The British Lady-Cackle, and other odd observations

I'm supposed to be finishing an essay right now. But because Quentin is passed out in my lap, exhausted from a morning of deliberate pouncing on my head while I slept, I'm going to blog instead.

Today, I'd like to discuss the elusive British Lady-Cackle (the BLC, if you will), and other odd observations from the past week or so. I'm sure you've heard all the rumors about how polite and dainty English women are - quiet, calm, icy and emotionless even (think The Queen in one of her never-ending Easter skirt-suits). However, you've not really lived in England until you're sitting in a pub on a Saturday afternoon, having a latte and reading about security threats, and there it is - out of nowhere - that piercing screech, knifing your ears with noises not yet defined by decibels in the natural world. "Where is that coming from?!" one might ask. "Is a parakeet being stabbed?" "Did a shih tzu just get a bath?" "Did (the artist formerly known as) Prince have a heart attack?" Others (like myself) may simply jump in one's seat, eye twitching involuntarily, and turn towards the noise, afraid to fully face it for fear it might actually melt your face. Enter: The British Lady-Cackle.

The Dowager Countess, upon hearing the BLC.

Brits are, in general and especially in Oxford, quite reserved, proper, polite, and friendly. However, there are exceptions to this rule, exceptions which seem to be growing the more I leave my cat-flat. Knife-fights are one exception to a common association with British gentility - although, let's be honest, I immediately thought about West Side Story. Second, we have the common drunks - usually couples who enter a bar completely reserved, and 45 minutes and six Guinness's later, are gargling unintelligible noises (probably words), eyes a bit glossy and bodies acting as if they just got off of a five-year pirate voyage. Actually, speaking of pirates, drunk Brits kind of remind me of pirates in general...the accent, the swaying, the occasional flailing of the arms. I passed a drunk couple in their 40's or 50's last night (Sunday) coming back from the grocery store...I didn't understand a word they were projecting out into the empty, residential street at 9:30pm. But, shiver me timbers they were loaded to the gunwales!

Other things I've learned about this week include, but are not limited to (OK, they're probably limited to):

• Fox hunting
• Pinkie rings
• Shower architecture in period homes
• The showering habits of the man with a body-length window in his shower directly across from my neighborhood pub
• Shetland ponies (in sweaters, not in sweaters, their height, their gardening habits, not to tickle their tongues, and other life-lessons)
• Where the "meter" is in my flat
• Yoga mats borrowed from a yoga studio are really quite gross
• It's OK if you don't understand people from Newcastle - a lot of Brits don't understand them either
• Americans drinking out of red SOLO cups at parties really is fascinating

I'm a Shetland pony in a sweater, and I'm in Scotland!

As I bid you adieu to ponder these musings (also because Quentin finally jumped off of my stomach and I should probably get around to that essay), I leave you with these departing thoughts from last night's trip to an open mic night: man-ponytails are never a good idea. In the words of my dear friend, Helena, while a man yodeled like a goat in the background: "stop putting me off my food with your horrible straggly pastiches of woman-hair." Well said. Also well said? "This is a song about devil worshiping amongst elderly women." Yep - that happened.

Snowshire

SNOW! It has snowed in the Shire and it is absolutely beautiful. When it snows here, it snows like it would in your most fairytale of dreams - spires dusted in white, perfectly constructed flakes that dance down from the sky, deer huddling together for warmth in a blanketed rugby pitch next to an icy river (that just so happens to be the Isis, aka the Thames). Walking down the street feels like you're dancing through a symphony - like violins and cellos are playing around you with every glance and every fuzzy crunch of your shoe.

Oxford blanketed in snow, from Christ Church meadow.

I know I promised I would write about red trousers this time around, but today I want to write about snow because, well, it's all around. I've learned some things about snow these past few days. One thing I've learned is the silence of snow - that soft break in noise, like the excess sounds in the world just hold their breaths for the chance to be blanketed. I've also noticed that snowflakes are like very cute versions of raindrops - you can't get mad when delicate flakes of white fluff hit you in the face, but it's pretty damn annoying when pellets of water attack your eyes when you're walking to the library. I have, at the same time, discovered that snowflakes are still a form of water, and that when you walk inside, those really lovely pieces of weather dandruff melt, and drown you. And then you're just cold...really, really cold. I've also learned that ice (yet another form of water!) is malicious, and full of evil trickery. It sneaks up, trying to cause slapstick comedy right when you've become confident in your new-found "snow-gait" (which, for me, is a distinct effort to march rather than shuffle). Along with this, I've learned that high heels in snow are a dangerous idea. It's kind of like ice-skating in an evening gown, which isn't actually as fun as it might sound...

Peering at the diorama.

