as soon as the handsome young man who had been sitting there got up--and purred, "I do like your shoes, darling.")

Really, the Telegraph article is nasty to Rushdie, but it does inadvertently reveal the tremendous lack of self-worth of at least one twenty-something socialite. Rushdie was quite right to say that their "lives and worlds are very different" because I don't think an aging British man could understand how very brittle and worthless a "twenty-something" American woman, no matter how pretty, rich or successful, can feel. Since young American woman are told over and over again that their principal value is in their sexual attractiveness, particularly their sexual attractiveness to famous men if they can find them, it is no wonder that this young woman went into a terrible snit.

Young People Today are very pretty indeed, but so many seem to play by different rules than older people, or they simply don't know how to play the game of light flirtation. To play it you need the self-confidence that does not come from wielding Twitter as a weapon. It seems to me, from this article, that what this woman found unchivalrous is that Sir Salman did not have any unchivalrous intentions at all. This hurt her feelings. How sad.

My advice to Young People Today is to be flattered by the attention of successful older people, especially celebrated writers, and to accept their dinner invitations and compliments without taking them very seriously. For once this is equal opportunity advice, for I am an older writer myself (although not as successful or celebrated--or old--as Rushdie, of course), and I have a vested interest in handsome Young Men Today talking to me at parties, darling.

Happy Feast of Saint Andrew!

2011-11-30T20:36:00.003Z

Such a busy day! All I have time to say is "Happy Saint Andrew's Day!" Saint Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland. I marked it by going to a public meeting about traditional marriage, attending St. Andrew's Day Mass in the Ordinary Form (celebrated by Keith Cardinal O'Brien) at the Cathedral, visiting a pal who is soon to go into labour, and assisting at Mass in the Extraordinary Form in the chapel so beloved by local Trids.

Now I have to do my Polish homework. I would have forgotten all about it, but my Polish teacher turned up at the EF and I was, like, "Eeek! Jaka szkoda!"

A Bad Day and a Safe Place

2011-11-29T16:18:00.005Z

I am having a bad day.

I am having the sort of bad day where what I really want to do is go down to Bauhaus, sit at a bar, have a cappuccino with one packet of sugar and listen to Weezer over the speakers while pretending to be writing poetry in my notebook.

Unfortunately I cannot do this because Bauhaus closed down in 2003 or so and was in Hamilton, Ontario, which is difficult to get to from Edinburgh in November.

Bauhaus was the most awesome cafe in the history of southwestern Ontario. Everyone who walked in--except the owner who only cared about money and not the vibe--became that much cooler for it. It had amazing breakfasts and it served small pizzas named after faculty members at Bauhaus, the art school. There was a Kandinsky pizza and a Gropius pizza and possibly a Klee.

It had a copper Gaggia cappuccino maker and a lot of dusty bottles on shelves behind the bar. There a stage director named Michael who could be found at any hour at the bar with the collar of his coat turned up. I seem to remember him smoking, but this would all depend on what the indoor smoking legislation was in Ontario at the turn of the century.

Michael was very cool. He was twenty-something. Of course, we were all twenty-something or looked it anyway. At night the place was packed with philosophy students from McMaster University and art students and Goths and a carpenter-painter who hadn't gone to university but wished he had. There was a junior curator from the art gallery, and in later years I ran into her in Toronto; her eyes were stilled rimmed with kohl. There was a twenty-two year old with red hair and a sunburn and an embryonic problem with alcohol. We went on a date, which was unfortunately to watch a video of Titus Andronicus, so I freaked out. Word back at Bauhaus was that he decided I had baggage and was (age 29) "too old."

It was the first time I had ever been considered "too old" for anything, and it took my breath away, but never mind.

Bauhaus was totally cool. There was a big guy--6'3" or more--with long dark hair and a pirate beard and a clerical shirt and collar until I told him that it was against the law to impersonate a clergyman. So he mostly left off the collar. He would sit at a table and work on his H.P. Lovecraft inspired drawings, and they would have scared you to death. They scared me to death. He was a very nice guy, but from a Catholic perspective he was most definitely a weirdo.

Whenever I was sad or lonely or life was simply not going my way, I would put on some Goth togs and scoot down to Bauhaus. Winter or summer, the Kandinsky inspired painting on the shopfront looked beautiful, but I think it looked most beautiful when there were snowbanks outside. Hamilton was a very beautiful city in spots; I'm glad I was young there. I always had enough money for a coffee and a breakfast or a pizza, and there was always a seat at the bar or at a table for me. Although the place was packed with, or would fill up with, some alarming-looking artsy people, the atmosphere was entirely welcoming.

The music was always on the rough, alternative side, which was good. It helped me to zone out. After a really bad breakup, I wrote a lot of bad poetry there. Really bad. And the bad beginning of a bad novel. But that was okay. Writing is both therapeutic and an end in itself.

I had a therapist once--actually, I had a therapist for nearly five years before she told me about her lover who was a priest--who encouraged me to find a mental "safe spot" for when I was feeling badly. I seem to recall casting around in my mind for some tranquil place or other; the Piazzale Michaelangelo overlooking Florence was a candidate. But I see that the safest, most tranquil place of all was a place that then still existed outside myself: Bauhaus Cafe, Hamilton, Ontario.

I'm glad I spent so much time in it.

Bittersweet Symphony from Erik Koene on Vimeo.

And Happy Advent!

2011-11-28T19:34:00.002Z

I'm so complainy, I forgot to wish you a happy Advent!

Not Without a Fight

2011-11-26T08:16:00.016Z

Dear Scots readers, go here.

Marriage is a unique and permanent relationship between a woman and a man for the begetting and/or care of children, the prudential care of their own sexual appetites, the union of their families and the good of society. It contributes to the flourishing of the couple, their children, their families and society.

Marriage, so defined, predates the state. It predates the notion of sexual orientation. It predates the rise of romance. It predates history.

Nevertheless, the state wishes to redefine marriage in Scotland. Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman, but in the state's view marriage is currently a relationship between heterosexuals. It wishes to further redefine marriage as a relationship between either heterosexuals or homosexuals, not between a man and a woman. The criterion for marriage, in their view, is no longer the complementarity of the sexes but romantic passion.

This is a serious change to one of the most ancient pillars of civilisation. It also puts a sexual passion consistently experienced by no more than two percent of the general population on the same footing as the ancient and universal custom of men and women deciding, for reasons as social and familial as sexual, if not more so, to live together in mutual dependence for their good, the good of children, the good of their families, and the good of society.

It is also a lie. The philosophical crime of our age is to privilege the will over the intellect. Increasingly something is considered real not because it is real but because someone powerful or with powerful friends declares that it is real. As a woman, I think the most poignant example of this is the man who undergoes surgical mutilation and declares that he is a woman. He is assisted in his fantasy by his doctors, the state who issues him a new birth certificate, and whichever family members and friends carefully retrain themselves to call him "she." People who are reluctant to go along with his fantasy, including women who are startled to find him in our private woman-only domains, are dubbed bigots. Naturally, we do not like being called bigots.

I don't like being called a bigot. I don't like being called a papist, either, but that is what I would have been called for the past four hundred and fifty years of Scottish history. Catholics have been a bit* out of step with Scottish history for a very, very long time. Catholics in Scotland were fiercely discriminated against in the workplace until the 1980s, when the control of the workplace finally passed out of the hands of the Scottish establishment to the multinationals.** Anti-Catholic disdain is no longer as big a problem as it was, but it will roar right back if this halcyon period crashes to a close. My guess is that it is the redefinition of marriage that will close it.

Scotland is a land that celebrates its defeats and martyrdoms. I find that rather papist of my mother's ancestral land. At dinner parties, my pals discuss the '45 and its horrific end in '46 ad nauseum. The men sing old Jacobite anthems; one of the women weeps. A Polish guest once asked the significance of Culloden. We all fell silent for a moment, to carefully think how best to get across the memory that was the bloodbath of Culloden.

It may be that the campaign to defend marriage in Scotland will be a bloodbath, metaphorically speaking. It failed in Canada, and it has failed in various American states. And the results are coming in. The redefinition of marriage in my native Ontario has led to direct attacks on the Catholicity of Catholic schools and on parents' rights over the sexual education (or re-education) of their children. The redefinition has led to lawsuits against Christians (for some reason, only Christians) and Christian institutions for trying not to have anything to do with it. It has led to the end of various Catholic adoption agencies.

So as far as I am concerned, whether Catholics and other Christians who prefer to tell the truth about marriage lose this fight or not, we must fight it. If we do not we will be complicit in our own marginalisation; like the Jacobites of old, we will be shoved to the margins of society and robbed of a political voice. We will be dubbed cranks, bigots and unsuitable parents. The only way not to go like sheep to this ideological slaughter is to say something to the Scottish government NOW.

There is a chance, a slim chance, perhaps, but a chance all the same that if we in Scotland all speak up now-- if all Catholics and other traditional Christians living in Scotland use the democratic process to defend the truth of what marriage is--we and Scotland's children will not suffer later.

Write as though it all depended on you, and pray as if it all depended on God. Saint John Ogilvie, pray for us.

*They played a very important role in the labour movement, that's for darn sure, and of course they went to battle like everybody else.

** Patrick Reilly, "Kicking with the Left Foot: Being Catholic in Scotland" in Scotland's Shame? Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland ed. T. M. Devine (2000)

* * *

Update: It occurs to me that this ties in with my someone inchoate article of yesterday. "Oh well, I'll just emigrate" does not strike me as a responsible or caring attitude.

Is There Any "Here" There?

2011-11-25T13:31:00.015Z

I risk the ire of my beloved husband and all right-thinking people by linking to the Daily Mail, which is a rag, but I found this story just so bewildering.

It's not the family complications and the who-was-supposed-to-marry-who that gives me a headache but the profusion of cities, states, countries and nationalities on display. The murdered bride was from New York, her "Scottish" husband was "Glasgow-based" and her father from Pakistan but living in New Jersey. There was one wedding in Glasgow and then a second ceremony in Manchester. Then there was a family wedding of someone else in Pakistan, which groom, bride and father attended. The groom and bride were murdered, and the bride's father zipped back to New Jersey.

The murdered groom's father, who lives in Pakistan, said that his (Scottish?) son has lived in Glasgow "with honour" for six years. (What made him Scottish exactly? If he was born here, where? There is no such thing as Scottish citizenship yet; foreign students and workers may be residents of Scotland, but few call them "Scottish".) Another relative says the murdered groom had successfully applied for a visa to live with his (American?) wife in New York.

Now murder is always horrible, and the carefully planned murder of family members is beyond horrible. When murder has something to do with a child marrying this man (or woman) instead of this other man (or woman), I simply get confused. It is particularly confusing when we are taking about New York, New Jersey, Manchester and Glasgow. In those cities, most people think marriage is about two people who love each other choosing to marry and their parents being happy for them. What people in (or from) Gujrat have to think about it is quite besides the point.

And this makes me think quite hard about diaspora and its relationship to place. If you belong to a diaspora, does it matter at all to you where we live? Are we immigrants, hoping to become part of the new country, or settlers, hoping to continue unchanged? Does the physical environment in which we live have anything to do anymore with how we live?

It also makes me wonder why a murder victim who may have been born elsewhere and lived in Scotland for only six years and whose father lives in Gujrat is dubbed "Scottish." I have two Scottish surnames, my mother's grandparents were Scots, I have lived in Scotland for almost three years, and I know perfectly well I am not Scottish. I came here at the age of 37; Canada made me.

If a newspaper dubbed Canadian expat me a Scot, it would rather trivialize the whole notion of nationality. My husband, born and raised in Dundee by Scots born and raised, is Scottish. But he is a citizen of the United Kingdom and therefore also British--as, I assume, was the murdered "Glasgow-based" (but Glasgow-leaving) groom.

I am in the process of applying for permanent leave to remain in the United Kingdom. It is complicated, boring and expensive. But I am doing it because I must do so to continue living with my Scottish husband and our life is here in Edinburgh. By here I mean geographically here.

My husband cannot leave his country; his heart would break. Leaving just Edinburgh would be a wrench for both of us. We have become Edinburgh people; our butcher is from Edinburgh, our fishmonger is from Edinburgh; our grocery shop of choice is the Scottish Co-operative. We walk Edinburgh's streets, we take Edinburgh buses, we admire Edinburgh's buildings, we study Edinburgh's history, and we stop outside the houses once lived in by my Edinburgh ancestors. I socialize with no other Canadians here; I rarely buy Canadian groceries or follow Canadian recipes or celebrate a uniquely Canadian holiday. My social life takes place in Edinburgh, an Edinburgh of Scots, English, foreign students and expat wives of Scots.

Catholics fuss a lot about "cafeteria Catholicism", but what about "cafeteria neighbourhood"? What happens to a community in which up to half the community cares more for the values and customs of places far away than the neighbourhood in which they all live? Is there not a danger that we will become completely alienated from our neighbours and, indeed, the very ground on which we stand?

My First Visit to the Extraordinary Form

2011-11-24T11:50:00.016Z

A reader has asked about the first time I went to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. This makes me laugh heartily because when I first went to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, a dozen people were incredibly nice to me, I was invited to Sunday dinner in a stunning flat and the one-and-only parish bachelor in his mid-thirties asked me to marry him ten or so days later.

This is rather off the scale for "best case first EF Mass scenario."

I went to my first (post-motu proprio) Extraordinary Form Mass with B.A. when I was on holiday in Scotland. B.A. was a reader of my blog and a friend of friends. He had invited me to stay with him whenever I liked, and I decided to come to Scotland and see him be received into the Roman Catholic Church. He had been baptized by the Scottish Episcopalian Church, and he was a fervent member of the High Church, Catholic wing of the Anglican Communion until he realized that Anglicanism was wrong and Roman Catholicism was right, and that he should start going to Catholic church for Mass.

This made him a little sad because he connected orthodox religious faith with beautiful and reverent worship, which was on tap in the Angl0-Catholic churches of his youth and largely missing at his university Catholic chaplaincy. When you have been trained to believe that mediaeval and early modern music is the authentic sound of human longing for the Triune God, it is hard to believe faux-Yiddish folk songs written by goyim, for example, are a decent substitute.

However, B.A. eventually fell in with the happy band who comprise the local Extraordinary Form community. As a former Piskie choir boy, B.A. was considered a catch and was soon ensconced in the back choir pews to add his baritone to the reigning tenor and bass. He felt no stranger to the Extraordinary Form as it looked so much like the services in the Angl0-Catholic churches of his youth. He and Gregorian Chant were old friends.

As B.A. was a cheerful, funny, amiable young man with a good singing voice and a talent for puns, various pillars of the parish came to like him very much. His unfortunate tendency to get involved with the Wrong Girl only made him more of an object of sympathetic interest.

Then I turned up: female, feminine, Single, Catholic, amiable, quiet (jet-lagged). Because I knew no-one but B.A. (who had met me at the bus station the night before), I sat in the back choir pews beside him. In the car park afterward, a swarm of ravenously curious, romance-sniffing Trids surrounded us. They seemed to have decided we should marry, and we did.

Here is what I wrote about that first Mass for the Toronto Catholic Register.* I see that I tied a scarf over my head when I got there. As a matter of fact, only about a half of the women who go to the Extraordinary Form in these parts wear mantillas or hats during Sunday Mass. The little girls generally do not. It is not a big deal. Wearing modest clothing is a big deal. I don't know if the mini-skirted or shorted visitors (female or male) can actually feel the eyes on the backs of their naked or stockinged legs, but everyone behind them has a good look and rolls their eyes, silently or with a what-a-world sigh.

I see from my diary that I had the impression that there were many young people ("girls often pretty, & men v. handsome"). Rather more recently, I wrote in my diary of a man visiting from Ireland, who seemed drunk, who complained that we were "all old." As a matter of fact, about half of those who regularly attend the local EF are under the age of 40. (I counted.)

When I write about my "Trid parish" (we aren't really a parish), I write rather like a young wife still in the first flush of love for her husband. But after three years, I can see that we aren't practically perfect in every way.

First, there has been at least one incident of pew-jealousy, in which established Trids kicked an unfamiliar young woman--who happens to be quite important to others in the parish--out of "their" pew. She was mortified, and I don't think she's been to our Mass since. This is a terrible shame. I understand and feel pew-jealousy myself, since I have grown inordinately fond of my spot in the (ahem) Men's Schola, but it is a vice that one must conquer in oneself.

Second (and much less seriously), not everybody is on the same page about babies and children. There are various camps: the babies should be right up front and centre, no matter how noisy, camp; the babies are fine at the back of the church camp; and the don't-bring-the-babies camp.

I am sympathetic to all camps, although I personally lean towards the babies-at-the-back camp. The elderly people of the community have suffered all kinds of inconveniences and insults in the past forty-five years for their obstinate refusal to give up on the Traditional Latin Mass. In some cases, they no longer hear as well as they did.

