Some Day's Just Suck, You Know

I woke up with a horrible taste and a in frog my throat in this morning so I coughed hoping that would get rid of both. Only it didn't. If I had anyone here to speak to I would now probably sound like the boogie man that lives under the bed. Only this boogie man couldn't get under the bed because after spending 4 hours on top of a dodgy mattress he had to move to the couch for a slightly better night's rest. Only now that I am up and about do I realise how sore my back is.

But on the upside I think I could do a mean voiceover for horror movie previews.

How do you get that job anyway?

Zucchini's & God.

"Heavenly Father doesn't want me to wear a Zucchini" said my 5 year old step daughter this weekend.

My initial reaction was "Huh!"

And then I realised she was looking at an old photograph of herself taken this summer where she was wearing a bikini. Things were starting to make a little bit more sense.

I was still confused as to where she might get the idea that God would not want her to go swimming. It is one of her favourite things to do so whenever we have the children we try to take them swimming if there is enough time, so I wasn't sure why she suddenly thought that swimming was bad. But it turned out that it wasn't swimming that was bad but just the wearing of the bikini. Now I can understand the logic of this. I'm sure there will be a time in the future where I might suggest to her myself that what she is wearing is inappropriate, even if I do feel that at the age of 5 this attitude might be a tad premature I still respect the right for someone else to have a different opinion on the matter. But what I don't understand was why her step mother would use God as the controlling factor in this instance.

I admit I am not the most godly of people, but despite what I may have said here in the past in jest I am respectful of other people's beliefs. But I cannot understand it when people will not take responsibility for themselves, for their own rules, and instead prefer to have a 5 year old and a 3 year old scared of what God might do to them.

I am new to parenting myself. Up until March of this year I had no experience of parenting so I can understand how difficult it is to parent and how difficult it might be to be accepted as a step parent by children. I know from experience that I am not as relaxed about parenting as my wife is, or their real father is. I see dangers everywhere. Knifes, scissors, crowds, flip flops going awry are just some of the some of the things that scare me as a new parent. But I make rules when the children are with me to help limit the dangers. Sometimes I am the bad guy as a result. I hate being the bad guy, and sometimes I admit I can take it personal but I prefer to take on that role if it limits some of the dangers out there when the kids are under my protection.

As much as I do not like it when my step children misbehave I would much rather them to think of God as loving and take full responsibility myself for the rules that I set in the house and anything that may happen because of it. I cannot understand why anyone would want young children to be frightened of God. In my view it goes against the whole spirit of religion. And its so 18th century.

No End To My Wants

So I got my craving for Ceviche satisfied last weekend (much to the dismay the following morning of my better half) but this weekend I have a new desire.

It's Autumn. Which generally for me means one thing to look forward to. No not Christmas (that when I am this skint is too far away to think about just yet). Not Thanksgiving (although I am getting strangely excited for my first experience of it). No this is the time of year I look forward to the rugby season starting proper. For me the club game in Scotland hasn't lived up to its promise from the days when the amateur sport turned professional in the 90s. So for me the season really starts when the Autumn Internationals begin.

I've loved the game of rugby since I was fortunate enough to go to the right school that actually involved it in the sporting curriculum. I learned to play just before the game turned professional, when Scotland had some amazing talents in the international squad and when Bill McLaren still commentated for the BBC. Had I gone to that same school now, I might not have had the same interest in the sport I have today. For a start there is a shortage of talented players in Scotland now that would find a place in a World XV but since when has that stopped us Scots enjoying our sport? We seem to revel in the underdog role.

I think it is most likely the lack of a Bill McLaren type of commentator on the box that would mean I wouldn't have the same interest in the sport. Today's commentators seem to lack the enthusiasm and joy for the sport that the great man had. The commentators of today certainly don't lack passion for the sport but its somehow not manifested in the same way. The ex players that commentate today focus a lot more on the mistakes within the game rather than the good plays. The English commentators especially, seem biased in the opinions. Bill in contrast focused less on the mistakes, mentioning them but laughing them off perhaps with a quick memorable turn of phrase and was enthusiastic about good plays no matter the nationality the executioner of the play was. I suspect it was his enthusiasm for the game that meant I learnt to play and enjoy the game more than I would have from just the training field alone. It is his approach to commentating that allows someone who is new to the sport to enjoy it as an outsider looking in. A neutral not sure of the rules does not want to listen for 5 minutes of half time why a particular play was bad, if the play breaks down they can see it for themselves they want to be able to see the more enjoyable elements. Sport is serious but at the same time its there for us as entertainment.

