11 posts tagged “weasels”

More descriptive bumpf will follow (mostly so that I have a memory jolt to look back on) but here are the photos now that we're home.

Day One:

Dad came to get us at an only slightly unholy 6:30am, whisking us to Euston station for our 7:22am train to Glasgow. At the last minute, we'd decided to forego the train tickets from Glasgow to Fort William and drive from Glasgow to Ballachulish, which actually takes less time and gives us a car to play with when we get there. It meant a little bit of money lost but a lesson learned and convenience gained.

The train took just under five hours. I had Twilight to read - it's rubbish, but beguiling rubbish - and posts for BitchBuzz to write, one of which became about vampires, so there was plenty to entertain oneself with. The train was a Virgin Pendolino and we got a table and, thanks to Ashley's office Christmas gift, an Acer Aspire One. All went well.

The drive from Glasgow took us through some extraordinary scenery, shifting colours and temperatures (lowest -5, highest 2) and rocky, desolate, bewitching expanses. You feel incredibly tiny in the pit of these intimidating valleys, and it's a surprisingly positive feeling.

We arrived at the pleasantly creaking Ballachulish Hotel, overlooking a glorious expanse of Loch Linnhe, just in time for tea and the oddest-tasting cake ever, and then had a boozy dinner of vegetable soup, roast lamb and Eve's pudding washed down with a heady rose. Then bed, and a comfy sleep.

Day Two:

After a breakfast of proper Scottish porridge oats, scrambled eggs, sausage, toast and tea, we decided to drive in the direction of Glen Nevis and see if we could get a good glimpse of the vertiginous slopes of Ben Nevis. Having seen that Inverness was just 80 miles away, however, we carried on, along the banks of Loch Lochy, Loch Oich and finally the entire length of a disappointingly monster-free Loch Ness. A brief stop at Urquhart Castle, then more gorgeously winding roads, flanked with ice-capped trees that waved their white fronds as invitingly as Anne Shirley's White Way of Delight. The scene would suddenly shift to rich reds and glowing greens and then suddenly we'd be back in a monochrome Christmas Card again. I've never seen such a gorgeously changeable and impressive scenery (suddenly you understand how so many die icy deaths on the treacherous slope, and shudder in your safe, warm car) and wonder why it's taken me so long to cross the border.

Inverness itself has little to recommend it. A resolutely functional Highlands capital; a handful of pretty buildings are about all that stop it from being a veritable blot on the landscape. It really is just a place for everyone from the villages to visit a Marks and Spencer every few months.

The drive back was as stunningly beautiful as the drive there. Four hours (two each way) of glorious natural beauty is quite a way to spend your honeymoon. We returned to tea, caramel chocolate tray bakes and mince pies. Then a shower and down to a cocktail reception (woefully underdressed!) and six course New Year's Eve meal including shockingly lovely venison haggis, neeps and tatties (why are swedes neeps?) and a fabulous roast beef. Then we rushed up to bed and snuggled like kittens in a basket, fast asleep long before the bells rang in the new day.

Day Three to follow... frustratingly, uploading the pretty photos we took with our wedding present DSLR is impossible on the hotel's slow (but free!) Wi-Fi, so these will have to be added when we get back. Happy New Year, Voxers!

It's finally time to get to really enjoy married life. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I've had a miserable Christmas or owt, but even with the stress of the wedding planning over and a lovely wedding day had there was then the misery of illness and the chaos of family frolics. It was lovely - a blessing, to be surrounded by so much love and plenty especially when some have both in such short supply - but it was also not particularly restful.

Now we get the chance to just... be.

On Christmas Day at the table we spoke of the situation in Zimbabwe and the way some small children like the Little Weasel are starving or being prepared to work in factories while he was happily stuffing his face and playing with Gordon the train. We are so, so lucky. We're planning to try and give something back in the New Year. I don't do resolutions, but I can do promises. We don't know yet exactly how but volunteer work almost certainly and definitely a good clear out of decent stuff that we're no longer using that might help a charity raise a few pennies. Whatever we do it will not be enough, but it's certainly better than the big fat not much we do now.