Also, human beings naturally feel anxious when babies start screaming: that's why babies scream. They want attention to their needs, and they will scream until those needs are met. Now it is important that their parents hear those screams, but it is rather jarring for the rest of us. We have needs, too, and in church it is to worship God and listen to Him speaking through the Mass. If the babies or children make that impossible, out they should go until they calm down.

At the same time, of course, we are happy that parents of young children want to come to the Extraordinary Form although--I'll just add this--we are simply not as "congregation-centred" as is the Novus Ordo. We are not all about making people "feel welcome at Mass"; we save the welcome for afterwards: in the car park, in the parish hall, around the tea table. Mass is between each attentive soul and God; the tea party afterwards is by the people for the people.

As it isn't really my business, I don't know if various deals are done between the priest and the parents of very noisy children. No clue. But I do know that the most of the parents and their children turn up afterwards in the parish hall, where they are given tea and cookies and conversation. The tiny babies are cooed over, and the bigger children are introduced. The seeing eye dog bumps into them, tail wagging furiously.

The parish is not so small and homogenous that we all fit in together and have no favourites among each other. There are various groupings of friends--based, I think, primarily on age or state-in-life, but--thank God for His Divine Mercy--there are no factions chez nous.

By the way, there are various laudable method of participating in the Mass. I follow the Low Mass word for word in my Latin-English missal. The Missa Cantata of Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation is more complicated: sometimes I listen to the Schola and sometimes I follow with the Missals.

New Edition of "A Bitter Trial"

2011-11-23T21:22:00.004Z

I have loved Evelyn Waugh (RIP) since I first read Brideshead Revisited. He was a very cranky man prone to depression and rude remarks, but one thing that kept him going was his Catholic faith. He loved the Mass. He really loved the Mass. The tabernacle, the sanctuary lamp and the Mass meant so much, so much to Waugh.

It can be very bewildering for a young person to read novels and pious works about the Mass because the Mass Catholic writers seem always to be writing about don't sound very much like the Mass most of us go to on Sundays. Indeed, it was a very, very long time before I realized the Mass the pre-1970 writers were talking about was rather more like the High Church Anglican services at Toronto's "Smoky Tom's" (St. Thomas) and "St. Mary Mags" (St. Mary Magdalene). And it is clear to me only now why I avoided Anglican churches as much as possible and found their rituals such a dangerous temptation.

Waugh and every other Roman Catholic writing about the Mass before 1962 were usually writing about the Mass codified by the Council of Trent. It was not known as the Tridentine Mass until there was a New Mass or, rather, the New Order of Mass. There were, of course, other Rites widely celebrated in the Latin Church before the Second Vatican Council--the Dominican Rite, the Ambrosian Rite and, until the Reformation, England's Sarum Rite. These are rather harder to find nowadays and, in fact, the Dominican and Ambrosian Rites have themselves been changed.

Graham Greene did live to write about the Novus Ordo in his fiction--in his Monsignor Quixote it plays second fiddle to the Usus Antiquor as the hero, in an accident-induced haze, celebrates the Form he knew best. Evelyn Waugh did not live to write about it in his fiction; instead it--or the experimental early versions of it--threw him into the spiral of depression and drug-taking that resulted in his early death.

The evidence for this startling statement can be found in the new edition of Alcuin Reid's A Bitter Trial. You can find what I say about the volume here in the Catholic Register. A Bitter Trial is absolutely fascinating and a must-read for those who have heard nothing about the "Old Mass" except that it was "boring" and "hard to understand."

The most poignant thing for me in the book was Waugh's acceptance that the "Old Mass" had been replaced and that most people professed to love the "new one"; in the end he begged merely that the ancient form not be wiped from the face of the earth.

It wasn't. I assist at it (to use the old expression) myself almost every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation. Perhaps I should remember to pray more often at it for Evelyn Waugh. He was no saint, poor man, but how much enjoyment he has given to so many people and still gives, decades after his death, to people who do not at all remember what one Canadian priest I knew called "the bad old days."

Last Bastion: Is St. Michael's Choir School's Repertoire Wreckovated?

2011-11-23T00:11:00.013Z

Vox Cantoris is freaking out, and when I read the bafflegab he linked to, I started to freak out myself. Go to the second page, where there is much completely ignorant talk about music. Note the cherry-picking of Sacrosanctum Concilium and the absence of the fact that Gregorian Chant is supposed to have pride of place in the liturgy.

Breathe, Seraphic. Breathe.

My family has a connection with the Choir School and ....

I went to St. Michael's Cathedral all through high school and ....

At dances at the Choir School in the Eighties....

Listen, I'm not sure I can write about this without going out of my mind. Okay, I will try breathing exercises again. Whew.

Despite the general destruction of Catholic liturgical traditions, especially musical, in the 1970s and 1980s, Toronto's Cathedral continued to be served by its Cathedral Choir School. St. Michael's Choir School trained boys and young men to sing the traditional, the classical, liturgical music of the Church. No matter what was going on at the other churches on Sunday morning, within the sanctuary of the Cathedral, Catholics were free to hear the greatest liturgical music of our ancestors. Byrd. Victoria. Gregory the Great (attributed). Mozart. Anybody who absolutely needed guitars to keep it real could go to the Cathedral's Last Chance Mass at 9 PM. There they would find a nice bearded fellow with a pleasant voice and a gee-tar. He had recorded stuff and was well known by those who cared to know about those sort of knowables.

Anyone connected with the Choir School knows the names of those musicians, no longer living, who kept the Choir School going and the music fantastic for decades: Monsignor Ronan, Kathleen Mann, Monsignor Armstrong. These people were giants. Tin-eared clerics did not mess with them.

Meanwhile, the school turned out Catholic men who had great musical training. Of the more famous of my brothers' generation, there's the opera singer Michael Colvin and the conductor/composer Janko Kastelic for a start. There's a whole bunch of other famous guys, but I mention these ones because I actually knew them when they were in high school and we Abbey girls showed up to Choir School dances.

Ah, Choir School dances. I think I'm going to cry for my lost youth, just remembering them. Breathe, Seraphic.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, St. Michael's Cathedral, thanks to its Choir School, preserved the authentic, timeless musical heritage of the Roman Catholic faith in a time when every other church was infested with rock bands, folk bands, mariachi bands, nationalist bands, bongo drums and the superannuated coloratura cockatoo that screeched in my home parish for something like twenty years.

Now Vox thinks that the current rector of the Cathedral has sacked the heritage and is going to make everyone sing the same happy-clappy as everywhere else in the name of diversity. Boy, I hope he's wrong. And if anyone currently connected to the Choir School would like to be interviewed by little me, please send me an email. Gold and silver have I not, but what I do have, I'll give you. I owe Monsignor Armstrong that much. seraphicsingles@yahoo.com.

A Not So Amazing Love Story

2011-11-22T14:51:00.012Z

Update (Nov 23): In the light of the recent upholding of Canada's ban on polygamy, it is worth remarking that polygamy did not work out so well for the "first wife" drowned in the Rideau Canal allegedly by her husband and his other wife.

***

I have been following Christie Blatchford's reports on the murder of four Muslim women in Ontario, allegedly by three members of their Afghan family. Until today I had no sympathy for anyone except the murdered women: the "aunt" (childless first wife) and the three adolescent daughters/sisters. The father, mother and brother are now on trial, and excuse me if I do not pity them at all. The Crown states that they knew exactly what they were doing, and that the father even researched beforehand how to manage his business if he ended up in jail. There is a tape of the mother regretting that they had to kill the youngest girl, but she didn't seem that bothered by the deaths of her sister-wife and her other murdered daughters.

Today, however, I suddenly found someone else to feel sorry for, and it is the eldest girl's, Zainab's, Pakistani-Canadian boyfriend. Blatch says there is some debate about what to call him, since his name is under a publication ban (why?) and his one-day marriage to Zainab was annulled.

Zainab's emails to this young man were revealed, and you can get the jist in Blatchford's column here. They made me realize just how young Zainab was, and just how vulnerable the poor young man who sent her that Valentine.

Zainab is dead, murdered--probably by her own parents and brother--so I think de mortuis nihil nisi bonum applies for once. But I will say that I am so glad neither of my brothers got involved with a girl from a family so screwed up. The young man could have been killed, and he now has to live with whatever feelings stem from having been the excuse to kill a woman.

It wasn't even a case of "It was only a kiss/How did it end up like this?" The young man sent Zainab a Valentine and a note that "I kind of like her and stuff." So high school. So high school, and why not? They were in high school. He sent a Valentine and a mash note, and poor Zainab--whose motives we will never know--accepted his courtship, even though she knew her family would go mental. Could she really have known how mental?

"Be aware [sic] of my bro" she emailed at once. Poor child. All those secret meetings and semi-literate emails. (How much was teen-speak and how much came from her truncated education?) I would wonder how much a teenage girl's love of drama had been involved if she hadn't been found dead with her sisters and aunt in the Rideau Canal. Can you imagine? Drowning, hearing the screams of the women you love best drowning around you? I wouldn't wish it on anyone, not even Zainab's parents.

And now the survivor, this young man. The young man was once found by the brother; he was hiding in the garage. Hamed walked right in, found the boy at once, shook his hand (huh?), and sent him on his way. He had known exactly where he was. Why?

The boy cared enough about Zainab to marry her, too. Why did his family not show up to the restaurant the next day? Why did Zainab annul the marriage?

No doubt these questions are pointless. It's a story about vulnerable teenagers. When I was a teenager, I had no idea how young I was. None. Zip. Nada. We got Romeo and Juliet in Grade 10, and so at sixteen we read Lady Capulet's assertion that girls younger than Juliet (almost 14) were "happy mothers made." Maybe not the best message to give 16 year old girls. Juliet herself was quite the adult; heck, she sounded like Shakespeare and was determined to let nothing-not even death-keep her from her one-day husband. So it was quite a shock to me to read Zainab's emails, particularly her "farewell" to her one-day husband.

Nobody should be murdered for anything, but it is so deeply, deeply sad to read of a girl being murdered by her parents for puppy love.

Update: Rosie Di Manno answered some of my questions. Now I think I'm going to cry. The mother had a "fainting fit", and the soon-to-be-murdered daughter asked her husband to divorce her to make her mother feel better.

Thank God for the Mass and my Friends

2011-11-20T17:38:00.005Z

Surprise! A Sunday post. I have had enough strength to drag myself from sick bay (aka the former linen cupboard with a bed in it) to the sitting-room, hoping for bloggy solace. I have a bad cold, and this morning I had a pitched battle with B.A. over whether I was well or not to go to Mass (he said not, convert) which ended after I lost all energy and retreated sulkily back to bed.

"My mother would never let me stay home from Mass just for a cold," I snarled.

"I'm not your mother," said B.A.

He's not my mother. I'm not my mother either because my mother doesn't have a drop of Irish blood in her body, and I think it is my Irish blood that worries so much about missing Mass for a reason less dire than imminent death. I was really, really unhappy about not being able to get to Mass, and the unhappiness cheered me up, because if I were actually unhappy to not be going to Mass, I was obviously not slacking. Some people might call this Jansenism; I call it being an Irish Catholic from Toronto.

The other mental test is whether I would suddenly find myself well enough to go to Sunday Lunch. Sunday Lunch is the other great Sunday event. I imagined myself at Sunday Lunch, seated by the hearth, wrapped in many layers. And then I imagined myself literally suffocating on the pipe smoke and passing out. So I knew I wouldn't find myself well enough to go to Sunday Lunch.

Finally, I'm not well enough to get to the last chance Novus Ordo at the Cathedral. I am less unhappy about that, to be honest, which is no doubt why so many prelates are so nervous about Catholics developing an addiction to the Extraordinary Form. But I have on occasion dragged myself to the last chance Novus Ordo, huddled in my coat, and I am really not well enough for such November evening shenanigans. So here I sit, full of orange pulp.

Having missed the liturgy for the Final Sunday after Pentecost, its subsequent Cup of Tea of Peace and Gin and Tonic of Concord, and currently missing the Sunday Lunch of Excess, I am now struck that I am lucky to have them at all, most of the Sundays of the year. It is sad to be sick on Sunday, but this almost never happens. And thus I should count my blessing and be grateful that I go to such a beautiful Mass with such lovely people so often. And I am also grateful that there is a Cup of Tea of Peace and a Gin and Tonic of Concord, and that I am invited to Sunday Lunch so frequently.

B.A. called me after Mass, and apparently the homily was about being the kind of Catholic who attracts other people to the Faith. This is a good homily for Trids because from various emails and comments I get, it turns out that not all Trids are fun people who love to party. Some Trids are crotchety and chase new people out of their pews and make women feel bad about wearing trousers and goodness knows what else. I can understand pew-jealousy, having myself stared with googly eyes at a Knight of Malta who stole my seat in the Schola, but not chasing new people away. Naughty, naughty, naughty.

So I feel superly lucky that not only do I get to go to Mass at all when I am well, I get to go to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. Not only that, I get to go with cheerful people who like to meet new people and give them tea and biscuits. And then I usually wander off with some of them for a stiff drink and then lunch.

Thus, I cannot really complain about having a really bad cold. And B.A. will eventually come home and report the gossip. Gossip, incidentally, comes from the words "God" and "siblings", so really gossip is really just instructive and edifying meditations on one's God-siblings.

It is after six, so my God-siblings must be well into the port by now. Heigh-ho. Maybe I should have some whiskey.

Demi, Noooo!

2011-11-17T23:41:00.003Z

Can't BELIEVE she's divorcing him.

Come on, Demi. You can't ditch the sixteen-year younger hottie.

You being married to Ashton has long made me feel better about being over 30. And now you're kicking him out. Och. Is that why he quit Twitter?

Och. So sad.

I rarely feel one way or the other about celebrity marriages, but this one makes me sigh a bit. Although actually it is quite stupid to think a woman is akin to Wonder Woman just because she married a man sixteen years her junior. And was in G.I. Jane back in my boxing days, and so she was my model for musculature. I literally had her photo up on the wall.

I should go to bed now.

Don't Wear It Out

2011-11-16T11:13:00.003Z

I see an article from a new guest columnist in the CR this week, and as we share the same Christian name, I anticipate confusion.

Editors love letters, and so they love columnists who provoke letters. Most people, however, do not go to the effort of writing a letter unless they are good and mad. So most of the mail inspired by little me is written by people mad at me. And then, if those letters are provocative enough, someone who thinks as I do will get mad and write a letter in my defense. That's how it works.

However, I suspect the dynamic is slightly different for women columnists than for men columnists. First of all, there are not as many women columnists as there are men columnists. I was confused and then livid when I was handed one letter to the CR that deplored me, and it concerned something I hadn't written. It had been written by another woman, and as I totally disagreed with what that woman had written, I was very much annoyed. And the only grounds for confusion, as far as I could see, was that she was a woman and I was a woman. The letter-writer, by the way, was a woman herself.

Second of all, it drives me up the wall when letter-writers refer to me by my first name. If I express a robust opinion, like a man, I expect to be referred to be my surname, like a man. I don't object to what anyone writes (on the right side of the libel laws) about Maiden Name, or Maiden Name:Married Name, or Married Name. But I do object to being chastised as Christian Name, as if I were a badly behaved child.

Women writers know that somehow the rules are different for us, and so we mull over over our bylines. There's a reason J.K. Rowling is J.K. Rowling and not Joanne Rowling. There's a reason Baroness James is P.D. James in print. There's a reason very few of us remember what Georges Sand's real name was. Men's names sell better. Sad but usually true.

The rules are different in Catholic publishing, too. If you drop your maiden name and take your husband's name, it's a political act. If you keep your maiden name, it's a political act. If you keep your maiden name and add your husband's name, someone is sure to come along and ask why you didn't drop your maiden name. (Clever answer: "Because I love my dad, too.")

I admit that I have made it more difficult for others by having two surnames. I wrote Seraphic Singles under one, and now I give interviews under both. Thus, potential customers are likely to ask for the book under the wrong surname. And there is the filing problem: do I go under C or M?

As a matter of fact, I go under C, even though I did not hyphenate the names. It would have looked untidy. So gruff letter writers are under the obligation of castigating me as four syllables, not two or--much worse--the Christian three.

BBC Alba

2011-11-15T21:46:00.003Z

Ah. If I knew I'd spend weeknights watching the hammer throw on BBC Alba, I would have paid WAY more attention in first year Gaelic class.

Fortunately, the word "anois," one of the few words that actually stuck, is in almost every sentence.

I was in university for approximately one hundred years. Why am I watching the hammer throw on BBC Alba?

Oh wait a minute. I'm married. That's it. I wonder what marriage was like before TV.

Yay, Craig Sinclair. Beat the Aussie!

