Versus Blurb has picked up the theme of accents that Angie K. introduced and I followed up on, and has a good post from an Australian point of view. It’s well worth a look.
More about Accents
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British and American English: The Accent
Two words spoken in an American accent reliably crack up the British: water and butter. It has to do with the difference between English R and the American R, which as far as I can figure out is this: Americans have one and the English have a sort noticeable absence—something you might write as an H, or an apostrophe. WAWtah, as opposed to WAWterrrr.
WAWterrr. Photo by AdriannaNicole
I’ve spelled that first syllable the same way but no way does it sound the same. No matter how much I mess around with the spelling, though, I can’t come up with the difference. Put it this way: The English first syllable is well behaved and sits in its chair with a perfectly straight back. The American one slouches and puts its feet on the coffee table.
That may not help. I do understand that.
Okay, I’m writing about English pronunciation as if the English had one single accent. They don’t, but let’s not get into that here. I’m oversimplifying, the same way I’m oversimplifying the American accent, because if I don’t I’ll never write this. I’ll lose myself in complications and sub-points and convolutions so badly that I’ll shut down the computer, go back to bed, and pull the covers over my head. Pretty soon I’ll be joined by two cats and we’ll spend the day there.
They’ll think it’s a day well spent.
Any number of British friends will, in the middle of a conversation involving food or drink, lose all restraint and repeat after us, “BUTTerrrr,” or “WAWterrrr.” They can’t help themselves. It just breaks loose. Even if it was going to fly around the room and break the dishes, they couldn’t keep it in. Sometimes they don’t even wait for us to say it first. I’d love to criticize, but if Wild Thing and I are in the car when the weather comes on and the winds are moderate, we’ll repeat “MAWderit” and laugh as if it was the first time we’d done it. Some jokes just don’t get old.
We’re lucky, though. We have the accent that people think is cool because they’ve grown up watching Hollywood movies. Well, we sort of have it. We have versions of it, with regional flavorings that, from this distance, most people don’t hear. So we don’t get the disapproval that goes with having accents people look down on, or are afraid of. A wave of let’s-all-worry-about-immigrantion is breaking over the country just now, and our accents mark us all. Wild Thing’s and mine get us sorted in the Immigrants We Accept pile. It’s uncomfortable sometimes, but not as uncomfortable as being in the Immigrants We Don’t Accept pile. Still, it’s odd when people react to your accent, even favorably. It’s a bit like having people react to your nose. You’ve been walking around with the thing all your life. You’ve forgotten it’s there and are thinking about something else, but people want to talk to you about it. Over and over.
I’m in the supermarket and the woman at the checkout says, “I love your accent.”
What am I supposed to say? It’s my accent. I’m not responsible for it. When I was a kid, if I’d known I could choose I would have chosen a different variation on the New York accent. Now it’s too late. The glue that holds it in place set long ago.
So I say thanks, just as if she’d said she liked my sweater. Which she’d have called a jumper.
A Recommendation
I just read a post on speaking with an accent on Not Another Tall Blog, by Angie K., and I want to recommend it to you.
Yeah, it’s true that we all have an accent of one sort or another, but when you’re the possessor of one that stands out, suddenly you don’t just have an accent, you have An Accent, and that changes things. Her post makes me want to write about the issue, but it’ll take me a while to catch up with that. In the meantime, do take a look at what she’s written.
Heavy Traffic in a Cornish Village
Wild Thing and I were walking the dog the other day and we’d just turned off the main road when a car made the same turn. We moved to the side of the road, stood in the weeds, and corralled the dog so that she did the same. She’s convinced that if her nose is out of the way, that takes care of the problem.
The car passed. The driver waved. We waved and moved back onto the road.
Then another car came past. That’s roughly two cars more than we usually see on this stretch of road.
“So much traffic!” Wild Thing said.
Irrelevant Photo: Fall Berries of Some Sort of Other
You need a little background here.
First, what I just called the main road? It has two lanes, goes from no place in particular to no place else in particular (I’m going to catch hell for saying that), and no one’s even bothered to give it a name or a number. That’s why I call it the main road. What else am I going to call it? Marlena? Suzette? It’s as main a road as the village has. Everything else is even smaller.