Thanks to Bill, today I look forward to the Autumn internationals. I wish I could take my wife to the home of Scottish rugby, Murrayfield this weekend to watch Scotland take on Australia. Not because I expect Scotland to win, I don't we have beaten them since 1982, but I would love her to take in the atmosphere of the stadium as the national anthem is sung. I would love her to enjoy a great exciting game, one with hard tackles but unlike football (soccer) one with fair play and none of the dramatics of the over paid football players.

Had Bill McLaren not retired in 2002 and his voice could be heard around the stadium I suspect she might even be suitably distracted from the rain and the cold wind to enjoy the game that bit more. But that would for me maybe a good reason to stay here in Utah as I would be sure to hear from her at the end of the game "Why can't you talk like him? I'd love you forever if you talked like him."

Sadly though I can neither talk with his Hawick lilt or take my wife to the game at the weekend. Life is not fair sometimes.

I suppose we could go to the Fiddlers Elbow to enjoy the game but that will only be an option if the game is on late enough back home to take into the account for the time difference here for the place to be open. And its not the same as watching it in pub back home, full of Scots and Australians with an invested interest in the game.

Sweet Perfection

Now I don't want you thinking that having a hot wife is all bad. When you have a hot wife, it does have its upsides. For example - unlike in my childhood, I no longer have to add a hot water bottle at the foot of the bed on cold winter nights.

That comes in handy if you don't drink tea, coffee, or hot chocolate and therefore as a result have no kettle in which to heat a hot water bottle.

When your hot wife even comes with a sensor and an adjustable thermostat that automatically recognises when you leave the bed for a toilet break and makes the bed nice and toasty for your return its sweet perfection in the human form.

The Downside Of Having A Hot Wife

When I was young and single I could see no downsides to having a beautiful hot wife that was horny all the time. It seemed such a win-win situation for those lucky buggers who managed to capture themselves such a beast. In those long years of being single I think I must have thought to my myself that I deserve that too (yes I really am that humble and selfless). As at the first opportunity of getting a hot beautiful horny woman to show any interest in me I married her before she could change her mind. Here she is on that day.

On that day that was the smile of the most beautiful woman in the world and who would do me no harm. Oh how naive I was!

That smile is a back breaker. More often that not it leads to sex, at least once a day. My younger self would have been delighted. Honestly, my older self is too. But that smile and an old mattress is not a good combination. The springs in the bed just cannot cope with our exercises, and on days like this neither can my back.

Things I've Been Craving of Late

HP Sauce on my chips. I don't know why but I've been wanting it bad for like a couple of months now. It is even available here in Utah in the British shop in Sugarhouse. But its like $4 a bottle, in the words of the grumpy drunk priest in Father Ted - "Feck Off!"

A bottle of Irn Bru. Not just any bottle, the glass 750ml glass bottle, and not because I'm Scottish and you get 30 pence refund for returning the bottle. But for some reason it just tastes better from those bottles. Especially when its been chilled in the fridge. Again I can get Irn Bru here in the Scottish shop in downtown, but again its expensive and its only available in the smaller plastic bottles but its just not the same.

My Mother's Cheese Pie. I wish I could remember how it was made. All I remember is the rolling the pastry base on to the bottom of the casserole dish, sticking it the oven for a bit and bringing it out later to see this 3/4 inch of soft tasty cheesy goodness that I could eat all by myself. Strange thing is I'm one of these people who doesn't like to have cheese on everything (how did I end up in the States? - must have been love.) and yet I love this pie my mother made. I've tried looking for recipes online to see if I can see anything like it, but nadda, no luck, maybe it was an old family recipe or something. Thing I don't understand is you can find just about anything on the internet, things you don't even want like a recipe for a nuclear bomb but nothing like the cheese pie my mother made. Why didn't I pay more attention in the kitchen? Maybe some day I'll have to write a Dear mum letter that my she who must be obeyed likes to nag about.

Ceviche. Every so often I've been having been wanting to go back to the local the Peruvian restaurant and tuck into this fish and seafood dish but lately we've been too skint to eat out so sadly no lime soaked octupus, shrimp, fish combo are on the menu.

Indian Curry. This is a big one, I've been craving some Chicken bhuna with fried rice and nan bread, and spiced mushrooms as a starter (yeah I am a greedy pig) for months. Sadly though there just isn't that many Indian restaurants around in Salt Lake City and those that are here seem to be way on the other side. Some day though me and my better half will have to check them out, if however they don't prove to be as good as those back in Glasgow it might just be another excuse for a date when we finally are able to go travelling.