Seeing Tosca

2011-11-15T14:44:00.005Z

Yesterday I went down Lothian Road to the Odeon cinema to see the Royal Opera's recent Covent Garden staging of "Tosca." It was much better than seeing opera on telly, and in some ways it was even superior to seeing it live, for I could see the action close up and the acting was phenomenal.

The setting is Rome in 1800, just as Napoleon was "liberating" the Papal States. In 1800, liberal Europeans were still all very excited about Napoleon. The British Empire was rather less impressed, for obvious reasons, and today traditional Catholics are horrified by what Napoleon and his lot did to the Church. Even Henry IX of England (I of Scotland), aka Henry Stuart, Cardinal of York, who had an unusually successful and happy life for a Stuart, had to run for it.

But back in 1800, various Italian Catholics were very down on their oppressive societies and very hopeful about Napoleon, and so in "Tosca" the pro-Napoleon people are the good guys, and the Papal States' number one enforcer, Scarpia, is the bad guy.

The whole relationship between Italian Catholics, the Pope and the Papal States is very confusing, and as Garibaldi was explained to me when I was 17 in Italian, I never got the hang of it. At any rate, the first act of Tosca is also confusing, from a trad Catholic point of view, because all the principals are devout but dodgy.

First of all, there is the well-born painter Mario (played in the recent performance by Jonas Kaufmann). Mario is painting the interior of S. Andrea della Valle. He has just done a painting of the Magdalena, based on his girlfriend but also on a noblewoman he spotted at prayers. He is all for Napoleon and revolution.

Second, there is Floria Tosca, his jealous lover, who bursts in with flowers for the statue of Our Lady, but sings quite a lot about what a sexy time they are going to have back at Mario's that night. She couldn't care less for politics. Her life is all about love and art and being nice to people and decking altars with flowers and statues of Our Lady with jewels, as she later points out. Liturgically she's spot on, but nobody's mentioned marriage here.

Third, there is the Chief of Police, Scarpia, who is depicted as a complete monster, although he might argue that catching revolutionaries is sort of his job. He's actually very clever at it. It's not until Act Two that you discover that he's got a nasty sexual kink. Instead of seducing women by pretty words, etc, he'd rather just coerce them and the more they hate him, the better he likes them. Okay, that's just gross.

However, to go back to Act One, the Trad Mass community of S. Andrea della Valle sing a "Te Deum" to celebrate a (supposed) victory over Napoleon, and Scarpia bellows along with them. He chastises himself for being momentarily distracted from it. "Tosca makes me forget God" he says, as if Tosca were a female altar server or wearing tight trousers during Mass.

Tosca, who is devout, is a normal sexual sinner--not that Puccini ever ever says that--and Scarpia, who is devout, is a deviant sexual sinner. In the end it comes down to Tosca thinks it is okay to have sex with the man she wants, and Scarpia thinks it is okay to have sex with the woman he wants (no matter what she thinks about it). They are both highly sexed people who are good at their jobs. No wonder the person Tosca addresses in the end is not her lover (who, incidentally, might pale beside her in comparison were he not played by someone as sexy as Jonas Kaufmann) but her enemy and equal.

No doubt this is all opera heresy. But I amused myself on the way home by composing a letter by a Catholic publisher to Signor Puccini about his opera.

Dear Signor Puccini,

Thank you very much for sending us your Tosca. Unfortunately it does not meet our publishing criteria.

This was a very hard decision to make. Your plot was gripping, your characters believable and the music utterly sublime. However, we could not help but notice that Tosca is in a premarital sexual relationship with her boyfriend. Also, the Chief of Police is depicted as a traditional Catholic AND as a torturer and sexual deviant. This contradiction in terms would upset our readership. The sympathy for attacks on the temporal authority of the Papal States is also problematic, as are the suicides of sympathetic characters.

Tosca is to be commended for helping those in need and decking altars with flowers and providing jewels to adorn statues of the Madonna. However, she is scarcely a good model for the young Catholic women of today.

We wish you all the best in the future,

Catholic O'Catholic

Catholic Publishers

South Bend, Indiana

Life is very messy, and so is art. And no doubt if you catch yourself sympathizing with Scarpia, there is something seriously wrong with you. You are supposed to be on Tosca's side, and assume that when she and Scarpia meet before the Throne of Judgement, nice Tosca will get a halo and nasty Scarpia will go to hell.

But most of all you are supposed to cry when Tosca sings "Vissi d'arte." So just ignore me and find it on youtube.

Shea on the Penn State Abuse Case

2011-11-14T10:43:00.005Z

What Mark Shea said.

I've never been called upon to phone the police about a pal. I've had practice calling the police, however. I once saw someone passed out at the wheel of their car in a parking lot, so I called the police.

My date was annoyed; what if the poor person were drunk and therefore got arrested? My attitude was that if the poor person woke up, still drunk, and drove away, he might kill somebody.

I also called the police on occasion when I've heard a woman screaming on the street late at night. I think it is a sin not to do something, even just yell "Are you okay?" out the window, when you hear a woman scream in fright.

And then I called the police when a friend's ex-boyfriend, whom I couldn't stand, kept pestering me over my blog and through email. Harassment is harassment, and when I say "Leave me alone or I'll call the cops", I mean it.

It's called being rooted in reality. And it's hard to be rooted in reality. Reality bites. But you have to stay rooted in reality, so that one day when you called to do something that is fully just but personally unpleasant, and not doing it would be a serious wrong, you can do it.

And Then Hell Froze Over

2011-11-13T23:00:00.004Z

SCENE: a highly decorated Scottish dining-room overlooking the Firth of Forth, late one dark November Sunday afternoon. Lunch has been served.

Polish Guest: Would someone pass the bread? This is very good bread.

Dead silence. All eyes dart from Polish Guest to bread bowl. Seraphic puts down spoon.

Seraphic: Did anyone record that?

Polish Guest (smiles in mysterious Slavic fashion): Would someone pass the butter? This is very good butter.

Lest We Forget in 2011

2011-11-11T08:13:00.003Z

11/11/11.

Philosophy Before Breakfast

2011-11-10T09:45:00.003Z

Marital harmony is when you wake up your husband in the morning to ask what he thinks is the extent of the legitimate authority of the state and, instead of braining you with a pillow, he breaks into fluent philosophy.

Thank you, B.A.!

Today's topic is if vigilantism is ever justified and, if so, by what? Feel free to cite Bonhoeffer and the July 20 Plot, even if just to prove that wasn't vigilantism.

The flip side is the legitimate authority of the state to assassinate enemies of that state without a trial. You can talk about that, too, if you feel like it. Go for it.

Update: I see that somewhere I have been accused of priest-bashing. Awesome. So now I have been accused of both clericalism AND anti-clericalism!

Friends of Different Ages

2011-11-09T17:18:00.003Z

I'm sooo tired, my dears. Go to the Catholic Register and read my latest for them. It's about having friends of different ages, particularly when you are Single.

I didn't get into the challenges inherent in having friends of different ages. Youth and age effect people in different ways, and so if you are very young, you might wonder why older people repeat themselves so often, and if you are very old, you might wonder why the young are so volatile.

How you deal with the frequent repetition of stories and the volatility is up to you. I mentioned the very Canadian concept of tolerance to a Polish woman the other day, and she said tolerance was not the same thing as love and to say "I tolerate you" is the equivalent of saying "I hate you."

I don't agree with this, but I see what she means.

So maybe the way to deal is to tell the older friend that they have told you that story five times already and you want a new one, and to tell the younger friend that you like them very much but you find their drama exhausting.

I throw this out there because my own inclinations would be to listen to the story for the sixth time without complaining and to let the youthful drama explode around me. I hate confrontation, even confrontation in love. But the one thing I am learning along with Polish lessons is that some people prefer bluntness, and that sometimes bluntness has its time and place.

This is such an unCanadian admission to make that I think I will pass out now.

Bonfire Night

2011-11-05T19:12:00.003Z

Yay! Yay! Bonfire Night! Fireworks have been going off around the Historical House for a hour or more.

I love Bonfire Night. In England it is called Guy Fawkes Day, and it has something to do with some supposed Catholic plot to burn down the House of Parliament. Actually, it was a Whig plot to make the Catholics look bad or something. At least that's what I heard. Google it. If it's not on my "Life in the UK" exam, I don't care.

The first year I was here, B.A. and I went down to the beach to see the bonfires. To our amazement, some kids had put a piano on the fire. To this day I am not sure whether the appropriate response is giggles or gasps of horror. On the one hand--yay enduring British traditions. On the other--a piano?

Szczęść Boże Pani Dorothy...

2011-11-03T21:45:00.004Z

Hmm. Krakow calling. How much Polish can I learn in six months? Oh dear. Is so hard Polish.

The Red Flag on the Rough Bus

2011-11-02T19:25:00.003Z

Ah, the Rough Bus. Where would I be without the Rough Bus, eh? Literally, still stuck on the North Bridge. Taking the long view, without a great writing resource.

In 44 Scotland Street, Sandy McCall Smith (as he is known in Edinburgh) makes a comic character named Irene worry about "middle-class busses." She feels liberal guilt about wanting her son to take only "middle-class busses," and yet she has a whole Edinburgh class system of busses worked out.

I can't really laugh at Irene for this, for I too have a class system of busses worked out, as I--still in a state of shock--revealed to the police officer who kindly drove me home from a bus melee by blurting "I could understand if it was the [Rough Bus], but this was the 44!"

Notice I was not called upon to give evidence.

The Rough Bus has its good days and its bad days and its really fearsome nights. One day last week it had a copy of the Sun, and I sure learned a lot. Goodness me. Some of this paper was very funny, too. I read it avidly as the bus rumbled past slum housing. I have never found a copy of the Telegraph or the Guardian on this bus, just in case you are wondering. Nor have I found a copy of the Morning Star, but this evening I was given hope this may one day happen.

When I got on the Rough Bus, I sat beside a chunky fellow in a black jacket. He was beside a left hand window, so I calculated he would provide cover if someone tried to chuck a rock through the left side. This has happened at least twice, which is why I usually sit on the right. And he was not so chunky that he took up more than his fair share of space, which is something else I look for in a seatmate.

There was a copy of Metro on the empty seat so I picked it up and gave it a good read. The fact that Hugh Grant has fathered a baby girl is deemed worthy of the front page. How nice. And when I had done with Metro, I stuck it behind my back and pulled out a book from my bag. And the man beside me began to whistle "The Red Flag."

Now, it is November, and if this were Toronto, I would immediately assume he was happily looking forward to Christmas and was whistling "O Tannenbaum." However, this is Edinburgh, and because this is Edinburgh, and we were on the Rough Bus, I had a pretty good idea that he was whistling "The Red Flag." And the one thought that jumped to mind was, "Is it cos I is reading Brideshead Revisited?"

I snuck a look at my seatmate. He was staring out the window into the pitch-black Edinburgh November afternoon, whistling the same bars over and over. He had a shaved head, I now noticed, and although heavy-set was rather short. This told me very little.

Amusingly, I do not actually know the words to "The Red Flag." Occasionally I have parties to which I have invited incompatible kinds of Communists, and it is all very delicate. One has to remember not to have the Trots and ex-Trots on the same night as the Leninists and the ex-Leninists, and that the die-hard Stalinists tend to eat fish on Friday, being Catholic, but it is best not to invite them when Poles are expected. But despite living where I live and despite having red hair and an Irish maiden name and a Catholic baptismal certificate, I do not actually know the words to "The Red Flag."*

I know only the jokey version that begins,"The People's Flag is shades of pink/No matter what the People think," and ends "The working-class can kiss my ***/I've got the foreman's job at last."

So as the shaven-headed guy beside me whistled "The Red Flag" over and over again, I just kept on reading Brideshead Revisited while a voice in the back of my head bawled "I've got the foreman's job at last."

Anyway, this was one of those "only in the UK" moments, so I have recorded it here for your amusement.

*In the 20th century, Irish Catholics in Scotland flocked to the Communist Party as one way to subvert anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-worker structures. Obviously, their priests did not like this very much. So Irish Catholicism in Scotland often meant that the women and children went to Mass while the men were members of the Party.

Ah, Scotland. So not like the tourist brochures.

Happy Hallowe'en!

2011-10-31T18:53:00.006Z

I love Hallowe'en because I love the creepy!

It is the only Canadian holiday I insist on keeping. Scotland has its old Hallowe'en traditions, but many of them have been Americanised, to the great disgust of many. The old Scottish custom is for children to black up their faces and go from door to door singing a song or doing a little dance to get sweeties. This is called guising, and instead of jack o'lanterns, the guisers carried tumshie lanterns: hollowed out turnips with candles inside.

Guising was dying out, however, by the time B.A. was a lad. The big autumn festival in Scotland is, of course, Bonfire Night.

Today I was so busy I didn't get a chance to buy a pumpkin, so I was very sad about that. I was also sad we had an inescapable work thing, so we couldn't have a party either. However, we are having a small party tomorrow, and I remembered this evening that we have a butternut squash. So I have carved this butternut squash into a jack o'lantern. It is now glaring from a cakestand in the bulls-eye oculus at the top of the Historical House.

I have been writing ghost stories this year, and it is an interesting challenge to write stories that actually creep out B.A. and our friends. The sad thing about ghost stories, however, is that they are so much less scary than real life. Ghost stories provide a pleasurable escape into a world where the worst thing you can imagine is a house that swallows you up or a skeletal arm grabbing onto your ankle. When I go down into the dark cellar of our 325 year old domain, I am not worried about being swallowed up or grabbed by a skeleton: I am worried some crazy intruder has broken in.

Sorry to mention that: Hallowe'en is not about real horror but about the spooky and, of course, death. Here's something I wrote about Hallowe'en for the Prairie Messenger last year, some months before a cleric told an editor to boot me for clericalism. Oooh, now that's scary! ;-D

So I Guess James III/VIII Really Was King Then?

2011-10-28T12:35:00.017+01:00

Warning: All this will make no sense to any reader from outside the British Commonwealth.

***

Constitutional changes afoot. Primogeniture may become the law of the land, and so not only may the first daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge eventually become monarch over subsequent brother, so might an heir to the throne be able to marry a Catholic, too.

Is this marrying-a-Catholic thing going to be grandfathered? For if so, this is certainly going to jostle the Line of Succession around a bit. I, for one, will welcome back Prince Michael of Kent.

I'm not the first person to mention this, but as Queen Victoria's first child Victoria's first child was Kaiser Wilhelm II, if the Princess Royal had become Queen of England then Kaiser Bill might have been King of England as well as Germany. Hee hee!

Meanwhile, as Aelianus pointed out somewhere or other, once you start removing all the anti-Catholic stuff from the British Constitution, you are admitting that the Glorious Revolution was crap and that the anti-Catholic hysteria that kept the Stuarts out and the Hanoverians in was crap, and British history looks all a big mess and makes no sense.

By the way Queen Mary (of William-and-Mary) and Queen Anne were nasty, nasty, nasty traitors to their own dad and stole the throne from their own brother James just because daddy's second wife was a Catholic. Poor old Anne did have a massive crisis of conscience, however, and would have named James III/VIII as her successor but---Noooooo! It was soooo much better an idea to ship in a German who didn't even like Britain or speaking English or the bread or the women, and locked up his wife, and murdered her lover, and had two mistresses at the same time.

Incidentally, I wonder if either Mary or Anne ever in her post-revolutionary career sat through a performance of King Lear.

What makes this extra tragic is that James III/VIII was very open-minded about religion, and the anti-Protestant Catholic bigots in his mixed-religion courts drove him almost as crazy as the anti-Catholic Protestant bigots back in Britain. He would have made life easier for the Catholic while letting Protestants do their thing. Seriously. He would have bent over backwards to make the Protestants feel all safe and happy. The one thing he would not do was "give up his faith" because he couldn't: "becoming a Protestant" would have been a big fat lie.

Meanwhile I am reminded of Diana, Princess of Wales allegedly and traitorously referring to her Hanoverian in-laws as "the Germans," which, if true, was unusually witty of her. However, it must be pointed out that the Spensers were Whigs, and it was Diana's great-great-super-great-grand-daddy Spenser who brought George I over in the first place.

Okay, this is definitely a rant. And, frankly, I don't care who the next monarch is after William (or Harry, if William dies without issue; or Andrew, if William and Harry perish without issue in some ghastly accident; or Edward, if there is some grotesque holocaust of Windsors). Since the Glorious Revolution it's all window-dressing, and it is so clear that nobody believes in the Divine Right of Kings, but only in what "the people" (i.e. Parliament) want, that it is apparent the succession is all random anyway.

If Parliament felt like it, it could boot Prince Charles Philip Arthur George off to France. It booted James II and the baby James Edward, Prince of Wales off to France, and it booted Edward VIII off to France, so don't laugh. Oh, Parliament also chopped off the head of Charles I: a very disgusting episode.