This is my first time actually "living" in snow. I've been skiing, yes, and I think I built a snowman once when I was eight in Yosemite. BUT, I've never actually "functioned" in the snow. Every day this weekend I felt childish wonder - peeking out my window in the morning was like unveiling a covered diorama, excitedly anticipating which scene I would find before me. I've taken many moments these past few days to experience the snow in different ways: observing it from the indoors (mostly out of the initial fear of how to interact with it), trekking through it, playing in it, letting it fall on my tongue and nest in my eyelashes, then greeting it with a firm handshake as I molded it into a ball. I've settled into a fond appreciation of snow, and what it does to the world around us - to the disorienting beauty it drapes everything in, and its ability to repaint an entire city and cloud it at the same time.

I could go on for a long time. But, instead, I think I'll leave you for now with this poem:

The Snow Man

by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

(that was pretty Oxford of me, huh?)

Trouser-Pant-Suspender-Braces

If anyone ever tells you that you're full of shit for saying you're living abroad in England, you have my permission to punch them in the nose. Yes - the nose. Because they're lying. And you know who else was a liar (and was associated with noses)? Pinocchio. And you know who is actually full of shit? Them, and most children's stories.

"Sorry, Cricket with a top-hat, I'm just full of shit."

Now that we got that out of the way, let me tell you why their noses may be momentarily bonked. England may technically have the same national language as the Americans (and Canadians, for that matter, eh), but they sure as hell don't sound like it a lot of the time. Granted it may be easier to "assimilate" when moving across the pond to a British nation than, say, to Bangkok or Doha, there still is a language barrier - and that language barrier can get you into more trouble in England than if you simply didn't know the language of the country you were a resident of, because you're assumed to understand what is claimed to be the same mouth-noise as your homeland. But, nay, says I - nay.

I've alluded to some vernacular differences in previous blogs - the difference between "pudding" and "pudding," for example (ya, see, it's not that easy). However, this week I have had the distinct pleasure of welcoming my very first house-guest from the States. That means that not only did I get to figure out how the hell to get to Heathrow from my Oxonian cave, but I also was (1) reintroduced to the many misunderstood phrases and accents from the point of view of a fresh-eared American, and (2) I was constantly giggled at for having apparently acquired some sort of pseudo-accent. "Hello," "sorry," "thank you," and "walk," I'm told, are especially entertaining to hear me say nowadays.

Enter: the Scottish bus driver. Me, to my house-guest: "So what do you want to do when we get to Oxford? Are you hungry? I know a great place for hamburgers - it's quite tasty. Or, we could get you settled in? A shower, perhaps? It's totally up to you. How is everyone back home?" My flurry of questions were happily administered over the fuzzy speaker-gargles of the bus driver's standard safety speech. What my house-guest heard, though, was something completely different than what the Scot intended: "Wait," he stops me - "why are we sitting here if there are donuts in the back?!" His nose was quizzically peeking around the seat behind him; I was inhaling delayed laughter so deep it felt like I was recovering from sit-ups (haha, ya right, sit-ups!).

Immediately, I had an idea - the first thing we were to do when we arrived in Oxford was to buy my friend a journal, a little one, that he could carry around with him throughout his three month exploration, and in which he would jot down anything he "thought" he heard from the Brits around him, and a translation of what they actually said (to be attempted by myself, the pseudo-veteran from a measly four month tenure). I'll ask Dan to share the journal with you all at the end of his trip, but for now I leave you with these three tidbits gathered from his first three days:

Stop seducing me with your suspender-braces, Steve Urkel!

1. Trousers vs. Pants: I personally hate this one, and still can't quite remember to translate the word when I'm speaking to locals. "Trousers" are the English word for what we in America call "pants" - jeans, khakis, dress-slacks, etc. "Pants" in England are, well, knickers or underwear. Therefore, if I said to someone "I'll be right out, I just have to throw on some pants" - they would assume I was walking around my house commando and needed to dignify myself with panties before exiting my abode (a good idea, in general, I think). 
2. Suspenders vs. Braces: Also a risque mistake, if made. Bluntly, "suspenders" in England are what we in the US refer to as "garters" or "garter belts" - lacy bands worn above a woman's "pants" to hold up old-school stockings lacking elastic, often worn by pin-up girls. "Braces," then, is the English word for American "suspenders" - the elastic straps synonymous with Larry King and Steve Urkel, and with gangsters during the 1940s, that hold up men's "trousers." So, again, if a man went into an English shop and when asked what he was looking for replied "suspenders," the (probably 80-year-old) shop-keeper would probably (1) look at him shocked, and (2) assume he was a lost cross-dresser.
3. Spotted Dick (pudding): This is one of my favorites, simply due to the sheer number of five-year-old giggles that emerge when asked quite seriously if you'd like "a bite of my spotted dick." It's a proper English dessert, that resembles a dense cake with raisins submerged in custard. Go ahead - make some spotted dick jokes, god knows I did the first time I saw them lurking in the freezer aisle of the supermarket. I also took a picture. 

Enjoying his first spotted dick on NYE.

There, that's three - keep posted for a riveting description of the sea of red "trousers" I wade through on a daily basis in this hamlet...for a preview of my disdain, go here.

You're welcome.