In the meantime we're also going to indulge in the ultimate luxury of the Western world - the holiday. We're going to nip on a train to Glasgow, pick up a car and then drive a couple of hours north west to a secluded little place where log fires, champagne, beautiful scenery, a New Year ceilidh and a lot of cosseting await.

It's a beautiful way to begin 2009, in privacy and contentment, and if we can't appreciate that then we deserve nothing.

See you next year - may it be the chance for any fresh starts you're waiting for, the catalyst to fulfill your dreams and the symbol of a happy, healthy, productive year ahead.

Hugs all round.

(I'm still waiting for the disk for the wedding photos, but those of you on Facebook have seen the online album!)

Weasel Cookies!

[N.B. This is totally tongue-in-cheek and based on wry humour and only a little bit of lazy xenophobia]

English Tradition: Complain about going to see the parents
Greek Tradition: Of COURSE we'll be with the parents. But, what's the big deal, we see them every week anyway

English Tradition: Arrive hungover, eat until upright and then pickle oneself horizontal again
Greek Tradition: Arrive hungry, pick at everything while it's cooking, complain you're too full to eat, eat anyway and then fall asleep in front of the telly.

English Tradition: Watch the Queen's speech
Greek Tradition: Complain about the pointlessness of the monarchy

English Tradition: Open presents before Lunch
Greek Tradition: Open presents whenever curiosity gets the better of you, or just don't give them until New Year

English Tradition: Pork, pork and more pork - glazed gammon, pork stuffing, bacon on the turkey
Greek Tradition: Chicken liver stuffing

English Tradition: Avoid an argument by getting drunk so you can pretend you don't remember it
Greek Tradition: Embrace the argument, add bells, whistles and volume, then pack it away neatly for next year

English Tradition: Board games round an open fire
Greek Tradition: Boredom around a heap of foodstuffs

English Tradition: Pretending to hate Christmas so as to appear cool
Greek Tradition: Actually hating Christmas but pretending to enjoy it "for the children". Even when they're in their forties.

Really, there's a reason I identify as Greek most of the time.

What is love, ultimately?

In every civilisation since the dawn of time man has asked this question. We have asked the question most pertinently when we have felt its power; it's ability to shock us, to redeem us, to tell us something about the very nature of human existence which makes it so mysterious and yet so novel

Even after these many thousands of years new hearts ask old questions. They ask why it is they feel this strange burning in the chest when thinking of their loved one. They ask why it is they drive a hundred miles to Lincoln to pick up their beloved's best friend even though they are exhausted after a shattering day at work. They ask why they feel such a strong desire to do the things they might not necessarily want to do simply to make that other person a little bit happier. What is this curious zeal a person feels which is so oddly out of touch with our typical responses, our typical passions, our typical selfishness.

Love, they tell us, is something involving chocolates and roses and small ornaments from expensive shops. Sometimes that is the case, if one considers love to be something we ought to "keep up". But it isn't those things really. Chocolates don't put out the rubbish when it's pouring down with rain outside. Roses won't make you a mug of warm tea when all you want to do is cry you're so miserable. Little ornaments won't get you up for work after 30 years of marriage. No, love is something more than all these things we use as signs, however sweet and tender those signs might be. Love is not vanity.

All True Love involves sacrifice. Sacrifice of our own ego, sacrifice of our selfish needs and wants, sacrifice of our precious time. Sacrifice of our most basic tendencies in order to create goodness in another person. And there is deep deep mystery in that for us who are born of man into a world which tells us that the individual is more important than any other consideration.

Love saves us. It makes the intertwining of two hands something glorious and beautiful and heavenly. It makes us smile at that one unique person in a way we just don't smile at all those others so dear to us. It gives meaning to all our pain and all our joy, for in these two we suddenly see something beyond ourselves and beyond the simpler understanding of our Nine to Five life. Love is there in those sighs after a long and hearty laugh, where all the world looks golden. Love is there in that twinge of sorrow we feel when our beloved has departed even for a moment. Love is in those messages at 12.30pm when all you can do is think of your treasured one and know that all is right in life because you have them there.