The snag in the whole "monarch can now marry a Catholic" restoration is that Catholics cannot marry without permission of the Catholic Church, and that Catholics cannot get permission from the Catholic Church to marry unless they swear to bring up their children Catholic. So if Issue of William and Kate wishes to marry a Catholic, the Church itself will have to say No unless Issue's Catholic fiance/e swears to bring up Issue's children as Roman Catholics. And when that happens, Issue's fiance/e will be forced to say good-bye to either Issue or Church. Either way, we'll look like the Bad Guys. As usual.

Or this would mean a Roman Catholic monarch, which would be interesting from a Roman Catholic point of view--especially if the 22nd century Parliament forces her/him to sign a "Murder the Sick/Elderly/Depressed" bill on pain of abdication--but would be rather startling for the C of E, to say nothing of Northern Ireland and the men who march past my house going boom-boom-boom, tweetle-tweetle.

I don't know why Cameron is even bothering with this unless to look all progressive and not at all conservative, which we already knew. Almost no Catholic I know gives a hoot about the fact that a Catholic cannot be Consort. We're much more worried that we're going to be fired/sued/arrested/separated from our children for not going along with gay "marriage" and for saying buggery is bad.

Catholic is not an ethnic group, people. It's (A) a relationship with the Blessed Trinity as revealed in the Person, mission, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and (B) a system of belief, religious practices and relationship with each other (especially our priests and the Bishop of Rome, the earthly head of the Christian Church, successor of St. Peter) and the world. It's not just like being a ginger or left-handed, okay? It is actually something serious, and I would like to see a serious philosophy behind the idea of a Roman Catholic Consort or Roman Catholic monarch in Britain, not just platitudes about being in the 21st century.

Update: Canadian Father Raymond de Souza weighs in. I don't see a thing about it on England's Catholic Herald.

Enjoy the Silence

2011-10-27T09:18:00.005+01:00

Alrighty, here is my latest column in the Toronto CR. It will look somewhat familiar, but I added and edited, softened down here and sharpened up there.

The topic of silence very much interests me, in part because I occasionally get bouts of tinnitus, and they drive me absolutely nuts. (I also get aural hallucinations, thanks to the ear-splitting fire alarms in the Historical House.) But it is also because I love silence better than any sound in nature. I love it! Is there anywhere more tranquil than a dark and silent chapel, with no sound at all except perhaps the far-off murmur of traffic and a sudden candle-sputter?

Very occasionally, I load up on noise. I did that while writing one of my novels (now being sat on in judgement in California), listening to the same Killers and trance playlist over and over again, so that its vibe would infuse my anguished character. But most of the time, the only sound I hear is my fingers tapping on the keys.

I live in the last stretch of countryside between Edinburgh and the next town over. The walls of the Historical House are very thick. And therefore I can't tell you if Edinburgh is an unusually noisy place, or if that's just me. But Edinburgh is certainly a noisy place, especially now that "work" has "begun" on the "tram line" again. The buses have been rerouted from Princes Street to George Street and so not only Princes Street throngs with tourists and shoppers, but George Street does too. The Old Town is full of cars and buskers and bagpipes, and the steps down the Mound teems with people coming up or going down.

Escaping the Edinburgh streets into a silent building is always a great relief. And hence my shock and disappointment when I walked into an Old Town church to pray and confess and was greeted by recorded caterwauling.

The latest on that story is that I sent an email to the new pastor to say the music had driven me from the sacrament, and he wrote back. He said that he had had a lot of "positive feedback" and that others had said the music created a "prayerful atmosphere", and so the music would stay. However, he did see my point about the kind of music (Rutter) and said he might pipe in Gregorian chant instead.

Now it's not my parish church--I just go there for confession--so I just replied thank you very much and that I did understand that people were uncomfortable with silence nowadays. This last was possibly a tad passive-aggressive, since priests sometimes preach about how people are uncomfortable with silence nowadays.

People are uncomfortable with silence nowadays, and I wonder what they are trying to drive away with their earbuds, radios and televisions. Meanwhile, I think I would like to write a book about silence one day after reading all the interesting books about silence there are. (Note to family and friends: books about silence would make great Christmas presents! Wishlist to be posted!)

Knowing Young Nuns

2011-10-26T10:32:00.028+01:00

Hello PhatMassers! Update below.

Another night, another documentary on the BBC. This time, however, it was a documentary of particular interest to the McAmbrose family.

"There's Boeciana!" shouted B.A. "There she is! On the left!"

Boeciana-sightings are always tremendously exciting for our set because Boeciana-as-was is now one of the sisters in St. Cecilia's at Ryde, and usually the only way to see her is to zip down to the Isle of Wight. Whenever anyone does this, he or she reports back to all and sundry about how she is doing. For her part, the former Boeciana writes incredibly long emails at Christmas and Easter. They are disseminated by one pal to all the other pals.

One can visit Boeciana for one hour a year. Admittedly, this does not sound like a lot, but I see some of my non-enclosed friends less often than that. More on this later.

Now as television is 99% propaganda, I was reluctant to watch "Young Nuns." I have met the red-headed Clara, and I knew she was trying her vocation with the Sisters of St. Cecilia at Ryde. She is very nice and (compared to me) very young and therefore vulnerable, and thus I was rather worried about how the documentary would portray her. I wasn't worried about the Sisters at Ryde because I knew the cameras weren't allowed in the convent, and all the director would get of them was footage they themselves made available. (Hence the sighting of Boeciana-as-was.)

Documentaries normally depend on drama. The drama the documentary set up was similar to that of "Young, Foreign and Over Here," i.e. "Will they stay or will they go?" But, to give the filmmakers credit, they also interviewed young nuns who had already made a firm decision to stay. These were four Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal, the second order of Father Groeschel's outfit, and they giggled throughout. They certainly seemed happy and peaceful. That they serve the community in a tangible, obvious way was stressed through shots of them popping into work at a soup kitchen and chatting cheerfully with one of the local characters.

Thus, the drama surrounded the two young women. One has a loving, close-knit family with a proper mum and dad and little brothers, and one sprang fully formed from the head of Athena. No, I am making that up. But the fact that Catherine herself had parents, parents who had bestowed upon her that super, cut-glass accent, was edited out. Nope. Clara was Close-Knit Family Girl and Catherine was Socialite Girl.

Clara was shown to cry a lot; Catherine to brood. Clara stressed the privations of her expected life--the never-leaving-the-convent and the iron grille that will separate her from family and friends, and Catherine thought a lot about husband and children. Other than a vague "peace and happiness" and a heroic wish to "give myself completely to God," the viewer didn't hear very much from them about how it would be great to be a nun. Meanwhile, the Franciscans were obviously having a whale of a time.

What the documentary did show, and I'm not sure it meant to do this, is how great it is to have a proper mum and dad and little brothers. (Clara's other siblings were never in shot for some reason; perhaps her parents felt this would not be good for them.) Clara and her mum seemed to have (and I am sure they do have) a great mother-daughter relationship.

There was none of that "my daughter is my best friend" nonsense, but it was absolutely clear they enjoy each other's company and love each other to pieces. When Clara's mother cried, I though I would cry, too. And when Clara's mother read Clara's letters from Ryde, I had the sense that only Clara's mother fittingly could be Clara's voice. And the scene where Clara's mum loses it on Clara right before they leave for Ryde was magic: real traditional Catholic family life.

Meanwhile, I sort of fell in love with Clara's dad. (I hope you don't mind me saying that, Clara.) Like St. Joseph, he was rather in the background. He didn't talk that much, but he was there, and he drove the minivan. He came across as the strong silent type that lets the women get on with it. I'd love a dad like that if I didn't already have a dad like that. Which I do. So does my pal E. And my pal L. Homo Verus Catholicus is such a poppet.

With a family like that, you could see why Clara would never want to leave, at least not yet. More on this below.

Who Catherine was leaving was rather more vague. The documentary showed her at parties and other glam-looking events a lot. She wore lovely gowns, and the slender boys her age wore black-tie, and I simply don't know how the narrator managed to keep herself from saying "Catherine is the great-granddaughter of the X of Y", since it was so freaking obvious she must be. But at no point did anyone say, "Catherine's dilemma is that she was born in the top drawer and will have to give up all this classy stuff to live with six women who occasionally put their sleeves in the butter."

I was not especially impressed that Catherine has dreamed about being a nun since she was four because I've known too many girls who dreamed about being a nun since they were four. The most amusing one, the one who talked about it the most, dressed up as French maid for Hallowe'en at uni, and when she left the vocations discernment house, she took one of the discerning boys with her. Surprise!

Fortunately for Clara and Catherine and me and many other women who have tried to get into a religious order, traditional nuns are pretty sharp cookies. They don't want to live with nuns who don't really want to be nuns. And they are a lot shrewder about postulants than postulants are about themselves. The "twist" in the documentary is what the orders themselves had to say about Clara's and Catherine's plans. And really, imagine if those nuns had seen all the footage of Clara weeping and of Catherine dancing with Mr Darcy's great-great-grandsons. It would have gone over like an unemployed Pole's opinion of England.

First marriages fail like crazy these days, and it occurs to me it is because we are all teenagers for so much longer. I do not know why this is so, but it is so. And teenagers are not particularly sensible when it comes to life choices. They don't really know what they want, quite a lot of the time. And it is a really bad idea to make an irrevocable decision until you know what it is you want. Oh, and it is a very bad decision to choose what you don't want.

I was struck by the sight of Clara crying over her letters and her friends because after I married B.A. I left almost all my stuff and almost all my friends. I see my old friends once a year (some of them for less than an hour), and my family maybe twice. That's what happens when you leave your country--especially your continent--to live with your husband in his country, on his continent. And, yes, I cried a little about that. (And my family and I cried during the wedding.) I had two bouts of cold feet, including a row with poor B.A. on the way to our rehearsal dinner. I had had a spontaneous nosebleed hours before.

But I would do it again in a heartbeat because marrying BA is what I wanted to do and marrying BA meant living in Scotland, which I also wanted to do. So I did and do. No apologies. I miss my friends and family, and it is annoying not to have my books when I want them, but this is the life I wanted and chose. And I think the biggest difference between Clara and Catherine and me was that I was not invited to make my choice until I was 37 years old.

I hope I would have had the self-knowledge and the confidence to have chucked everything into the garbarge or storage and said "see you later" to my friends and family if B.A. had come along when I was 24. I hope I would, but I doubt it. Which may be why God didn't send B.A. along when I was 37.

Final verdict: a better-than-usual documentary that made the viewers at 'ome think enclosed life must be absolutely awful, but that there was something to be said for those sweeties who do proper work at soup kitchens, like, pity they can't wear mascara.

That said, it deserves a papal medal for its portrayal of Catholic family life. I can't think of when I have seen such a normal, loving, functional family on British TV.

Update: There was a rather decent review by Ed Cumming in the Telegraph. Instead of sneering, Ed confessed himself bewildered and said he found it all a parallel universe. Why would anyone give up friends, sex, Twitter, etc? Good question, Ed. Good question indeed. Keep asking that... Keep asking...

So far, other reviewers sneer. Twitter...ugh. And the Guardian's comments box reminds me of the French Revolution.

Update 2: Well, hello, PhatMass from Mrs Judgmental. Listen, what I'm judgmental about is TV. When you are recorded for TV, you lose control over your own story. The director urges you to say stuff you might regret later, and the director edits to get across what s/he wants to get across. The director also wants a big TV audience to keep on watching, and the TV critics to say her/his work is gripping.

As for Catherine and my butter remark, blame the editing not me. The impression the editing gave (and I am not saying this has any basis in reality, just in the "Socialite Girl" theme the director presents) is that Catherine's life is all about charity catwalks and snazzy dancing with boys in evening dress at balls. Personally, I adored Catherine and wanted to set her up immediately with Andrew Cusack.

I resent the implication that I am reverse-snob. I am perfectly nice to all the great-grandchildren of the Xs of Ys that I meet. So :-p. Go read some Nancy Mitford to understand about the butter.

Meanwhile, I wasn't distressed that Clara cried; that was only normal. I cried before I got married, as I pointed out. I am distressed at how much of the documentary showed Clara crying.

I know when you're talking about me, peeeeepul! :-D

Young, Foreign and Over Here

2011-10-25T09:11:00.022+01:00

"I don't own a TV," said Devon-based Canadian comic Craig Campbell to The Skinny. "It is 99% propaganda."

The Skinny is a Scots entertainment periodical; I picked it up to look at the club listings. And I was vastly entertained by the words of my fellow Canadian because I believe the same thing. I wonder if he thought this in Canada, or whether it was the shock of British TV. My hypothesis is that it is hard to see propaganda for what it is when you grow up with it, but when you see it in another country, it's obvious.

Whenever my husband and I switch the channel from "Grand Designs", "Poirot" or cooking shows, the stream of propaganda begins. I listen and watch critically to discover what it is we viewers are supposed to believe and feel and how the director goes about making us believe and feel that way. Incidentally, television loves cliches. Occasionally I astonish B.A. by anticipating what a person is going to say after his/her dramatic pause.

So I put "Young, Foreign and Over Here" to the same scrutiny. I was not as interested in what the young people from "Eastern" (Hungary? Slovakia?) Europe thought of England as I was in what the director was choosing to do with them. What would he/she put in, and what would he/she leave out?

The dramatic framework was how many of the "Eastern Europeans" would manage to stay in England more than two months and how many would go home, dreams crushed. The stakes could be quite high: a young Pole had been accepted as an undergraduate by Oxford University but needed to earn his living expenses and a young Hungarian ran out of food.

The dreams were varied: a Czech-Slovak couple wanted to go to acting school, a Polish woman wanted a good career, a Siberian woman longed to be a music promoter and the Hungarian wanted to live an English life, hopefully as a well-paid translator. By the way, there was a lot of character revelation, and the Hungarian was edited to be the Bad Guy.

Ah, the cliches. The Oxford-bound Pole and the Hungarian complained that Englishwomen were fat, and the Hungarian added that they sounded like Vicky Pollard. The Pole also complained about the bread. They all seemed to complain about the food, which they found unhealthy and full of chemicals, which was not surprising as they were at some cheap amusement park at the time.

The Slovak and the Polish woman were surprised at how many black people and Muslims there are in England. (Shot of parade. A zaftig black woman dances past, wiggling her hips.) The surprised-at-black-people-and-Muslims theme was repeated. And, of course, the director found some white people to say they didn't think so many foreigners, especially Poles, should be over here. The very kindly man who took the "immigrants" on bus trips was black.

None of the migrants, not even the Poles, went to church--as far as the viewer knows. This is a great pity, and if any young Central or Eastern European migrants are reading this and you are hungry, please go to the priest at the Catholic church nearest you and tell him you are hungry. Nobody has to go hungry in England, and church-going Catholic adults will go out of their way to help foreign young co-religionists in particular.

(B.A. was very distressed by the way, by the sufferings of these young people and said that if they had come to our parish, we would have taken them home to dinner. This is quite true. If a young man appeared before us after Mass and said, "I Polish. I Catholic. I hungry." B.A. would burst into tears and adopt him.)

They didn't seem to sign up with the NHS or with the local Jobcentre or find a food bank or anything I would advise a newcomer to do. As far as their well-being was concerned, the documentary was interested only in living arrangements and employment. The Oxford-bound Pole lived in a room with four or five other young Polish men, and although there were bed-bugs and I suspect the arrangement was illegal, it seemed very jolly. I hope they are all writing novels.

I suppose the overarching theme of the show was that all these young migrants were willing to work. (Yay!) The director got them to complain that English people would rather go on benefits than do some kinds of work. (Boo!) The Polish woman who desperately wanted work that would match her qualifications ended up in a factory with a zillion other Slavic women, at £100 a week. The Oxford-bound Polish man finally broke down and took a job as a rickshaw driver, earning up to £100 a night. The Czech-Slovak couple got jobs as servers in shops and restaurants. The Hungarian did not get his job as a translator.

The Hungarian came off the worst of all the migrants exhibited for the English viewers at 'ome. When we first meet him, he is against the background of a flag of St. George and holding a bulldog. He is pasty-white, sports a baseball cap, has headphones clasped around his neck and came to the UK without proper job interview clothes. Not to put too fine a point on it, he looks like a chav.

When he finds a one-bed flat and a roommate, he jokes with the roommate about what they will do if one or the other brings a woman home: his plan is grossly biased in favour of himself. But women never do darken their door, which is one lens through which to view the "Englishwomen are fat and sound like Vicky Pollard" remarks.

He tries to find a job (shots of Hungarian walking about, shots of Hungarian handing in CV to, interestingly, non-English European shop-owners) without any luck or guile, and then marches into a firm that hires interpreters. This is his dream middle-class job, and he feels confident that his talents in speaking three foreign-to-him languages will come to his aid.