Second, Wild Thing and I are both New Yorkers. I was born and raised there and she lived there for ten years. So it’s not that we’ve never lived with traffic. But human beings are adaptable. When I lived in Minnesota, I noticed that 40 degrees F. was cold in the fall and the most blissful warmth in the spring. So we’ve adapted. Two cars in a single day on the road past the ford? In the off season, when the emmits have gone home? Outrageous!
And we’re not the only ones who resent seeing two cars in a row. Someone who shall not be named, nay, not even by initial (okay, I’ve forgotten who it was), set out a Road Closed sign on one of the back roads. For years. Long after whatever was once wrong (if anything ever was) had been fixed. He didn’t like the traffic.
The locals all knew to drive past it, and when I became a local I taught myself to do the same, although the first time expected to find that the ford (this is a different ford) had risen out of control; that a downed tree had left the power lines sprawled across the road; that a herd of wild elephants had set up camp by the ford and were scavenging downed limbs for firewood. Even though I knew better.
In one version of the story—and no story in the village has only one version—he got tired of people with long vehicles taking the road and getting stuck at the ninety-degree bend where the road narrows down. In another version, a delivery truck got stuck and its cargo had to be off-loaded onto a smaller truck. In a third version, the company kept sending big trucks and they all got stuck—one, two, three pretty trucks, all with the same logo and all stuck where the road bends. It’s a wonderful image. Sadly, it’s the least likely of the versions. A single truck could get stuck there if it was long enough, but by getting stuck it would sacrifice itself for its fellow trucks, who’d have to back up a long way and then cross the ford backward before backing up some more, but they wouldn’t be stuck. That’s village gossip for you. Whatever story you hear, you have to figure it’s related to something real, but you can’t necessarily tell what the relationship is.
Anyway, it’s the off season here in the village, and the traffic’s horrendous. If you were thinking of visiting, wait till it calms down a bit.
New Page Added
I just added an Obnoxious Self-Promotion Page to Notes. It’s titled “The Divorce Diet” and you’ll find it at the top, in the black bar under the photo of the Cornish coast. Even here, in this nearby yet tastefully promotion-free space where we’re speaking, you can hear its crass bass thump leaking through the walls.
But that’s the kind of thing you do when you have a novel coming out. You set all shame to one side and promote the hell out of it—anywhere, everywhere, and in just about any way you can. Does it make a difference? I haven’t a clue, and everything I’m hearing says that no one else has a clue either, but the book’s close to my heart and (sorry to be the one to say this, but I will anyway) I think it’s good, so to hell with manners. The page is up. Feel free to explore. Feel free to pre-order a few thousand copies, to review it online, and to tell 500 of your closest friends about it. Or feel free to ignore the whole shebang. It’s up to you.
After a while, you get used to the bass thump and it doesn’t bother you quite as much. Or you invest in earplugs or poison the neighbor who has the loud sound system. I’m a New Yorker. I know these things.
And while I’m promoting things, you can check out a beautifully written (and, ahem, favorable) review on The Zombies Ate My Brains.
Irrelevant Photo: Boscawen Un, an ancient stone circle
Gardening in Cornwall: What We Do When Autumn Comes
J. is a serious gardener, and she grows the best tomatoes I’ve eaten since I moved to the U.K. I don’t know how she kills slugs and snails on her patch in the spring, but I know she does, because if you’re going to grow anything around here, you have to. Otherwise they mow down every plant you stick in the earth. They move through like a scene from Slug Apocalypse, leaving nothing behind.
Irrelevant Photo: The North Cornwall Coast
A couple of us were at J.’s house and we went outside to admire the garden. It was that beautiful time of the evening when the sky’s a tissue-paper blue and you can almost convince yourself that the world is at peace, even though, yeah, of course you know better. Even though it was late in the year, she still had some flowers in bloom.
On the edge of a flower bed was a slug. The big, creepy kind, easily the length of my ring finger.