So I was scrolling through the latest BBC headlines as I do regularly when I spotted -

Rain And Winds Begin Hitting UK

Since when has that been news, that was a daily occurrence for me when I lived back home. Maybe the headline grabbing element of that sentence is in the 'begin'. Maybe it stopped and I missed that piece of news.

Living In Different Worlds

Time, place. Experience. Sometimes its the seismic events of history that make me wonder if I really am of this world. Sometimes major events come and go and don't really affect me directly as much as I think it should.

There has been 2 huge historical events that have taken place in my lifetime. I wasn't born when man first stepped on the moon but I do remember the late evening tv pictures of 9th of November 1989. The fall of the Wall wasn't that spectacular. All you saw was a bunch of leather jacketed Berliners attacking reinforced concrete - mostly with hammers, with little success (although I bet you can buy those chippings on Ebay today). Nobody died, as far I remember. A lot of people got drunk, and stoned (d'oh bad pun). The wall itself wasn't an impressive structure. It wasn't even particular tall or especially forbidding. Its real power lay in the killing ground of mines, dog runs and razor wire behind it.

The concrete barrier was always more symbolic than anything else. It didn't matter that none of the crowds of scrambling people could do much damage to it without the help of some heavy equipment. What mattered was that they were climbing all over it, and hitting it ineffectually without getting machine gunned to oblivion. As a sudden and surprising symbol of hope and optimism and moment of time representing changing times those watching it could ask for no more. Those little hammers that couldn't do much damage to concrete had somehow on that night managed to put an end to an age of idiocy. A 40 year threat of worldwide nuclear holocaust seemed to evaporate that night.

I remember watching those tv pictures. I remember the hope and joy. But at the end of the day it didn't really affect me in the way I thought it would go on to. I was too young at the time. Too young perhaps to feel threatened by a possible looming Armageddon. It didn't feel real enough. I have never lived in a communist country, so I didn't feel get to feel any restrictions being lifted. The closest I've been to living in a divided city was in Glasgow on the day of Celtic - Rangers game, hardly the same thing.

So when the Wall fell I just went on living my life pretty much as I always had, albeit in a Europe with the map redrawn.

A dozen years went by from the day of the fall of the Wall before something as big happened again. This time it wasn't a chilly November night that brought hope but a bright September morning that brought shock and fear. The planes crashing into the Twin Towers in 2001 was just as unbelievable as the pictures of men clambering on the Wall with arms aloft.

For a while on that terrible Tuesday I was even afraid. I was in Scotland that day, but my mother had went abroad for the first time in her life that weekend. She was visiting her best friend who had moved to New York over 20 years previously. She had called me on Sunday from New York and had told me that she was going to visit the Towers on the upcoming Saturday. When I saw those aeroplanes crashing into the Tower my first thought was that maybe she had decided to change that day trip and brought it forward by a few days. The panic that came over me was horrible. I had no telephone number for where she was staying and couldn't get in touch with her. But whereas the whole world seemed to know what had happened that day, she was resting at her friend's holiday home situated on the banks of the Finger Lakes with no tv, no telephone or radio completely unaware what was happening just miles away. When she finally did get to hear of it and get a chance to call me my panic was replaced with a selfish relief.

After that although al-Qaida had attacked the USA I didn't think that I was personally living in a more dangerous world. I had lived in the UK when the IRA had bombed buildings in a regular basis. I wasn't one of those soldiers who had to go to War. I wasn't one of the grieving parents who had to suffer when their son was brought home in a box. I didn't believe in the war in Iraq but neither was I one of those who marched in the streets against it because I ultimately knew it wouldn't change the politicians minds. I didn't feel threatened by Muslims. There have always been extremists of one kind or another, and none of them have ever really affected my life directly.

When I remember the pictures of the Wall falling I remember happy times, I would have loved to have there that night but ultimately I wasn't, perhaps as a result I don't really feel that they had as a powerful effect on my life that it could and should have.

Strangely, as big as the fall of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers were as moments of the history of our time, it was the probably the collapse of the banks and markets beginning on September 2008 that had a bigger more direct impact on my life. Is that selfish? Do I really need to be a part of something to feel it? Am I really part of this thing we call the human race?

Listening to: Call Me Anytime - The Cops

Why I Couldn't Be A Conservative In The USA Reason # 1

As I'm not a citizen no one in the USA is going to invite me to vote but that's not a good enough reason not to have a mini series of blog posts.

Back home in Scotland I was very much of two minds politically. I liked the idea of an independent Scotland but wasn't entirely sure that enough people were going to vote for it in order for it not to be a wasted vote. I am also not entirely sure that Scotland could be strong enough economically for the first 5 - 10 years after breaking itself off from the UK to have something to build from thereafter. Perhaps when there was still oil in the North Sea back in the 70's it would have been good but now? I just don't know.