We have heard a lot about these languages by now. And, indeed, he does not hide his naked scorn for the English, who do not seem to speak foreign languages. But what is this? The firm sits him down with a German test and, behold, he cannot read or write German after all. He is better at speaking foreign languages; he learned them from television.

Our contempt for the Hungarian should be tempered, however, by the fact that he is starving.

Home to Hungary he goes. He gets the very last sentence of the show, a sentence calculated to put up the backs of every TV-watching Briton who will feel free to voice their opinion of a white foreigner in a way they might not of a brown one: "Britain failed me."

Snort. Anyway, as usual for television, the exploitation factor was high. I wonder what the cameraman would have done if the starving Hungarian had fainted at his feet. And I wonder if anyone involved with the project pulled a string or two afterwards to get the Polish girl out of the factory. As everyone over 30 knows, employment is about who you know. This is why migrants are at such a huge disadvantage, and also why they club together by ethnic group or religion.

We, I mean, for, of course, I am a migrant, too. Whenever I open my mouth, everyone in earshot knows it. Luckily for me, I am married to a Scot in Scotland, so I more easily navigate the shoals of "Living in the UK" than the average migrant. And I have the great advantage of expecting nothing from the UK except my basic human rights, cracking good architecture and Scottish identity. I certainly do not make enough money to live on, but my husband does. So I am okay. I just plug away at my writing, and it pays the occasional bill.

***

By the way, the bus trips were howls. The migrants were trotted through an American-style amusement park, a seaside holiday pier ("This fish and chips would be better in Poland") and a petting zoo which was supposed to pass for "countryside." Only once does the camera show something truly impressive or beautiful about Britain, and that is when it shows the Oxford-bound Pole visiting his college at Oxford. He cannot stop smiling.

***

Final note: The program has a very stupid title that provokes resentful memories. The original "over here" was a slam on U.S. soldiers during the Second World War: "Over-paid, over-sexed, over here." At least, I think it was originally applied to U.S. soldiers. Canadian soldiers (equally over-sexed if not over-paid) were "over here" first, as their descendants will never, ever tire of reminding you.

***

Update: Goodness me. Traffic through the roof. I'm trying to think of what else to say on this topic. I suppose I might mention that my study book for the "Life in the UK Test" says that 92% of the British population is White, about 4% is "Asian", 2% is Black or Black British and only 2.7% is Muslim.

Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable for non-Britons to be surprised at the large numbers of Black people and Muslims they see in England. One reason why the people served up for your evening's entertainment saw so many was because they were in London. Says book, "45% of all ethnic minority people live in the London area, where they form almost one-third of the population (29%). Other areas of England with large ethnic minority populations are the West Midlands, the South East, the North West, and Yorkshire and Humberside" (Which? How to Pass the Life in the UK Test [2007]).

Proszę bardzo.

The Dashing White Sergeant

2011-10-24T15:09:00.007+01:00

For the sake of those who yearn for the Scotland of their parents or grandparents, I record here that six people who adhere to the Roman Mission in Edinburgh did dance a Dashing White Sergeant last night.

I am not completely sure how this came about. But I do recall that it was I who used our luncheon hostess's computer to find a good tune on Youtube, and that it was B.A. who coached the five other dancers in the steps. Moments earlier, he had been making sport of Jimmy Shand's perennially doleful expression.

Somehow most glasses and chairs were moved out of the way and the sitting-room of a respectable third-floor flat was transformed into a ballroom in the blink of an eye.

During our first attempt, a bookcase toppled and nearly went down. Fortunately the candle and photo of the Pope were easily retrieved, and the broken glass and red wine easily mopped up. Then we made a second attempt.

Round and round the floor we went. Thump thump thump said the floorboards as the ancient music blared.

"One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight! And one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight!"

"Hee-eugh!"

"Step, kick, step, kick, turn-yoor-partner-round. And step, kick, step, kick, turn-yoor-partner-round."

"Turn turn turn turn turn turn turn..."

"Advance!"

"Hee-eugh!"

The man downstairs was in North Berwick, thank goodness. It would have been amusing, however, if he had climbed the fire escape and peered through the window to see what was going on. Scots, English, colonials and--oczywiscie!--a Pole had suddenly drunk enough and heard enough of the late Jimmy Shand's band to break into mad country dancing.

"It was like in Jane Austen," said the thrilled and innocent hostess afterwards, in the kitchen.

Actually, it was like nothing in Jane Austen. It was positively disreputable and Scottish. I'm sorry you missed it, Andrew.

Hee-eugh!

It Has Happened Here

2011-10-24T11:58:00.015+01:00

Yesterday Catholics in Scotland were encouraged, by little cards at the back of the church, if not by the priest in front of it, to write to the Catholic Parliamentary Officer in defense of traditional marriage. The Catholic Parliamentary Officer is not interested in recriminalising homosexual acts. He is merely interested protecting the rights of Catholics and others to say that only marriage is marriage and to live, act, teach and worship according to that reality.

It is always bad news for religious people when the government and courts do not agree with their religious beliefs. Political correctness is nothing new, as the blood-soaked history of Scotland attests. At different times in Scottish history, the Scottish and United Kingdom governments and courts have persecuted Reformers, Catholics, Presbyterians and Scottish Episcopalians. There was also systematic discrimination in employment against Roman Catholics in Scotland until the 1980s, when the new economy made that impossible.

In 1411, the Catholic regime in Scotland might have burnt my Presbyterian friend Cath at the stake, and in 1611, the Presbyterian regime in Scotland might have hanged Catholic me from a gallows, but in 2011 Cath and I get together for coffee and stew over what the Secularist regime might do to both of us and our respective religious communities. It will not burn or hang us, but it can make our lives much more difficult than they ought to be.

My youngest sister wrote her MA thesis on Catholic recusants, and the people who did for the Catholic recusants in England and Scotland were usually their politically correct neighbours. The Catholic recusants were, for the most part, happy to keep their heads down and sneak off quietly to Mass without bothering their neighbours. But that wasn't good enough. And it never is good enough for self-righteous, politically correct neighbours with an axe to grind or fast money to make.

A nice English Jesuit went mental when I mentioned this in class, but the primary reason Catholic Emancipation Act was finally signed was that the King was convinced that the Irish Catholic majority would rise up and slaughter every last Protestant in Ireland unless it was. This was not actually true. But that's what they told the King and the King, who took his anti-Catholic, pro-Protestant Coronation Oath very seriously, reluctantly and bad-humouredly signed the Act, threw down the pen and walked out of the room.

(Nowadays there is some happy chatter about getting rid of the anti-Catholic bits of the Coronation Oath and the Act of Succession. However, this is only because Protestantism, as a political movement, is a spent force in England. Evangelical Protestants probably make even more embarrassing dinner guests for the glitterati than church-going Roman Catholics, for at least we Papists are trained to keep our mouths shut and still retain a bit of exotic glamour, a soupcon of the brimstone Granny swore followed us around.)

What I learned from the history of the Catholic Emancipation Act is that it is always better for Catholics when the ruling powers want to keep us happy. And this is why we have to scream bloody blue murder whenever it looks like the government doesn't care what we think. If the government rules in favour of our enemies--and, yes, those who despise the idea that marriage is a pre-historical, religious, social and familial arrangement between a man and a woman are our enemies--some of our enemies are going to make sure we get it in the neck. Guaranteed.

This is not to say we should not love our enemies. Of course we should. We can do this by telling them the truth in a respectful fashion and standing up to them when they throw toddler-like tantrums. But unless they are fervent Christians, we should not expect them to love us. That would be dumb. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

Recycling...

2011-10-24T10:44:00.001+01:00

Poppets, thanks for your comments, but I took something down to fix up and use for my livelihood, such as it is.

bodis-riper 3.8

2011-10-20T10:14:00.004+01:00

hello it is me the inner child nobodie mayd me fan art i am sad. howver seraphic wants help on a gost storie so im going to ryt bodis-riper insted. besyds i miss proodens.

bodis-riper

part 3

chapter 8

the beeuwtiful yung duchess of paisley desended the steps of ladie jerseys town hoam and a crewl smyle curved upon her lips. she ordered her dryver to tayk her to hoam and no sooner had she alited but the carriaj of a gentleman pulled up before the huose. a gentleman in a top hat and blak frock coat alited. this was sir viktor egret of harley street and after ascertayning his identitie clementyn welcomed him into the huose and ushered him in the bedchaymber of her strikken brother.

quite a chanj had been wrot in the sikroom. the stayl air was now fresh and sweet and the chaymber smelled of lavender and freshlie ironed linen. a bol of grayps stood redie by the bed as did a helthful bottel of wiskey. hewbert had been proped up agaynst fresh pillos. his linen niteshirt had been chanjed--despyte his week shreeks of modest protest--and his unfashunablie long hare had been jerked free of nots and tangels. snow-whyt sheets overlayd with a bloo silk coverlet covverd him up to his chest.

sir viktor took in the sceen and smyled for altho he was a good doktor and prowd of his reputayshun he luvved a good fee and the room smelt even more stronglie of money than it did of lavender. ther was nothing so good for his pokket book as a long lingering illness and one look at hewberts wan fase sujested it.

'hewbert darling' trilled clementyn from the door. 'here is sir vikor egret of harley street come to mayk you comfortable.'

hewbert opened his eies and looked bleerilie at his visiter. his sisters henchwumman had but resentlie given him a dose of a powerful sedativ. it was the onlie way she cud chanj his shirt.

'comfortable? comfortable?' he murmured. 'is ther comfort to be fownd on this side of the grayv?'

'now now mr robinson' sed sir vikor hartilie as he strode to the bed. 'that is not the lyn to tayk sir. you must think happie thots. a fensing ahem axsident is nothing to eat owt yore hart abowt.'

'it is not i sir that eats out my hart but yonder harpie by the door. and wen she has eeten her fill wat must she do but send another drooling with filthie lusts to pillaj and chew?'

'o sir viktor' sed clementyn wipping out her lacie handkerchef and holding it to her eies. 'how he raves!'

'hmm' sed the doktor and bent over hewbert. he looked into his eies and started. 'his pupils are dilated! may i have been asked wat has he been given?'

'only tinkchur of belladonna and opium' sed clementyn piteouslie.

'hmm' sed the doktor. 'the belladonna is all very well but i think he ot not to hav so much opium. kombyned with fever it may overset his reeson.'

'but the payn doktor,' sed the bewtie. 'i kannot bare to see him in payn.'

'wat do you meen?' sed hewbert in slurred tones. 'you ken you lyk nothing better. the payn in my shuolder is nothing to the payn of being in the cluches of such an unnatural sister.'

the duchess sed nothing but merelie mayd sobbing noyses into her hankerchif.

'deer me' sed the doctor. 'if you will permit me mr robinson to lay bare yor shuolder...?'

'my servants?' sed hewbert. 'were are my servants? are they ded? imprisoned? transported? wer is angus macdonald? wer is littel sharlott?'

'good hevens yore grays' sed the doktor startled agane. 'hoo has been attending yore brother? this wuond is n-tyrlie inflaymed!'

'o deer' sed clementyn her fays firmlie disgized by her hankerchif. 'i cannot recall. a doktor smith? i think that it is--smith.'

'liar' slurred hewbert. 'harpie. she-devil.'

'you did very well to dismiss this doktor smith' sed the doktor sternlie. 'this sadlie neglekted wuond will tayk careful tending now. if the infekshun spreds i will have to remoov his arm.'

'no' cryed hewbert struggling up. 'you can not remoov my arm you minion of satan it is consecrayted.'

'i beleev your grays...'sed the doktor meeningfullie. clementyn rang the bell and two footmen attended by rufus the blak payjboy kaym in.

'wat fresh villanie is this?' demanded hewbert as the men held him down. 'help! help! angus! angus! angus! help!'

'not too much' muttered the doctor over his needel 'we do not want to over-slow the hart.' he gayv hewbert the injekshun and the man fell limp among the pillows. the doktor plased his head over hewberts hart and then lifted his eielid. the duchess nodded to the servants and they left the room.

'it will be some time befor he regayns conshusnes poor fellow' sed sir viktor. 'ill retirn this evning to bleed him.'

'i am very gratful to you sir viktor' sed clementyn. 'wat must i do in the meentym?'

'wy nothing yore grays' sed the doktor. 'you must leev him striklie alone. he must not be over-xited--that cud be qwyt fatal. it is not just the wuond--it is his hart. i do not wish to make you over-anxious yore grays but i beleev i hav detekted sum maladie of the hart. either too slow a hartbeet or too rapid cud depress his helth very rapidlie.'

clementyn willed a blush

'he longs abuv all for the visit of his friend the earl of grunstane' she mirmired. 'but i am afrayd..ehm..i hav herd...ehm...it has reeched my eers that sir charles was he hoo gayv him the...ehm...axsidental blow.'

'i see' sed the doktor with a serching luik of the bewtiful fays befor him. 'well in that cays yore grays it is my opinion that anyone involved in the seen of the..hem hem...axsident shud not be permited to enter this room.'

'verrie well sir viktor' sed clementyn. 'i will do my best to a-line my will with yores and not that of my brother. but you see how very very commanding he is.' she gayv a littel laff. 'it is for this reeson that i hav been forsed to mayk alternate arranjments for his staff.'

they left the room and after the butler had s-corted the grate man to the door clementyn sat at her ryting desk. she skribbled a note on a perfewmed sheet and rang for rufus the blak payjboy. within half an hour proodens fownd herself braking open the wayfer at the lunch taybel.

'well my dere' sed her mother affekshunatlie. 'wat does it say?'

'my deer ladie proodens' red proodens 'how delightfulie kynd of you to agree to add a yuothful note to wat will now be a very happie afternoon and evning indeed. send along yore finest dinner dress now and that way you will be unencombered for our dryv. how delited my brother will be to see you. your admirer clementina p.'

'wat a kind unaffekted kordial wumman she is' x-claymed hermione.

'yes' sed proodens and immediatelie scheemed abowt wat she wud ware.

to be kontinued...

More Polish Puff

2011-10-17T21:15:00.002+01:00

It's in the CR, and it has been picked up by the webpage of a Toronto Polish radio station.

Foties: Warszawa

2011-10-15T11:55:00.014+01:00

Alrighty. I have no time for writing today because I am going to an Edinburgh football game with a native of Warsaw who wants the Edinburgh football experience. As he couldn't find anyone else to go with him, I did not tell him that the Edinburgh football experience generally does not include the companionship of married ladies from church. Besides, when I was Single I longed for young Polish men to take me out, and now that I am Married, they do. Life is like that, and it is very bewildering.

Okay, so these are photos of Warsaw itself. The first one was a bit of an after-thought since really I should have taken a photo of the exciting studio not the stairwell.

The second one is of a model boat in whose bow Polish communist Easter chicks are having a demonstration. Their banner says (roughly) "Bread for the Proletariat." This photograph, shown at Sunday lunch, annoyed a young Polish parishioner so much that he rushed into the night to vote. I think it very amusing for its juxtaposition of Catholicism and communism, but then I'm not Polish.

The third photo is of an election poster. I was in Poland during the run-up to the national elections, and this poster begs Poles not to vote for the people who beat them up. As in Eastern Germany and in Russia, the same people who ran everything during the end of the communist era apparently tend to run everything now.

The fourth photo is of a painted building in the historical section of Warsaw. After the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans systematically destroyed Warsaw, killed a lot of people and expelled the rest. However, the survivors returned and rebuilt this section, brick by brick. The Poles are like that.

The fifth photo is of two of the pretty Polish women non-Polish women in Edinburgh hear so much about. I was very impressed that the Polish girl with the mobile phone had legs the same colour of the building behind her.

The sixth photo is an anachronism. When Berenike and I turned a corner in the historical section, I was alarmed to see two German soldiers with guns and a Polish peasant hiding in the back of a 1940s truck. Really, it was a bit of a shock until I saw the man with the film camera. If I were to walk through a time warp, I would not like it to be into Warsaw during the German occupation. There was German yelling and firing, too. Eeek!

The seventh photo is of a cukiernia, which is pronounced tsook-ee-AIR-na, and roughly translates to "sugar shop". Berenike decided we must stop here and have Polish doughnuts, the kind with rose-petal jam inside. There is a cukiernia on every block in urban Poland, which will make life worth living when the revolution gets so bad, western Catholics will flood the place as refugees.

The last photo is of the F. Chopin Academy of Music, near the University of Warsaw. It reminded me very much of post-1950 architecture in Toronto. The thing about communist architecture is that in Poland it looks quaint and exotic, but in Toronto it just looks stupid. Again, the Poles would argue that it looks stupid in Poland, too, but I'm not Polish and when I go touristing about on the other side of the Berlin Wall, I expect to see this kind of stuff.