J. flicked it away—and I’d have to say she did it gently—with the toe of her shoe.
“That’s why I don’t come out at this time of day,” she said.
So it’s not just me. Everyone who gardens knows they’re out there. And at least for part of the year, we don’t look. If we did, as surely as if we’d sworn an oath, we’d have to kill them. And really, you can’t dedicate your life to eliminating an entire species, even if it’s only from a small patch of ground you call your own.
Declining an Award
Notes from the U.K. was nominated for a Very Inspiring Blog Award a while back, and it threw me into a quiet little crisis. I was flattered and even inspired, but also flummoxed. It was Angie K. from Not Another Tall Blog who nominated me, and in her acceptance post she admitted to taking two months to accept her own nomination and do all the things a nominee is supposed to do.
What’s a nominee supposed to do? Thank the person who nominated me and link to them: Angie, many thanks. List seven facts about myself. Display the award and nominate 15 other bloggers. Figure out how to display the award. Follow the person who nominated me. (I did that and it’s been a pleasure; she’s a good writer).
Irrelevant Photo: A hut circle near Rough Tor, part of a prehistoric settlement
But I coasted for a while before I did anything public, figuring that if it took Angie two months, I could hide for a month or three and still be a moderately good citizen of the net. Or at least not an awful one. Because something made me put off doing those things, and it wasn’t just that I couldn’t figure out how to copy the award so I could display it, although that didn’t help.
At some point during this time, I read a blog that declared itself an award-free zone, and it rang one of those silent brain-bells that are preinstalled in all of us. Yes, I thought. I don’t have to do this, however flattered I am.
So I’m declaring Notes an award-free zone. Why? Partly because jumping through the hoops that come with breaks the focus of the blog. I write about the joys and absurdities of living, as an American, in the U.K. At least in theory I could write about the joys and absurdities of living in the Internet, and somebody probably should, but that somebody isn’t me. So flattered as I am, I’m going to pass.
But I will tell you two facts about myself: I’m as short as Angie K. is tall and I’m the kind of person who can say, in all sincerity, thank you but I have to pass on the honor.
And one final fact: Last week I bought a pair of jeans that didn’t need hemming. I can count on one stubby little hand the number of times that’s happened to me.
Gardening and Snail-i-cide in Cornwall
One of my first posts was about slugs. I wrote it early in the growing season, when none of the new plants stand a chance unless I carry out mass slug-i-cide. And snail-i-cide. It’s disgusting, it’s disturbing, and it works, up to a point.
But the plants that don’t get eaten get bigger, and sooner or later I convince myself that I can skip an evening’s slaughter. Maybe because it’s raining. Maybe because it isn’t. There’s always a reason, and it doesn’t have to be a sensible one. Then, before I notice what’s happening, several days have rolled past, and then the weeks do the same thing, and eventually I decide that I don’t have to kill them anymore. The plants are established.
Irrelevant Photo: Wildflowers
Oh, happy summer. I declare a truce with the slugs and snails. This isn’t negotiated, it’s a one-sided thing. They still eat everything in sight, but now I look the other way when I see them.
Then summer passes, and right now it’s fall. Or autumn, if you’re of the British persuasion. A few days ago, I lifted the lid on the kitchen garbage can and found a snail glued to the underside. How did it get there? I suspect I found it when I was washing a batch of spinach I’d cut and I tossed it in as a sort of compromise: I won’t carry it sweetly back out to the garden to munch its way through more spinach, but I’m not killing it, am I?
The reason I say “I suspect” is that I’ve rearranged my memory so that I’m no longer absolutely the kind of person who’d do that. I probably am, but I have a small escape hatch. The snail might have moved in on its own: come in the back door, crossed the living room rug, crawled up the side of the garbage can, lifted the lid, crawled in. You know; it could happen if, I don’t know, the laws of physics changed or something. I’m just not sure.
I plucked it off the top and put it inside the bin again. Why? No idea. I don’t understand the workings of my mind any better than you, dear reader, are likely to. The next time I looked, it had climbed to the top of the liner and I left it there. Because by now it had become individualized. It wasn’t just some snail, it was almost a pet. And I’d tossed the poor thing in a near-empty, and dry, garbage can, with nothing edible and nothing moist.