I also believe in a government that has low taxation and minimum government interference in the lives of the citizens that it serves. So although I hated Thatcher when she was in power I was pretty much a conservative at heart, and just could never see myself voting labour when they seem to be control freaks and have acres of government at every level. Plus its probably not helped by the fact that Blair was someone I despised more than even Thatcher.

Now you may think that with my earlier statement of believing that a government should have minimum interference in the lives of the citizens it serves and my preference for low taxation that I would be as much as a conservative here as much as I was back home. But conservatism here is a different beast. And for that reason alone I think it could make a semi-decent mini series for this blog while I get back my blogging groove.

Reason # 1

Conservatives in the USA seem to believe with more enthusiasm than liberals in the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

I'm not going to make any pretense that I am tough Scotsman. Guns scare me. I don't want to be anywhere near them.

In addition to that I don't want to read any more stories of kids accidentally shooting their siblings when they get hold of their father's loaded gun that was supposed to be locked away in a cupboard. I don't want to want to read of cults in Texas being armed to the teeth and shooting FBI officers. I don't want my step children to be scared of going to school because other kids are carrying guns in their backpacks along with their books. I don't want to step into a 7/11 in the middle of the night to buy a bag of Swedish Fish and have some drugged up wannabe Jesse James flashing a gun barrel between my eyes - with all the Mexican food I eat I'm likely to shit myself there and then.

Back in the day when the USA was a new country I could understand the need for people to have the right and the need to bear arms. It was a dangerous world. Native Americans didn't exactly like the idea of the white man moving in on their land. Criminals from Europe saw America as the land of opportunity and would happily steal the land from underneath your feet. As would some crooked businessmen who might want your land to sell it onto the railroad or just to build a ranch. Back in those days the local sheriff might be too far away or just not powerful enough to save your sorry ass. Therefore a good man at the birth of this country may have been expected to carry a gun in order to protect his family.

Now though we live in different times, the USA as so many levels of police that it should be a safer country in which to live. I suspect it would be safer still if it wasn't so easy for gangs and desperate junkies to be able to get a hold of guns from legal and illegal sources.

Back home I felt if I was unlucky enough to come across a ned with a knife nicked from his mothers kitchen that I could have the chance of outrunning him before any damage was done, its not see easy to outrun a bullet. Maybe if the Bill of Rights was amended and the antiquated belief that the people have the right to bear arms was reassessed and something was done about the number of guns freely available in this country I could feel safe eating Mexican food before visiting a 7/11.


Listening to: Sean Kingston - Me love

Ah Gringos! Given time I might grow to love them.

As Scottish accents go I never really considered myself to have a particular thick one, but since spending the last 8 months or so living here in the States I'm finding myself having to reassess that assumption. It seems the gringos just can't understand me.

That I could find acceptable if they'd only just try - but whereas Latinos will take the effort to listen and on occasion make an attempt to have conversation like the Mexican worker who the other day took my order for a Whopper and ended up talking about the weather here compared to back home and the film Braveheart it seems most white people in these parts would prefer to cut me off and look at me blank faced as soon as I open my mouth. When I first moved here it didn't take long for me to get used to the close minded attitude of some of the local white population but then just the other week I applied for a job that I was well qualified for. I first sent of an email complete with my resume and then followed it up with a phonecall.

Me - "Hello, I am replying to your advert on ...... regarding the job that you ....."

Interupted mid conversation with "I can't even understand you! If you can't speak English why do you think I would even consider employing you!!!"

When I first came to Utah I thought it might take an adjustment of sorts to fit in and settle down and then reality struck.

I hate to imagine how I might have got on in Utah if I actually had a thick Scottish accent. Like if had a nasally accent like a Glasgow ned for example or a sing-songy West Highland accent or god forbid a Welsh accent like some of my relatives from my father's side of the family.

"Hearts Aren't Made Of Glass"

I've seen my fair share of graffitti whilst having to relieve myself in public restrooms. I can't speak for the ladies but in the gents toilets the graffitti itself isn't all that charming it usually consists of obsenities or telephone numbers scratched into whatever surface is available (presumedly with the help of a key, coin or knife blade) along with whatever sexual service they are willing to provide the occupant of the cubicle.

However Library toilets seem to have a higher class of 'artist'.

I love It When She Answers Her Own Questions

"You know what sounds good right now? I don't know. Something yummy!"

Listening to: The wife, in bed