This reminds me of the Elton John video for "Nikita." This really dates me, but back when "Nikita" was a hit video, it was actually believable that Elton John might hanker after a pretty Soviet border guard lady. Listen, if you kids had sat around in cars after dark singing "Forever Young" at the top of your 14 year old lungs, you too would be fascinated by Stalinist architecture. I definitely expected the Soviets to come, but I thought they would drop the Bomb on my house, not move in next door, which they did.

Foties: Rome and Home

2011-10-14T23:27:00.013+01:00

It takes foties ages and ages to load. Let me see. First we have a view of Rome from the library windows of the English College. Then we have me making a break for it during a marital spat about which bus we should take and where we should go. Then we have Jan Sobieski in the Vatican Museum showing his parking ticket to some Viennese clerk to be stamped. (Nota Bene: at least a third of middle-aged men in Poland look exactly like Jan Sobieski.) Then we have Barbiconi's, apparently so much better than The Other One, where the discerning priest gets his kit and slavish parishioners buy their newly minted monsignor purple socks. Then we have John Paul II standing outside the Gemelli, where he sadly spent a lot of time, rather more than Hilary, although occasionally she consents to visit. Then we have a golden tinged gateway to Vatican City. So pretty, almost as pretty as the Swiss Guards (not shown). Then we have a grieving angel on the Stuart Memorial. Finally, we have the view from my kitchen window.

Perhaps tomorrow I will have the patience to load more foties. I am not really a fotie person. For me a thousand words is worth a fotie any day.

A Tiber Swim

2011-10-13T08:35:00.010+01:00

I have some paid writing to do, but today's priority activity is making sandwiches and lamb pies to celebrate a Tiber swim.

You know, it's easier to use the Tiber metaphor when you don't reflect that the physical Tiber is grey-green, polluted with plastic bottles and palpably indifferent to humankind. It just keeps on snaking through Rome, saying "I've seen everything. This is nothing. You should have seen all this in Nero's day, honey. I've lost track of the people I've drowned." It's better to think of the Tiber as a sparking English Channel kind of place.

Anyway, tonight's Tiber swim is by A READER, although I will not say which one because I do not know him well. But I do know he reads this blog because he once came up to me after the Cup of Tea of Peace and said my blog had converted him to Catholicism. At least, that's what I think he said. I bragged to the Schola, and they suggested I was going deaf.

"Which blog?" I asked at the time.

"The one with the Inner Child," he said.

Now this does suggest that I am going deaf because I cannot see how the Inner Child could convert anyone to anything except a shallow, materialist obsession with unbridled artistic expression, the dodgier passions, chocolate and designer bags. The Inner Child in the "Women" section of the Chopin museum was not a pleasant sight.

"Did Chopin really sleep with all those women?" she asked, loudly.

"No," I said. "That exhibit is about his mother. Please keep your voice down."

"It would be really fun to write a novel about Chopin and Georges Sand," said the Inner Child.

"Mm, yes. That would go down SO WELL at church."

"You could set it in modern day Edinburgh! ROFL! LOL! They go to Majorca and everything. Snicker snicker. Snort."

"I think it is time to go to the gift shop. Wouldn't you like to go to the gift shop?"

Et cetera. By the way, although the pound kosztuje 4.5 zwotych, It-bags in Poland still cost too much. The only item of clothing I purchased was a mohair beret, and then there was great mirth amongst my Polish pals because it turns out that this is the definitive article of clothing for right-wing, daily-Mass attending, PiS-voting, Radio Marija-listening Polish grandmothers.

I have not yet sorted out how this is a bad thing. When the moherowy berety are gone Poland might turn into France, and then where will we all be, eh? When the revolution comes, the only safe place for Catholics will be Vatican City, and we won't be able to fit.

But for now we can roam free in the UK*, and a new ex-Piskie is joining our happy band of brothers. To celebrate I will link to my tell-all posts about the different kind of Trids there are.

Taxonomy of Trids 1

Taxonomy of Trids 2

*If "gay marriage" goes through, we are in serious, serious trouble. Few "gays" will "get married", but "politically correct" totalitarians will go from strength to strength. Expect lawsuits, re-education, erosion of parental rights and indoctrination of children, because that--mes amis--is what we are seeing in Canada.

It's not about love; it's about never resting until Catholics and other Christians are driven to the fringes of society, punished and silenced. It's about demands for love and acceptance with a gun held to our heads by a few fanatical activists who will never, ever, EVER feel loved enough because they can't.

rainczek and promiss

2011-10-12T09:36:00.002+01:00

helo it is me the inner child but i cant stay becos my outer adult is having coffee with cath in a jerman cafe were seraphic will tawk lowdly abowt po-land lol rofl. i hoap ther is cake. jermans are good at cake as are poles wich i did not kno not being the wirld expert on po-land seraphic pretends to be. so xausting following seraphic arownd po-land as she tried to proov canadians can kno stuff abowt poland. the nise thing was that her attempts to speek polish were so ridikulus all poles felt better abowt there n-glish no mater how bad.

so anyway i will come back sune and tell you what wikked but luvely clementyn did next. wat happens is very xciting and ther will be a fantastik seen with hewbert whom everyone is in luv with sins everyone is always in luv with the various vershuns of hewbert hoo show up on this skreen. wat if i told you there was a reel hewbert goodness how good for the turist trade that wud be.

anyway the supereggo is screeming so we must go and wash and cach bus.

The Knowledge of Others

2011-10-11T13:53:00.013+01:00

Oh dear. He is wailing. I cannot bear it. Alas!

"He" is my top parish flirtation, the only rival B.A. need worry about. Oui, oui, c'est le plus jeune member of the parish, whom I am babysitting this afternoon. I have put him down for his afternoon nap, and he doesn't like that.

I feel like I have betrayed him in some way. I have proven myself like all the other women, so obsessed with making him eat when he would rather not eat, and putting him down to sleep when he does not want to sleep. So he wails.

He has attained the age of only one year and a bit, so he is actually very easy to argue with. It is less easy to argue with grown-ups. It would be nice not to argue with grown-ups, although I seem to do it an awful lot. It is very much against national type because Canadians (the English-speaking ones) do not really like to argue.

We Canadians like to think that we are the Polite People. I thought we really were the Polite People until I got a job in the passport office, and noticed how rude all these Canadians were about civil servants and when I went on a Contiki tour and noted how rude we Young Canadians were to Americans. In that case we didn't argue with them, but asked rude questions like, "You know, the United Nations is in New York. So how come the USA doesn't pay its UN dues?"

These nice young tourist Americans were unused to people asking them rude questions or even to being teased for being American, so they were very indignant and hurt. They were also furious when they got to Italy and discovered they could not shop during the three hour lunch hour, and thought that this should be changed. But never mind that. The thing is that non-Americans do pick on Americans, who understandably don't like it.

Not being American, I sometimes find myself listening to detailed complaints about Americans. (I also find myself listening to complaints about the British, but never mind that for now.) And sometimes I do not think that these complaints are fair, having met literally hundreds of Americans and more or less keeping an eye on their country my entire life. I have met many intensely intelligent Americans, so I particularly do not like the "Americans are stupid" theme I hear so often.

At the same time, of course, I have a small seizure when someone suggests that I am American, in the same way a native Irishman might have a small seizure when it is suggested he is English. But this is not because I have a problem with the USA, except for the cultural dominance and the invading my country in 1812 bit (plus the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny). What I don't like is people assuming that Canada is just like the United States, when in fact it is not.

As a rule, Canadians are not very noticeable. We are staggeringly rich, but as G8 nations go, we keep a low profile. When Britain wants to compare itself to somebody, it looks anxiously to Germany or the USA, which strikes me as ridiculous when, really, the most British country on earth is arguably Canada. We have the same political system, the same memories (plus our own local ones), the same Queen, the same religions, way fewer republicans than Australia and the same hemisphere. We were once part of an Empire (two, actually), although of course we never had one and hopefully never will.

I bring all this up because I have been arguing with Polish ex-pats about how much "Americans" (in which group they include Canadians, not having yet been taught the hard way, like the Scots, that Canadians have seizures when people do this) know about Poland. The ex-pats say that "Americans" know nothing about Poland. Now I abase myself before their obvious superiority in knowledge of Poland, but I do not before their knowledge of the knowledge of "Americans."

Incidentally, as far as I can tell, Poles (unlike Canadians) seem to like to argue.

Poland was mentioned quite often in my elementary and high school world history classes. That the Polish cavalry was mowed down by machine guns at the start of the First World War is something I have known since I was about six. The impression I got from 13 years, off and on, of world history classes in my perfectly ordinary state-funded Catholic schools, was that the Poles are enormously brave, romantic people who will fight on in the face of certain death because that is what they do and, indeed, have always done.

I also knew (from 1978) that the Pope was Polish. This was so widely known in North America that from 1978 until 2005 easily answered questions were answered with "Is the Pope Polish?" to mean "Yes." I also knew as a child who Lech Walesa was because the news magazines and the radio were constantly talking about Lech Walesa and something pronounced Solidare-nosk and then, sadly, about Father Jerzy Popieluszko, who was murdered in 1984.

Shortly after that, a Polish priest, said to be one of Father Popieluszko's pals, turned up in my Toronto parish. It was rumoured that his bishop had sent him out of Poland so that what happened to Father Popieluszko wouldn't happen to him. The bishop wanted him to learn English, so he didn't go to a Polish parish, of which there are many in Toronto, although perhaps not so many as in Chicago.

I dated a Polish-Canadian guy. His grandfather was in the resistance and was shot. His grandmother had survived a concentration camp. She might have been two camps, actually--one German, and one Russian. His father came to Canada with nothing and worked in construction. His sister was very pretty.

After 9/11, I heard an awful lot about Jan Sobieski. He was Polish, too. As was his grand-daughter Maria Clementina, the mother of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

"Yes," argue the ex-pat Poles. "But that's you. YOU know. The others don't."

But I am not some amazing exception. Anybody in Canada and the USA who listened to their history classes on the Second World War and on the Cold War must know many of the horrible things that happened in Poland, to the Catholic Poles as well as to the Jews. Okay, Jan Sobieski is not someone who sticks in everybody's mind, but John Paul II, come on.

"Then why," argued an ex-pat Pole, "do American tourists to Poland go only to Auschwitz?"

"There were American tourists at the Castle in Krakow," I typed, but then I had sudden misgivings. When I was in Krakow, my kind guides kept pointing out sites of Jewish suffering and remembrance as if these were the kinds of places in which they thought I, an English-speaking Catholic, would be most interested.

So I have to admit that I do not know where in Poland American and Canadian tourists tend to go. I imagine that many of the Catholic ones would want to go to Auschwitz not only as a gesture of respect to the Polish Jews who died there but as a memorial to the Polish Catholics who also died there, and as a pilgrimage to St. Maxmilian Kolbe and/or St. Edith Stein.

Anyway, this is a very stressful debate, and I am already in trouble for liking Warsaw more than Krakow, which I admit might be perverse. But I have a writing rule that I must always write about that which is most on my mind, and currently it is the question of how much my countrymen and Americans know about Poland.

I approve of patriotism, and I think it is great that Polish men still insist that the women of their country are the most beautiful in the world (a form of patriotism largely abandoned by other men), but approving of patriotism means that I am patriotic, too, and I refuse to lie down and say that Canadians (and our American cousins) know nothing about Poland. We might not know much, but we know something. We did not spend the 19th and 20th centuries blind and deaf to anyone but ourselves, which reminds me: Chopin, Paderewski, Kieslowski. Marie Curie.

Seraphic Goes to Poland

2011-10-10T12:07:00.015+01:00

Goodness. What a busy morning. And I have a lot more thank-you emails and notes to write, but I will take a break to tell you all what Poland was like. Tomorrow I will tell the Inner Child that there will be no more chocolate for her unless she gets cracking on the saga of Prudence, Hubert and Co. The Inner Child would like you to know that her favourite part of Poland was the hot chocolate in her glass in the chocolate shop in Krakow's old Market Square.

First, I must say that I had a marvellous time and was treated like a movie star or maybe a very precious piece of china. I was never without a nice Polish grown-up to watch over me and make sure I didn't get lost or confused or sad. First I was under the care of Tomek of Homo Dei, who later took me to Warsaw and formally handed me to my pal Berenike, who later took me back to Krakow and formally handed me to Dorota and Margareta of Homo Dei, who handed me back to Tomek.

Needless to say, they all fed me delicious foodstuffs including bread, cheese, tomatoes, ham and coffee (breakfast or supper), soups, pierogies and cabbage rolls (dinner). Most of the time this was in the Homo Dei/Redemptorists canteen or restaurants, but in Warsaw Berenike had made me rosow soup and pierogies with her own fair hands. I also had delicious hot chocolate (made from real chocolate, not powder or cheap syrup), paczi (pronounced PONCH-key and are doughnuts with no hole but delicious rose jam inside), other pastries, including a cabbage pasty on the train back to Krakow, and a memorably frothy meringue-covered cake (see photo).

I had four interviews about my book Anielskie Single. The first was on Wednesday in the Homo Dei office by the departing editor of a vocations magazine called eSPe. The second was taped at Radio Warszawa on Thursday by the radio presenter. The third was by a journalist for Nasz Dziennik, which is a huge national daily, also on Thursday. The fourth was back in Krakow on Saturday, by a journalist from Stylowy Magazyn Studencki. All of these interviewers were young women, and two were themselves Single.

By the way, it turns out that the title Anielskie Single is provocative because the very word "Single" (pronounced SING-lah) in Polish carries the connotation of a swinging single, wild and free, and is inescapably connected with "Sex & the City." So you can imagine what the devoutly Catholic majority of Poland thinks of that. Incidentally, when the Revolution gets worse, and Counter-Revolutionaries like me have to flee, B.A. and I shall flee to Poland. It is political Catholic heaven. The Poles don't believe this ("Poland has CHANGED!"), but it is. Blatantly Catholic newspapers have circulations in the hundreds of thousands.

That said, there is a movement to make Poland just like western Europe, but you can call these people cannibalistic toad-philiac witches in the newspapers and on TV and still be invited to cocktail parties after Mass. Listen, I loved Poland so much I almost cried, which was nice for the Poles around, for most of them love their country and like to hear foreigners say nice things about it. They think none of us know anything about Poland, so if you mention you have seen Polish movies or recall that Mickiewicz wrote "Pan Tadeusz" or agree that the 20th century was very lousy for the Poles, you go way up in the local estimation.

People in Krakow questioned me closely about how I liked Warsaw. From their avid looks, I could tell at once that there is a terrible rivalry between Krakow and Warsaw. I discovered that this is because Krakow used to be the capital city and never got over being superceded by the big W.

"When was this?" I asked.

"The sixteenth century."

"Oh."

I have threatened to write a history of Poland based only on what I was told by Poles over four days. I don't think I will, though, because the 20th century part is so sad. It is so sad, and I already know the Jewish part so well, that I really didn't want to think about it.

However, in Krakow, it is impossible not to think about the Holocaust because foreigners always want to see the Jewish neighbourhood, and so you are taken to the Jewish neighbourhood, and because foreigners always recognize the name Schindler you are told "And Schindler's factory is over there!" And you might be feeling at peace with the world while waiting for a tram, looking at a lovely old church across the way, when your guide suddenly says, "This station is where the Jews were loaded for Auschwitz."

Incidentally, a good answer to a proud Krakowian about Warsaw is that Krakow is very beautiful and Warsaw is very big. Telling him or her that you liked Warsaw better is not a good answer, although in my case it happens to be true for reasons that are intensely subjective.

First, Warsaw is the town of my friend Berenike, whom I had not seen for some time, and of her grandmother, whom I liked very much. In Warsaw I stayed not in a monastery but with a family in their flat, and thus saw something of what daily--not holiday--life might be like.

Second, Warsaw's tourist industry does not circle a great well of sadness. In fact, the tourist industry is not that interested in Warsaw because Warsaw was almost completely destroyed in the war, and the busy-bee communists built a lot of blocky things and grandiose monuments to the soi-disant Russian "Liberation." Warsaw is about business and commerce, and the part tourists like best is the "historic" neighbourhood that was carefully rebuilt.

The amusing thing about mid-century communist architecture, from a Torontonian's perspective, is that--unlike most building in Toronto--it actually takes into consideration something other than the profit motive. Thus the blocks look out on nice parks and trees and there are shops underneath and schools nearby. (I am told, however, that the blocks built in the 1980s are atrocious.) Sadly, there are lots of new developments going up in Warsaw that do not give a damn about anything but the profit motive, and this is sad. I hope there is a Catholic architecture movement.

Third, Warsaw is even more exotic and eastern than Krakow, and therefore more thrilling for the child of the 1970s who expected, not the Berlin Wall to fall, but the Bomb to drop. The foreign influences are Russian, not Austrian, since under the Partition (more history) Warsaw was under Russian rule, and Krakow under Austrian.

