I've Seen This Happen In Other People's Lives
Today we took a trip to the Dallas Museum of Art, primarily to see a piece by Phil Collins. Not the baldy chocolate-salesman but the Turner-nominated artist-type fella, who happens to be based in Glasgow. For The World Won't Listen he travelled to Colombia, Turkey and Indonesia, and filmed Smiths fans singing karaoke versions of the songs from the titular album. The installation consists of three screens, each showing a performance from one of the three locations, synchronized such that each one is singing the same song at the same time. There are barriers between them, so that you can concentrate on a single performance if you want to without the others bleeding through, or you can wander along the back and experience bits of all free. There are some great performances, some rabid Morrissey wannabes, some who are obviously having a lot of fun, some who seem genuinely moved by the songs that they are singing, and some that are just comically bad, but all are engaging with songs written in rain-sodden Manchester, thousands of miles away from their home, but which have a universality that's carried them around the world.
The DMA is hosting the piece in its completed form for the first time, but I dare say it will turn up elsewhere, and Glasgow seems like a likely candidate since it's where the artist makes his home. If it should turn up near you, I'd highly recommend it, particularly if you are now or ever have been a Smiths fan. You'll leave with a smile on your face, at least.
Boxing Day
Or, as they call it in America, "the day after Christmas." Snappy, huh? We are in Texas over Christmas and New Year. I promised to write, in detail, about my Boxing Day as part of the Day In The Life meme that's going around my friends who blog. I should have really done it "live" yesterday, however much of it was spent driving around, so I will attempt to reconstruct it from memory. However, I cannot do so without first announcing something that I haven't discussed on here.
After suffering a miscarriage earlier in the year, R is now pregnant again. The first six weeks or so were pretty nerve-wracking, since the last pregnancy had failed at about that time, but she's now about twelve weeks along, and we have seen a healthy little passenger on the ultrasound screen. We are both elated and terrified, which is, of course, totally normal, and having to adjust to the idea of becoming parents in the new year. Anyway, that somewhat influenced our decision to come back to Texas for Christmas, even though we were here last Christmas and in the summer, since after this holiday we are going nowhere for quite a while.
Jet lag and the remains of the cough that a nasty cold has left her with woke R up at about four, but she managed to come back to bed and doze off again for a little while until about eight, when her hunger alarm went off and she announced that she had to have breakfast asap, so we got dressed quickly and went out. The previous couple of days had been sunny and relatively warm, but now it had turned grey, dreich and cold, and felt almost exactly like Glasgow had before we left. We got in the car, and drove to a nearby branch of Corner Bakery, where we had coffee (decaffinated for R), scrambled eggs, potatoes and the crispy bacon that Americans miss so much when they come to the UK. The debate between American bacon and our pink, fleshy kind is not one into which I will be drawn. I like them both for different purposes. I wouldn't put American bacon on a roll, though, as it's likely to shatter and send lethal shards of hard bacon into the head of an innocent passer-by. And nobody wants that.
Fed and satisfied, but feeling a little unhealthy from our fatty breakfasts, we went to Whole Foods, an absolutely massive grocery store by our standards but fairly normal here, and bought some fruit, before heading over to R's mum's house and picking her up. Whever we come over to Texas we always go and buy clothes at Old Navy, since they are dirt cheap to begin with, and even cheaper with the exchange rate being what it is. And, of course, Christmas being over, the sales have started, and a lot of stuff has half-off again. They aren't the greatest clothes in the world, but I'm someone who's happy so long as his body is covered, warm enough, and comfortable, so they do me fine. R needed some maternity clothes, since although her bump isn't particularly obvious yet, it is making itself felt and her regular jeans are becoming too tight to wear. She got some preggie pants, and I a few pairs of boxers and a couple of jumpers.
After clothes shopping, R felt it was time to eat again, so she got some drive-through chicken nuggets (I'm done dropping company names. Don't want this blog to sound like a long ad for all the shops and services in the Plano area.) which she ate in the car. I was still stuffed from breakfast so didn't order anything of my own, but she has a passenger to feed, of course. Once sated, we drove back to her sister's house.
Between the eleventh and fourteenth week of a pregnancy, there is an ultrasound scan that can be performed which can detect an elevated risk of Down's Syndrome in the developing foetus. It's called Nuchal Translucency Screening, and cannot be done outside of that window of opportunity. We could have it done in the UK, but by the time we get back we will be just on the cusp of fourteen weeks, so we decided to pay to have it done while we were in the US. R's sister-in-law works as a nursing assistant, and was able to get us an appointment for that afternoon, so after a quick stop we headed over to the hospital. I had never been in an American hospital before, and the experience was a surreal one. Yes, I had expected something a little bit more modern than the tatty cash-starved NHS can provided, given that they are basically businesses that can set their own prices, but this place felt more like a hotel, and a posh one at that. No unpleasant, plastic bucket seats for this waiting room. Instead we sink into plush sofas and watch the time on a pseudo-antique grandfather clock. It is certainly comfortable, but there's something obscene about such opulence in a country where those without insurance are left crippled by unmanagable debt for the crime of falling ill, and I'd take the scuffed lino of the NHS any day. Anyway, we're soon called into the scanning room, and the sonographer is a pleasant enough lady who asks lots of questions about Scotland. "What do they think of George Bush over there?" she asks. When we tell her that he's not too popular, she seems relieved, and tells us that a lot of her co-workers are hard-core Republicans and that she feels she can't express her own viewpoint without getting shouted down, which seems like a shame.
We had a scan just the other week, but it's easy for the idea of R being pregnant to become vague and abstract again without direct evidence. It's all brought home again when we see the little fella/lass on the screen. Everything seems fine, and the sonographer lets us hear the heart hammering away, but it's not lying in the correct position for her to take the measurements she needs, so there is a fair bit of faffing around until she is able to do so. Fortunately, when she does so it looks like everything is fine, which is, of course, a relief.
