I’m trying to read a book a week on the streetcar on the way downtown each morning. The feeling of finishing a book is a splendid one and if accomplished during a morning commute, shunts my day into the success category before most people have even struggled to their desks. Very little needs to happen […]
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The Parish Talent Show
I have always had an unreasonable fear of singing in public. While I dream of being the one who vaults in front of the microphone to entertain the amazed masses, I am instead the one who blunders to the back of the room, making panicstruck attempts to blend into the curtains, foliage or profiterole […]
Me and the Alphabet of Knowledge
Despite my Scottish accent, both my names are as Irish as a grumpy donkey tied outside a whitewashed cottage, seagulls trying to steal chips on Dun Laoire Pier, and the ability to tolerate excessive levels of shocking shamrockery in order to fleece tourists of pint-money during the weeks around St. Patrick’s Day. Aefa is a […]
“You speak really good English for someone from Scotland”
Sometimes people say this kind of stuff to me when I’m on the road. Sometimes I eavesdrop. 1. “You speak really good English for someone from Scotland.” Gas station attendant, Hoquiam, Washington, Chapter 6: Hellhole of the Pacific 2. “Well, when you find a woman who ain’t your cousin round these parts, you want to grab them […]
No Knees in Memphis
At Memphis Scottish Festival, a large, boisterous man hustles me into a front row seat in what he tell me is “The History Tent.” I am alarmed to find myself equipped with a sheaf of lyrics to Jacobite love songs. I manage a tuneless drone along to “Over the Sea to Skye” and then start […]
Mosey on down to Kittrell, TN
At Memphis’ Scottish Festival, I get talking to a blonde woman in an olde stylee milkmaid type get up. She has the most Dukes of Hazzard accent I have yet heard in my time in Tennessee. I am delighted. I didn’t think accents like this were real. She asks me where I’m from. “Glasgow,” I […]
The Scottish Inn
At the Scottish Inn in Memphis, I am handed a room key card and a menu for Marlowe’s Restaurant and Ribs in case I want a “pick up.” I look down at the menu and note that they offer, as well as the generous offer of pick up and delivery to the restaurant in a […]
A convoke of pies
No idea why, but some weird spambot blog has used a post of mine but fed it through some sort of olde worlde Babelfish translator thingy. This is now my favourite edit of this chapter so far. I would never have thought of describing my discomfort as “fugacious.” Here are a few of my favourite […]
Learning to be Scottish in American-English
The last couple of days, I’ve been working on pesky wee details about the book. Like whether it’s in British-English or American-English. At the moment it’s mid-Atlantic. Half and half. I live considerably to the left of the Atlantic and write for a slew of US outlets, so writing in US English makes sense. But […]
Resolve.
Last week AOL asked me to write a piece on travel resolutions for their readers. While those five are definitely contenders for my own personal list of resolutions (with the possible exception of drinking plastic bags of tea—I prefer it by the bucket), my version features a few alternative aspirations for 2011. 1 Wreak revenge […]