Stop that, I told myself.
I didn’t listen. Instead I asked myself whether it was crueler to carry it to the pavement and crush it or to leave it where it was. This was, in spite of its absurdity, a serious ethical question, and a complicated one, which (like so many serious and complicated ethical questions) I haven’t answered to my own satisfaction. That’s another way of saying that I left it where it was but became conscious of every bit of edible junk I tossed in, and every smidgen of moisture. I made a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, which involved a lot of oatmeal landing on the floor. My recipes are like that: Take one handful of rolled oats and toss over your left shoulder. So I swept the oatmeal up and threw it in with the snail. Ditto the bits of dog treats I cut in half because the dog is small and the treats are big and she’d be chewing for half an hour if I didn’t cut them up.
Mmm. Snail food.
So here I am, the bane of slugs and snails, feeding a pet snail.
Eventually the garbage can will fill up and I’ll take the bag out, slug and all, and toss it in the trash. I know this. But like a mother who can’t bear to tell her daughter the goldfish died, I’ll tell myself it’ll be fine. It’s just going on a trip, darling, to a new home.
Planning Thanksgiving in Cornwall
We’ve started planning our Thanksgiving party. The guest list is limited by the size of our house, which is a shame because we’d love to add more people. And since there’s no competition—no one says, sorry, but I have to go to my brother’s this year—almost everyone we invite is available. And it’s an American holiday, which gives it an element of cool here.
Our tradition, both here and back in Minnesota, is that we cook the turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie (usually; back in Minnesota, as D. got older he became a very good cook and he brought the pies), and we ask everyone to bring something. Which is where it gets interesting.
Pumpkin pie–with a neater crust than I make. Photo by the Culinary Geek from Chicago, courtesy of WikiMedia
The first time we invited we invited M. and J. to our Thanksgiving in Minnesota, was the first time I understood how rigid the traditions are. J. isn’t from the U.S. but she was the cook in the family, and as they told the tale later, M. said “No, you can’t bring that” to everything J. suggested. Macaroni and cheese? No, you can’t bring that. Chocolate cake? No, etc.
So this year, a different J.—an American—told me she’d have to explain to P. that just because root beer floats are American doesn’t mean you can have them at Thanksgiving. I looked at the list of what people were bringing: leek gratin, cauliflower cheese, quiche. Don’t bother, I said. We’ve given up the battle.
The only traditional elements of the meal are the ones we make—turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie. And baking powder biscuits, which weren’t traditional in my family, but Wild Thing’s from Texas and will never say no to biscuits. The rest is all stuff that would get us all deported if we tried it in the U.S.
So we’ve evolved our own traditions, one of which is the meal isn’t traditional. A second involves me, the vegetarian, cooking a dead bird. Which hardly even strikes me as strange anymore. A third—one we’re trying to break—is that I make cranberry sauce and forget to set it out. A fourth is that we have to have at least one dessert that isn’t pumpkin pie, because although pumpkins grow here they’re considered a squash and people are, um, let’s say hesitant about eating it as a sweet. But we do have to have it. That’s tradition for you. Besides, a few of us like it.
Further Adventures in British English: The Letter U
The British love the letter U. They use it at every possible opportunity (neighbour, colour, flavour, savoury), and it drives some of my friends insane that Americans don’t. It’s one of those things: If you let it get to you, it will. Gleefully. If I have to write something in British, I assign myself a handful of U’s and I don’t stop writing until I’ve used them all. When I write in American, I now see tiny gaps in neighbor and color where the U isn’t: colo’r; neighbo’r.
He’s been here before, but I can now offer some advice: Make your your spellcheck is set to the right language.
And no matter which country I’m writing for, my spell check is set to the other. To my embarrassment, it snuck a U into neighbor a while back, and I posted it on the blog, which T. (copy editor that she is, down to the bone) pointed out diplomatically. I felt like the carrier of an, admittedly mild, disease—U-itis. I don’t have the bug myself, but I did spread it.
Notes from the U.K. 