Elated, both by the good news and by seeing the wee yin again and knowing that, as far as can be told, he or she is doing well, we headed home. We thought about going out to see a movie, but R felt too tired and a bit nauseous so we decided to skip it and stay home for the evening. I played a bit of Zelda on the DS, getting stuck on the Isle of the Dead, ate some chicken soup that R's sister made, took her mum home, watched the Snuff Box DVDs that I'd burned to bring over, then went to bed. I read for a little while (The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.), before turning out the light and going to sleep.
And that was Boxing Day 2007. Both banal and quite exciting.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Fog
Last night we went out after work to do a bit of late Christmas shopping. Fog had descended over Glasgow, and gave the lights a soft halo. The air sparkled, implying snow, and we actually felt a little bit of seasonal cheer for the first time.
But fuck me, it was cold!
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Christmas
When I was a boy, Christmas was a big cart full of exciting magical surprises, shackled to a tiny, geriatric snail. Nowadays it feels more like a lorry full of concrete with an annoying siren on top, that you can hear and be mildly irritated by from a long way off, but then comes roaring over the hill when you least expect it, giving you only a fraction of a second to leap out of the way, and every year that lorry gets upgraded with a bigger, faster engine and even more concrete.
I used to be such a fan of Christmas as well, even well into my adulthood. I am worried that my growing Scrooginess may be an early symptom of turning into my dad.
We are going back to Texas this year, and even though the date is approaching quite rapidly and causing a little last-minute panic, I am looking forward to it. Even the actual travel isn't too bad. It's a long flight, but sitting about reading, playing my DS, and having food brought to me - even if it is some of the worst food known to man - sounds like a good way to spend a day to me, though the inevitable airport security faff I could live without. Rest assured, I shall be nailing my passport to my forehead. We wouldn't want a repeat of the Munich incident, would we?
Don't try robbing our flat when we're away, as we have a cat-sitter keeping our little furry brats company, who is an expert in the deadly arts. Possibly.
Labels: christmas, diary, travel
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postMonday, December 17, 2007
Parp!
Not the sound of my bottom, you will be relieved to hear, but my nose, as my body as been colonized by an unwelcome cold virus and converted into a snot factory. R has it as well, and worse than I do, so at its height on Saturday I just about managed to do some half-hearted flat tidying before spending the rest of the day slobbing about on the sofa. My head started to clear a bit on Sunday, just in time for an appalling gig with the band-I'm-in-what-is-not-the-choir, but much of today has been spent blowing my nose and annoying my workmates.
Christmas is just around the corner, and I have only bought a couple of things so far, so I must get my finger out. The work Xmas party was on Saturday, and while it was, as you'll be sick of hearing me moan, exactly the same as every other work Xmas party ever, I did quite enjoy myself. I think because it was in a reasonably small venue and so felt more like our party, rather than one set in a huge hotel function room shared with twenty other companies. And while the DJ played the standard work Xmas party set, he at least kept the cheesy banter to a minimum.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postSunday, December 09, 2007
Mixed Successes
Well, for all my claims of busy-ness, this weekend has been a bit of a mixed bag. We didn't go to the movies on Thursday after all, since R was feeling characteristically green. Instead I spent most of that evening going through an iTunes library that suddenly seemed to be entirely populated by the unlistenable and unpopular and picking out tunes that people might like to hear at Friday's choir Christmas party.
Said part went pretty well in the end. I had the easy job, DJ-wise, since I went on relatively near the end when everybody was already pissed and dancing. No warming-up required, I just put on lots of dancefloor-friendly crowd pleasers that I thought would go down well, and people kept on dancing, so I feel justified in calling my first attempt as a DJ a success. Havng a sympathetic audience made up of pissed-up friends with broadly similar musical tastes helped a lot, I have no doubt, but watching folk shake their asses to Can was a definite highlight, and I got home pretty drunk and elated.
Saturday and Sunday have, so far, been mince, and I have failed to finish the story I wanted to get in for Tuesday's writing class. It's already too late, since they have to be submitted in time for them to be emailed out to the rest of the class so they can read them in advance. Oh well. I can churn out a 50,000 word novel in a month, but having to write a story that other people are going to read and critique has re-awakened my inner editor, and he demands more quality than I have in me to give, I fear.
Labels: diary
link | 0 comment(s) | links to this postThursday, December 06, 2007
Dear Santa, please bring me more hours in the day.
Well, November, and the task I had set myself during that month, may be over but I am no less busy. The choir we're in has gigs coming up, a reactivated and reconfigured version of the on-again-off-again band I'm in also has a gig next week, my writing class ends next week and there's a short story that I'd like to get finished and critiqued, I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet, nor signed a single card, there are two Christmas parties coming up, I volunteered to DJ at one of them, the flat is a tip, we're going to see The Darjeeling Limited tonight, we're going through to Edinburgh at the weekend to check out mar-c's exhibition at the National Museum, and I've started work in earnest on the next version of Poster. Phew. It's nice to be active, but I'm feeling a wee bit overwhelmed at the moment.
On the subject of DJ'ing at a Xmas party, it's the choir who are having it, and I won't be the only one playing records (or queueing up songs in iTunes more like) so it should be quite informal and fun and with no need to resort to the standard Xmas-party playlist that I get to hear every. bloody. year. at our work do. Having said that, I volunteered in an overcaffeinated rush of self-confidence, and now I'm feeling a bit nervous about it. Any advice you can give someone whose closest experience to DJing a party is bring a mix-tape to play on a long car journey?