Fourth, Warsaw has the new Chopin Museum, which I loved. It is a collection of 19th century stuff in what looks like an 18th century building presented in a 21st century way, with state-of-the-art technology, with everything in Polish and English.

Fifth, and this is very weird, Warsaw reminded me of Toronto. Why this is I cannot tell you because the defining feature of contemporary Toronto is how intensely multi-ethnic it is, and Warsaw is 99.9% European, a lot more homogeneously Polish than it was before 1945. However, it reminded me of Toronto all the same. Perhaps it has the confidence of the capital city who believes it holds the keys to the future and thus does not dwell too much on the past.

I got home late on Saturday night, and the next day I went to Trid Mass and the Cup of Tea of Peace and the Gin and Tonic of Concord and the Sunday Lunch of Festive Jubilation. I talked about Poland non-stop to anyone who would listen, which was mostly two young Poles.

At Sunday Lunch I strained to remember which big newspaper had interviewed me.

"You are too leeberal for [buzz-buzz]," said Young Polonia smugly. "It could not have been [buzz-buzz]."

Young Polonia had asked my husband what he thought of his wife traveling so much, and B.A. immediately sang a hymn to how quiet the house was, and how much he had enjoyed his free time, and how little money had been spent, which was British Male for "I support my wife in whatever she chooses to do."

"It was Something Jenik," I said helplessly.

Young Polonia whipped out his palm pilot and found Nasz Dziennik.

"That's it!" I said, and suddenly realized that's what he had meant by buzz-buzz. "I guess I am not too liberal for them after all."

"You will be hated by the Polish Left," said Young Polonia between bouts of pleased, sardonic laughter. "They will hate and revile you."

"Oh goodie," I said, rather struck by the idea of a surviving Polish Left. "How exciting! By the way, did you vote?"

I forgot to mention that all Poland was plastered with election posters, and the mysterious papers were apparently full of it, and the merits and demerits of the PiS party had been explained to me before I left.

"I did register," said YP reluctantly. "I hate politics."

And after some serious thought and, presumably, struggle with his conscience, he got up from the table and went off to vote.

Czy są jakieś pociągi do Krakowa?

2011-10-04T08:08:00.005+01:00

Tonight I leave for Poland. It feels very strange to have returned from one exotic European location only to rush off so soon to another. I must brush up on my small store of Polish words. Alas, someone else took Pimsleur's Polish out of the local library, so I must make do with the BBC.

I must say that my Italian would have been in better nick last week if I had studied that, not Polish, for six weeks. Ah well. Once I come home, I can get right back to memorizing Italian vocab.

Meanwhile, trotting out Polish words for the amusement of parish Poles has become my favourite party trick. I eavesdrop on their dinner conversations, and revel at their fluency. I now can tell where one word begins and another ends, and understand such frequently occurring words as "nie" and "drogu."

I haven't had any luck finding English translations of Polish novels in the local library or in the Oxfam shop, which is too bad. I was hoping to go with some knowledge of Polish artists, but I am left merely with Joseph Conrad and Frederic Chopin, who have conveniently short and easy names. I think there was some Irish-Polish countess who interested herself in Irish theatre. And of course Bonnie Prince Charlie and Henry IX were half-Polish, which is something nice to tell parish Poles, so that they feel included when you sing "Will Ye No' Come Back Again" after Sunday lunch for the fifth week in a row.

Home from Rome Again

2011-10-03T09:03:00.038+01:00

Oh, how British. The first thing my husband and I did when we were released back into Scotland was rush to a friend's house with all our luggage and down a gin-and-tonic.

I was delighted to be among a crowd again, since for me domestic life normally includes at least seven people. Indeed, one of the highlights of our Rome trip was a Saturday night party with ex-pat Trids on a belvedere overlooking the sea. B.A. and I had a marvelous time together, but really we are people-people and an audience of one is really not enough. If this were one hundred years ago, we would have adopted five red-tape-free Dundee orphans by now.

Of course we saw amazing sights. It was our daily practice to abandon our convalescent hostess Hilary and rush off to beach, lunch or nearby Rome. Once we returned, guiltily, with cookies. But mostly we thought only of ourselves and la dolce vita, which we consumed in great mouthfuls. In fact, lunch was the most important two hours of the day. On Saturday the splendours of the Roman Forum were before us, and the Colosseum behind us, but because it was 1:15 in the afternoon, all I could think about, in a very worried way, was LUNCH. In Rome, you must be in your chosen restaurant before 2 PM, or no lunch for you.

I don't have much time to write about our trip, because I have to do all the laundry and prepare for my trip to Poland. However, I will write a few remarks about various famous places to entertain you, especially my doting mother:

Saint Peter's Basilica: Well, of course we went there on our first day, right after lunch. Saint Peter's Basilica is a nightmare for the pious and sensitive because hordes of pagans gambol through it, thinking it funny to splash their hands around in the holy water fonts and flick the drops onto Bernini's cherubs.

However, Saint Peter's Basilica has a lot of saints and blesseds in it, including the ever-popular John XXIII, whose remains continue to look very good indeed. Obviously everything bad about the Council must be blamed on Paul VI.

Saint Peter's also has memorials to such interesting historical figures as Queen Christina of Sweden, Merry del Val, the beautiful Queen Maria Clementina Sobieski Stuart and her Stuart menfolk.

It is great fun to take dozens of photos of the Stuart memorial because the activity catches the attention of the pagans and Protestants, who amble over to see why anyone would be interested in it. Actually, Stuart-obsession can attract and confuse even Italians, as we discovered when we found what was left of the Stuarts' Roman pad off the Piazza Santi Apostoli.

Santissima Trinita dei Pellegrini: This is where Trids and anonymous, clandestine seminarians go to Mass, poppets. Summorum Pontificum or not, priest shortage or not, a seminarian can still find himself expelled from his romantically ancient Roman seminary for being caught at a TLM. It is very sad and gives the lie to the concepts of "openness", "dialogue", "pluralism" and all the other buzzwords every contemporary Catholic M.Div. knows so well. Eventually the stealthy sems will have to come masked; they are just too recognizably seminarian.

Anyway, it is a beautiful baroque church where the Mass of Ages is said with great solemnity three times a Sunday. The homilies are in Italian and--as far as I can tell--of strictest orthodoxy. If you can't get to the Missa Cantata in the morning, there is the 6:30 Low Mass in the evening. Mantillas for ladies--especially young ladies--are de rigeur.

The Tiber River: Grey-green with empty swollen pop bottles, muddy rocks, seagulls and a few foolhardy ducks. It snakes through Rome giving the impression that it has seen everything, and it has.

Gemelli Hospital: We pushed Hilary in her wheelchair onto a train and to the Gemelli, which is a great white, contemporary edifice with a not-bad white statue of Bl. John Paul II standing on wounded nature, represented by a great crack in the stone. (I think. I don't remember seeing the crack at the time, but it's in our photos.)

I like the Gemelli very much. Hilary may disagree, but I don't find it depressing. It is clean and airy, with windows that open and kind-looking doctors and nurses. There was a portrait of Padre Pio in our waiting room. The Gemelli is a Catholic hospital that really is a Catholic hospital, and you get a sense that the Italians will be able to hold out forever against the secularist extremism of Brussels.

Visiting the Gemelli would enlighten all those wondering why Hilary has chosen to be cured of cancer in Italy instead of in England or even Canada.

Campo dei Fiori: This is a marketplace with a brooding, hooded figure of a seminarian who was burned at the stake after being found at the EF Mass in Santissima Trinita dei Pellegrini. It is ringed with okay bars and overpriced restaurants. It is full of stalls of good, beautiful, useful things sold by Italians and tacky t-shirts sold by South Asians.

Mealy-mouthed tourist guides assure you that the old markets are still the real thing, so you may be surprised when you see recent arrivals with their stalls of crap on the edges.* But go further in, and you will find the good stuff and some good bargains, especially if you have come to Italy to load up on socks and underwear.

La Cancelleria: This is a splendid Renaissance palazzo that was the Vatican center of operations for a long time and still belongs to the Vatican. We only went in because it was raining and its loggia provided good shelter, but I'm glad we did for it is very nice to look at.

Piazza Navona: Big and packed with famous fountains, tourists, sketch artists and overpriced restaurants. It shows the changing face of Italy, as many of the waiters are Filipino and South Asian. Speaking as someone who has to jump through hoops and pay large sums to live with my husband in the EU, this interests me. It's also interesting from a Mark Steyn point of view: no Italian babies will = no Italian waiters in the Piazza Navona.

It's also interesting from a "How has Rome changed from when you were there in 1999, Seraphic?" perspective. Twelve years ago, Italy was doggedly mono-cultural with, of course, natural regional differences. And when I was in high school, an entire chapter of my Italian textbook was taken up with the Italian obsession with national characteristics. This was often expressed as Ma non pare italiana. (But she doesn't seem Italian.) And when I was a child, the Italian-Canadian kids were obsessed, simply obsessed, with being Italian. So the idea of a multicultural Italy, an Italy with Indian restaurants and Polish bakeries and African presidents, simply non pare italiana. However, veritas est quod veritas. History marches inexorably on.

On one occasion, BA and I marched through on our way to somewhere else, and we stumbled upon a Leftist demonstration. The banners said this was a Leftist demonstration, so I don't mean that pejoratively. The demonstrators, who were 99.9% white, carried banners that said they were against racism, and a group of plump, middle-aged, fully-dressed white Italians took hold of a big rainbow flag and fluttered it like a parachute in gym class. I felt a bit sorry for them. It was all so retro. There's more diversity in Morningside than there was in that Leftist demonstration. And nobody laid a finger on the pretty fountains.

Trevi Fountain: Hard to find, very big, very crowded with tourists. Obviously one has to see it at least once, which is why I led B.A. to it. I am tempted to say it is over-rated, but it is not. It really is stupendous. But it is over-visited.

Vatican City: It's who you know that counts, and B.A. and I actually know someone with the all-important blue card, and after lunch he led us past the less picturesque guards into Vatican City. Cars zoomed under the arches from the Vatican to outside Rome, and B.A. caught sight of a famous monsignor, just as the famous monsignor just missed running over B.A.'s foot.

The walls of Vatican City appear to me to be a greyish biscuit-yellow. There are guards everywhere demanding to see the magic blue card, and it was all very intimidating. The further in you go, the fewer people you see. They are mostly guards and firefighters. That said, I was there only long enough for our friend to fetch something, and then out we went, although not before the blue card got us a place on a Scavi tour alongside a surprised group of American tourists.

Scavi: The Scavi are marvellous, and you must not miss them. If you do not Know Somebody, then you must reserve well in advance. You stand within the gate of Vatican City and are reminded of the horrible things Nero did to Christians. Then you go in a door and look at complicated models of what was once where the current St. Peter's Basilica is now. Then you go underground and find yourself walking along an Ancient Roman road past pagan mausoleums. It is hot and humid and smells of the ancient dead. Then you back up and start to look at evidence of the presence of Christian Roman dead and then evidence of early shrines to Saint Peter and then (which came as a shock to B.A.) of the actual presence of Saint Peter.

In short, Saint Peter was buried and a little memorial called a "cappuccino" (which is hood-shaped) was built over him. Then a building was built around it. Then a massive church was built around that. Then St. Peter's Basilica was built around that. Everyone remembered and handed on the information that Saint Peter was down there, but you know how modern people are. Tradition is not enough. They have to sniff around and dig. So during the Second World War, various modern-type Catholic archaelogists got permission to sniff around and dig for Saint Peter, and after much Vatican-type politicking and misinformation and left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing, they found him. Then they lost him. Then they found him again. Constantine or someone had wrapped him up in purple and gold, but our modern types stuck him in plastic see-though boxes. (Blessed JP2 ran away with a bit and had it put in his favourite altar.)

As a result, near the end of the tour you can see a bit of Saint Peter through a window underground and if you are with an earnest young American priest he will read from the Gospel and lead you in prayers and, if you have a devout convert husband, your devout convert husband will get down on his knees on the ancient floor. If you are me, you will feel a Canadian embarrassment about bones and wonder if it would not have been more respectful to leave St. Peter quietly covered up in his purple rags and nice cappuccino. Then you will recall that your mother thinks it disrespectful to look at babies' ultrasounds and reflect that you are turning into your mother even sooner than you imagined.

The Spanish Steps: It has just occurred to me that I could be paid for all these interesting and original remarks, so I will leave you with the Spanish Steps. The Spanish Steps are probably lovely, but unfortunately, as soon as you get to them South Asian men start shoving roses into your face. This rather ruins the 1950s dolce vita excitement you may have experienced as you came out of the Metro station.

The rose-pushers do not take "No" for an answer. If you say "No", they say "For free, madam" or "For good luck", and thus their object in forcing roses on you is obscure. It occurred to me that this might be a form of the dodge practised by the Gypsy children who shove newspapers at you while other Gypsy children rifle your pockets. However, I could not say for sure. Meanwhile, the rose-pushers are not Gypsy children but very dark South Asian men who look so similar they may all be related or from the same village in India or Bangladesh. They clearly have no legal right to be there: when the police appear, they run.

Thanks to overenthusiastic suitors in my youth, I have an especial hatred of men forcing roses on me. Thus I was not very polite to the rose-pushers, but scowled savagely and snarled "Va via!" instead. Then I started thinking about grammar, and wondered if I should be wasting the polite form on men actually assaulting me with roses, and shouted "Vai via!"

Goodness. What a mistake. A young South Asian man my height jumped before me, his eyes filled with rage and hatred.

"VAI via?" he demanded. Perhaps he had never been so insulted in all his life. It occurred to me that it must be a horrible life, the life of an illegal migrant in Rome, sustained by ill-concealed, aggressive begging, despised by atmosphere-seeking tourists like me. It also occurred to me that he looked like he was going to hit me, and that I am a woman after all.

White privilege be damned: when it comes to male versus female, and your husband has no idea what is going on, guess who the more vulnerable person is, eh?

"VA vai," I shouted, rolling my eyes, and turned my back on him. Roses scraped against my naked arm, and I marched off in the direction of the Via Condotti.

Meanwhile, the Italians were incredibly nice, and the meals were delicious, and I talked to my favourite restauranteur, in Italian, about his August holidays in the mountains. Hilary was a tremendously kind hostess who let us do our own thing. She got up at 5 AM the morning we left to make us breakfast.

We got home at midnight last night, but that is because we went from gin to Sunday lunch which, with an interval for last-chance Mass at the Cathedral, continued past eleven at night and ended with Gilbert and Sullivan and Jacobite songs.

*Full disclosure: I did buy a pretty ring from a newcomer's stall near St. John Lateran. "It's from India," said the seller, who seemed also to be from India. It was ridiculously overpriced, but my underwhelmed "Ci penso" knocked the price down 2 Euro. I still feel guilty as I doubt it is worth more than 2 Euro, but it is a vastly amusing ring, being mostly a fake-gold tortoise inset with fake jewels.

Did the German Church Insult the Pope?

2011-09-24T15:43:00.003+01:00

While I read this post by A Reluctant Sinner, I was transported back to an ancient tavern near a seminary in a large German city. I was having lunch with a kindly priest-professor. We began to talk about Benedict XVI, or rather, how much various theology professors couldn't stand Benedict XVI. I discovered that this was not a North American phenomenon.

"German academics hate him because he is a German academic," said this priest-professor.

Adam and Eve ate the apple out of pride; Cain slew Abel out of envy.

Meanwhile, I have been receiving sad and panicked letters from a friend I met at the seminary. The German Church is in a state of uproar, with hundreds of theologians and priests signing a demand for Protestant-style Reformation, thousands of lay Catholics leaving the Church, and some of those who stay becoming pretend-priests in their parish churches.

Some of the letters are real pen-and-ink-with-stamp epistles, and this anachronism adds to the seriousness and desperation of the messages. My poor correspondent no longer agreed with his/her professors' reformist views, was finding it harder and harder to hide this, and was starting to wonder if some of his/her grades weren't being assigned arbitrarily.

"Welcome to white martyrdom," I thought, but what I wrote was "Find Martin Mosebach."

The Joy of Creation

2011-09-23T10:39:00.003+01:00

Posting will again be patchy as B.A. and I leave for Rome on Sunday, and I have a house to clean, post to send, laundry to do, money to change... Aaah!

The house is in a bit of a state because I have been writing a story. Not everything I write shows up on the internet: sometimes I write stories and even novels on the sly, with an eye to selling them to people who own good old-fashioned printing presses.

When I am in the middle of a story (or a novel), I get very excited about other stories. While watching Tinker, Tailor's George Smiley swim in a pond, for example, I suddenly thought about how marvellous it is to write stories. It seemed like the most important thing on earth. It isn't, of course. But it momentarily felt like it. What a very human thing it is, to tell or hear stories.