Love is an ocean of compassion, of understanding, and of hope. It is gentleness, humour, protection. Love is beyond any one word we might choose to describe it.

For we know, in the end, many things only in part. One day, they say, we shall know things more perfectly. And when the sun draws to a close at the inevitable day we will know that we, who loved truly, sacrificially, and profoundly have sucked deep of the very essence of what it means to be alive. We will know we have performed that great work that makes it all worth while.

That is where love remains. And that is why we are here at all. True love is in the giving of our whole selves.

From Tennyson's Ulysses:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Love is that goodness we give at the doorstep after life's long, and troubling day. That is love. And it is what these two people have.

1. Beck - Loser

Forces of evil on a bozo nightmare
Ban all the music with a phony gas chamber
’cuz one’s got a weasel and the other’s got a flag
One’s on the pole, shove the other in a bag

2. Nick Drake - Hazey Jane II

And what will happen in the evening in the forest with the weasel
with the teeth that bite so sharp when you're not looking in the evening.

3. Pop Goes The Weasel

I'm not quoting the lyrics of such an anti-weasel song!

Sky News was great fun, all two and a half minutes of it; I had my name on the screen! They pronounced it right without asking! I looked that uniform shade of beige everyone on TV news looks because it turns out they spray the make up on! w00t!

I decided to spend the day looking for ways and reasons to be cheerful. JB and I have lurched from one emotional heart to heart to another; this was partly, I think, prompted by having a small spat over something. But mostly I suspect it was as a result of me spending a lot of time talking about guilt, CBT and depression and other cheerful things with a friend and colleague which just made me want to make sure there's no part of me, good or bad, that JB doesn't know about. It is relieving and important, but draining.

There has also been some negotiation with my parents over numbers for the wedding as they keep pulling relatives out of the closet. I want to keep it fair and offer JB's mum as many guests as my parents have, but it's really hard to pull off the balancing act. It's my friends I keep pulling out to accommodate everyone else! JB has an awful lot of friends whose weddings he's been to and feels obliged to invite even though they're barely in touch. It's frustrating, especially considering we're still not formally engaged, although he tells me he has some half-formed ideas for how to 'surprise' me. Daft romantic, beloved stoat.

Anyway, to paraphrase Ian Dury, here are three reasons to be cheerful.

1) Allison Janney and friends on what a feminist looks like (JB and I both tempted to make "this is what a weasel looks like" video:

Well, I've certainly eaten enough chocolate to pretend this is my Easter. Once again I've restarted the "diet" - it's more of an attempt to bring my comfort-binge-eating tendencies under control and do more exercise - and it's all going well. Actually, the exercise has been going well since January, not to tempt fate...

The four day break has been great; we shopped (JB got me underwear for my birthday present and I spent vouchers and freebie points for other things), we slept, we ate lots, we frolicked with my downright adorable nephew who charmingly gave everyone kisses and duddles (cuddles) and we bought a Wii. I fear my right elbow is now doomed to a lifetime of RSI, but I have soundly beaten JB at Wii Bowling and Wii Tennis, so that's okay.

Naturally, the nickname for the console is the Wiieasel.

The whole "weasel" thing started as a song lyric.

"This is my country / and these are my reasons" - Fergus Sings The Blues, Deacon Blue

JB pointed out that reasons sounded like 'weasels' and so it stuck. Now we are weasels, stoats, otters (holding hands, of course), ermine, ferrets... You name it, we're Mustelidae. I've even written and published a book for JB on Blurb about "stoatly living". Because, in our universe, stoats steal pants. Knickers pants, not trousers pants. Ferrets dance, otters and romantic, weasels are spies that are everywhere and polecats and pine marten know all the best places to pootle.

How can you tell the difference between a stoat and a weasel? Weasels are weaselly recognised and stoats are stoatally different.

I'm sure that makes perfect sense to you all, right? One day I might even explain the A & JB alternative definition for the Hebrew word "tov".