Now must dash.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Jane

2011-09-22T10:22:00.008+01:00

Last week I went to see Jane Eyre with two other Triduanas, and I enjoyed the experience so much that I cajoled B.A. into coming to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with me yesterday. B.A. had turned down Jane Eyre, but amusingly the two films have much in common.

First, these films are adaptations of books. And because they belong to a photographic medium, not a textual medium, the plots have been savagely edited. But that is fine with me. I long ago gave up on expecting films to be faithful to books, and so I judge them for themselves. The one great exception to this tolerant attitude is Neil Jordan's blasphemy against End of the Affair. We hate him, Precious, we hates him forever.

Second, the films employ flashbacks and visual shorthand, so if you haven't read the novels, you have to pay strict attention as the plot development was somewhat hard to grasp. After Tinker, Tailor ended, the cinema buzzed with people working it out.

Third, the films were really about clever photography, not dialogue. Mia Wasikowska as Jane and Gary Oldman as Smiley didn't talk that much. The camera zoomed in on their stolid faces and recorded the emotions that flitted across them. I rather enjoyed that. It made for restful, atmospheric movies. Of course, Jane Eyre is rather more restful, having neither Turkish hooker sex scenes nor brutal assassinations.

I just read a review of Tinker, Tailor by Peter Hitchens, and he loves the early novels of Le Carre, so he fairly danced with rage about the film. But I was never in any danger of that for, as I was not allowed to read Le Carre as a child, I never got around to him. What I wanted from the film was to see England in the early 1970s.

I was in England in the early 1970s, as a matter of fact, for my father spent an adventurous post-doc year at Oxbridge, and brought along his then-small family. I was very small indeed, but my memory was in good working order, and I absorbed a lot of detail and atmosphere. I wash my hands of 1980s Britain, but the early 1970s helped make me me. I, too, drank the milk ration.

Peter Hitchens wails that the voices are all wrong, but I don't remember the English voices of the early 1970s. What I do remember, and recognized in the film, was the complete absence of Ikea products. Furniture was shabby but solid and dark. There were indeed piles of paper everywhere. People smoked indoors instead of out, and it rained a lot. All men, including my young father, wore Smiley's raincoat. And the yellow-green-and-orange floral plastic shopping bag hanging by a door almost waved to me. That print was ubiquitous in the 1970s. Seeing that print was like seeing a family member peeking out of the screen. It was as if a frame of our of our earlier home movies had been glued into this 2011 film.

So although Hitchens hints that the spies would have all sounded twice as posh (or at least strangled) as they did in this film and claims that women did not use the F-word back then, the film looked very 1970s to me. I rejoiced in every scene with messy wooden desks. I also enjoyed that the film was shot in such a light as to make it look like it was almost always raining, because that is exactly what England was like to infant me.

As for Jane Eyre, I loved the voices of the principals, for they were all Northern to one extent or another. It was obvious that Jane, Mr. Rochester and Mrs Fairfax all knew that, due to their positions, they weren't supposed to sound so Northern and thus spoke as RP as they could. But they were Northern, all the same, and it was charming and possibly authentic to the mid-19th century moors.

My one quibble was that there wasn't enough Helen Burns. Helen Burns, who is a devout Calvinist, is a necessary foil to the rather nastier form of Calvinism at Lowood School. (Now that I think of it, Cath of Ninety-six-and-ten reminds me of Helen Burns, only she did not die of typhoid as a child.)

The absolutely brilliant thing about Jane Eyre, as gets forgotten by sex-addicts obsessed with Mr Rochester, is that it is not about Jane's one great erotic adventure, but about Jane's refusal to be anyone but herself. She is constantly confronted by women and then men who want her to be this or that, but she refuses. She stands up to everyone: her bad cousin, her bad aunt, her bad school and then various men who try to push her around.

The marvellous thing about Mr Rochester is that he doesn't try to push Jane around, just bamboozle her into something pleasant but illegal. One realizes that the man is redeemable because he can see Jane's worth and admire her from the depths of his being for being a thousand times less pliable than himself at her age.

In case you don't know, I won't tell you what happens to Mr Rochester, but it occurs to me that it is good that today men and women of good will meet each other on greater terms of equality, so that it is not necessary for them to undergo ghastly misfortunes in order to bring them to our level. It struck me, as I watched the movie, that supernatural intervention or not, Jane could not see Mr Rochester again until heaven had granted her good fortune and him bad fortune in equal amounts. It would have been all magnanimous him and little her, and what woman of spirit could put up with that? Ugh!

Update: I can't resist mentioning my absolutely favourite part of Tinker, Tailor. It is at the office Christmas Party for the top British Intelligence office, amid drunkenness and snogging, when a man dressed as a cross between Lenin and Santa Claus gets up onto a stage. He begins to lead the party-goers in the Soviet national anthem, and more and more of them join in. They sing in perfect Russian, of course, and it is all very hilarious and ironic and yet strangely a tribute to their opposite numbers, their sworn enemies, who are of course probably more like them than anyone else in England.

We Spit Bullets

2011-09-21T09:18:00.009+01:00

I am supposed to be working on other stuff, but I thought I would link to something amusing to entertain Hilary, whose eyelashes are falling out. The eyelashes were pretty tough, having lasted the first two bouts of chemo, but three rounds were too much for them.

First I must explain the following link. My Irish ancestors fled Ireland for the USA in the 1840s, and I once tried to find my direct Ireland-fleeing ancestor in the shipping lists at Boston College, but sadly he shared his name with hundreds of other Irish refugees. He popped up in the Irish emigre paper, though, looking for his brother John. If John had arrived in the USA, he should now join the family in Watertown, Wisconsin. (I went cold when I read that, by the way. It was almost like seeing a ghost.)

My dad tells me the family flourished in Watertown, Wisconsin before our particular branch went to Chicago. (He himself came to Canada in the 1960s.) Because my father is the soul of respectability, I always assumed all his family, the Irish-Americans of his father's side, were, too.

I knew that the German-Americans of his mother's side could be rare terrors, because my grandmother filled me in on family gossip when my mother was out of earshot. For example, my Great-Aunt Meta had a crush on Prince Henry of Prussia, and so threw a fit at an American Red Cross dinner when someone insulted his brother, the Kaiser. I have no idea if this is true. Apparently my great-grandfather called my grandmother "Die kleiner vixen," so possibly I should take all her stories with a grain of salt.

My father, on the other hand, has his own hilarious stories to illustrate the quirks of our Germans. There is a particularly good one about my Great-Aunt Tilly, who was addicted to cherry soda and weighed well over 300 pounds. And then there is Great-Uncle Adolf. I forget what it was that Great-Uncle Adolf did, but he was named Adolf, which is always good for a giggle.*

In contrast, the Irish of the family have always been presented to me as pattern-cards of Catholic virtue. If they married at all, they married late. They occasionally became nuns. They befriended a historically important American priest. They threw fits when my infant grandfather and his brother wandered into an Irish wake in a part of Chicago they weren't supposed to be in and, being male, were offered cheroots. So far, so respectable.

However, my attempts to find outside accounts of my family turned up this. (Type "Cummings" in the search box, and then click on "Saloon Patron.") William, the hero of this story is not my direct ancestor, but I suspect he must be a great-great-uncle or a cousin of some degree. And I must say I was delighted to make his acquaintance.

That reminds me: my grad school (English Lit) pal Christine Sismondo has written a history of the American saloon. It is called America Walks Into a Bar. It is getting great reviews all over the place, and it is the kind of book men, not just women, like to read. If you are interested in American history or in American bars, it is the book for you. If not, buy it for someone who is.

Christine's first book is called Mondo Cocktail, and it is hilarious. When I first saw it, I frizzled with envy, for writers are greatly given to envy and the cover is gorgeous. But then I bought four or five copies, for giving to male friends and relations. I gave one to priest, one to a brother, possibly one to another brother, one to Volker 2 and one to B.A. I saved one for me because it makes me giggle so much and eventually I will follow the cocktail recipes.

*I should explain that my father's mother was born in 1904, and thus all his older relations were of 19th century vintage.

This is Why I Like Taki

2011-09-20T16:12:00.007+01:00

Not too long ago, I was in an Edinburgh Italian sandwich shop with a gang of Edinburgh University students who dressed and spoke as if they were extras in their child-millionaire best-mate's own personal recreation of the 1981 Granada Brideshead Revisited.

I must have looked about a million years old, but it was awesome. I felt like Lady Marchmain, but with only half her charm and none of the money. I was wearing an excellent hat.

What interested me most about this gaggle of guppies were their accents. Some of the accents were bona fide Brideshead posh, born of English parents and public school. Some were musically Scots, of a homely yet cleaned up make. And some were fake. I mean, they were fakity-fake-fake-fake.

"Dew yew," said one of the boys in his fakity-fake-fake Yah accent, "like Takay?"

He meant Taki, and as the other boys claimed no knowledge of who Taki was, I asked if he read Taki's Magazine.

He did not know that Taki had a magazine, and now, months, later, I wonder if he meant Saki, especially as Saki would have found his artifice wonderfully delicious.

I have just been reading Taki's Magazine, which is not for the sensitive, and after tiring of his cruder writers, confined myself to the thoughts of the great man. Taki, though breathtakingly rude, is never crude. I have never read anyone like him for invective. I note, however, that he approves highly of Poles.

I was particularly struck by this article on martial arts, about which I know a little, having boxed for two years. Taki fought competitively for fifty years, so is, figuratively as well as literally, a much better man than I.

It occurs to me that writing and martial arts have a lot in common. First of all, you have to get into the ring. You can say you're going to write all you want, but you're not a writer unless you actually get stuck in and see a piece (or a poem or a story or a book) to the last bell.

Second, you have to be brave. You have to be willing to bloody sweet little noses and to have your own sweet little nose bloodied.

Third, you have to be somewhat unpredictable, so as to win the respect of your reader. You have to get in under her guard and pop her in the chops, so to speak.

Fourth, you cannot give up. Taki points out that in judo it is very easy to give up, but you mustn't do it. In writing, if you are felled to the mat, you must get up again before someone counts ten, or your soul will shrivel.

Although I know perfectly well boxing is a dumb and dangerous sport, especially if you are female and depend on your brain, I am sometimes sad that I do not box any more. At such times I blame very much the little Italian grandfather who used to hang out in the gym and once, after watching me do my usual unsmiling two hour routine, asked me why I was training so hard. I didn't know, and because I didn't know, I quit. The heart went right out of me, which is fatal, fatal, fatal.

However, writing is a lot like boxing, and as that was my first sport, it will probably be my last sport, too.

By the way, here is my most recent CR article. Hilary White of LifeSite News noted that my hair is very flat in my CR photo, and I explained that it had been held down and ironed for the occasion.

This is Why I Like Christopher Hitchens

2011-09-20T10:41:00.005+01:00

Yeah, I know he writes a lot of bad stuff about the Pope, Catholics, Christianity.... If I found myself beside him at a cocktail party, I would be terrified. If forced to say something, I would probably squawk, "Do you like my shoes?"

However, he did find out if water-boarding was torture or not by having himself water-boarded. He might have been (for surely cancer has gently removed some of these activities) a chain-smoking, booze-guzzling, Catholic-hater, but he certainly had guts. He is also the kind of man who can admit--and in print, too--that he has discovered he was wrong about something, and that I respect, too.

Flirtation in Britain

2011-09-19T12:48:00.027+01:00

Those of the Edinburgh Trids who generally regroup after Mass for a Gin and Tonic were deprived this Sunday of our Gin and Tonics. Instead we were waved away to an alternate location at the top of a fire escape where we were fed beer, wine and sausages by an Australian who indicated that lunch was ready by banging a metal bin lid. Sundry Europeans were frightened and confused (like bears) by the metallic din, but being a colonial myself, I recognized it for what it was and rushed into the kitchen to chow right down.

While I was in the kitchen, the Beauty of the Parish (Schola Division) sidled up to me to claim that someone had plagiarised my thoughts on flirtation and published them in this week's Spectator under the headline "The world's worst flirts."

He had at first wondered if I were, in fact, the authoress--writing under a pseudonym--until he got to the following passage: "It's no surprise that British women have such a loose reputation abroad. We are so starved of masculine interest that we've no resistance to the smooth patter of continental Lotharios. Bellissima, they murmur as champagne is poured and hair is stroked and our knickers just fall off." The Beauty of the Parish (Schola Division) decided that I would not have written that last bit, even under a false name.

As a matter of fact, the author was Julia Stephenson, and I am sure all words and ideas are hers and hers alone. And, indeed, I do not entirely agree with her, for--having read her very entertaining piece--I suspect she was writing about Englishmen, not British men, per se, for most Scotsmen are not at all deficient in flirtation.

Scotsmen can be outrageously flirtatious, not because they want sex, necessarily, but because they want women to listen to them blether. If you giggle enough and allow Scotsmen to talk as much as they possibly can, they will probably fall in love with you. This happened to me in an Edinburgh bus station once. I probably would have spoken more, but I had really bad jet lag, and the end result is that I am now married to a Scot and partly deaf.

I once warned my visiting buddy Trish that if she, a woman alone, walked into any pub in Edinburgh, she would immediately be pounced on by a Scotsman longing to blether. She did not believe me. She thought that, being 40, she would be as invisible as 40 year old women generally are in Toronto. Ha! Double ha! All she had to do was set foot in the "Mitre" and--whoosh!

This is not to say that all Scotsmen love women. No. There are Scotsmen who are deeply afraid of women. Instead of pouncing like voluble wolf spiders on women who wander into pubs, they stare into their pint glasses and hunch their shoulders up around their ears. It is very hard to flirt with Scotsmen like that. You have to wait until they are tremendously drunk and sentimental.

"Flirtation," said the Beauty of the Parish (Sch. Div.),"can be just good manners. And it is certainly fine for married women."

"Do expand on that," I said. "B.A. darling, will you leave the room for a moment?"

"Ha ha," chortled the BotP (SD) but retreated to the buffet table.

Julia Stephenson seems to blame women just as much as men for the supposed British inability to flirt. She contrasts her own light-hearted non-relationship with her French cheesemonger with the behaviour of an English tea-shop lady who stalks the man. And as much as I enjoyed her article, I think she missed the hub of the matter, which is that the English are too honest and earnest. Unlike Continentals, Scots, the Irish and me, they have no idea how to lie charmingly for fun.

Before I was married, I usually saved my flirtatiousness for my giddy female friends, for we all knew that I was near-fatally attracted to men and thus did not mean a damn thing I said. And now that I am married, and thus robbed of my giddy female friends, I have had to adjust my natural flirtatiousness for an almost entirely male social environment. (Yesterday's Trid Mass count, by the way, was 20 women, 41 men and a guide dog.)

This new context is, of course, fraught with challenges. First, the Scotsmen might take my natural flirtatiousness for permission to talk my ears off. Or, if they belong to the gynophobic minority, they might look distressed and hunch their shoulders around their ears. Second, the Englishmen might take me seriously, either tut-tutting on behalf of my husband or wondering where a ladder might be. I think it very arrogant of someone to think he could steal me from my husband just because I suggested it in the first place.

There is also the sad fact that literal-minded men might be personally affronted. Men are not, as a group, particularly beautiful, but they take it as a personal insult when women aren't either. I keep forgetting that I am not particularly beautiful although, like the late Duchess of Windsor, I have a certain charm. I suspect it is born of forgetting that I am not particularly beautiful.

Once, in my boxing days, I flirted outrageously with an attendant doctor to persuade him that he ought not to stop my match just because I was bleeding profusely from the nose. This is on video-tape, and after watching my gore-soaked, eyelash-batting performance, I understood why the doctor laughed so much. He did, however, let the fight continue. Result!

The way to proceed, I have discovered as a married lady of my very late 30s, is to flirt with Poles in their twenties, whose future wives are currently in kindergarten, and with Irishmen, including Andrew Cusack, who truly appreciate the art of pleasant piffle. Oh, and there is also my husband. However, the only way to make marital flirtation palatable to people at parties is to joke about divorce. The more we joke about divorce, the more our friends are convinced we are a delightful couple. This will serve to heighten the general amazement when I really do run off with the Beauty of the Parish (SD).

;-)

Holiday from Blogging

2011-09-14T23:13:00.001+01:00

The Inner Child may get her act together and write more Bodice Ripper, but I am otherwise taking a break from blogging.

Researched and Wrote All Day

2011-09-14T00:21:00.001+01:00

I sent in my big fancy assignment. Is controversial. Will make or break. As usual.

Now I will collapse. I have not listened to my Polish CDs for TWO WHOLE DAYS!

Fortunately, the Beauty of the Parish (Non-Schola Division) has returned to Scotland and is coming over on Thursday to listen to my pronunciation.