Colors

There's a family further up our street, appropriately named "Rose". (We don't live on Rose Street, but the usual way to our home on Spruce Street is to drive up Rose Street. However, the appropriateness arises because this is about various colors, including rose.) The parents are unable to have children of their own, and adopted a daughter, who recently celebrated her second birthday.

By a happy coincidence, there was a young single mother, not a blood relation, but related through a "blended marriage", who couldn't afford to give up her forty-hour-a-week job if she were to be a "stay at home mom". When she is old enough, the little girl will be told that the loving woman she knows as a family friend is, in fact, her birth mother. We were lucky enough to get to know both adoptive and birth mother at this happy birthday party.

The little girl has already developed a color sense, and is particularly fond of pink and purple. Her home was decorated with approximately those two colors, mainly with balloons. All guests were asked to wear, if possible, those two colors, and I changed into a pink shirt. Barbara wore a beautiful top which incorporated a variety of colors, including those requested.

Looking around the room, I saw many variants, ranging from violet to crimson. The word "purple" is in fashion, for those states that are neither as blue as California or as red as Texas. No doubt some of you have read Alice Walker's best-seller The Color Purple, or seen the movie: purple is in fashion.

In the Episcopal Church, where we elect our bishops, we use the expression, "will be wearing a purple shirt", for someone who has been elected bishop. You will see bishops wearing that same variety of colors, from violet to crimson. There is no strict rule about this, but I do wonder why the various outfitters that specialize in clerical clothing don't get together and decide one consistent shade.

Rose is a pretty color. The Episcopal Church has a "penitential" season (Lent), when purple vestments are usual-- or (as my parish prefers) "Lenten Array", a "natural" off-white. In many places, including my parish, the Fourth Sunday in Lent sees vestments in rose, denoting the relaxing of the strict (or not so strict!) rules of fasting still complied with by many Christians.

The Season of Advent is properly not considered one of penitence, although one may see purple vestments in many churches. Rather, it should be a time of patient, watchful, waiting for Christmas. The Third Sunday in Advent is the Rose Sunday in Advent.

I am looking forward to Rose Sunday next month, as for the first time the Presider and the Assisting Priest will be wearing rose stoles (the long scarves they wear).

All this reminds me: next summer I must serve some of the Rosé wine that isn't very popular--although some that isn't sweet is much to my taste. I have about a dozen bottles in my cellar, great for quaffing on a hot day.

Next

I began this on a Thursday morning. I had just ordered the restart of a newspaper that has been on "vacation hold", with the first restarted issue to arrive in nine days' time, on the Saturday of next week. I would call that "Saturday week". The clerk who was responding told me that the paper would arrive "next Saturday". I resisted the temptation to say "No, the following Saturday".That highlights another cause for confusion between "Brits" and what those Brits would call "Yanks". By now, after more than fifty years in the US, I have learned that "Next (anyday)" doesn't mean literally the next Monday, Tuesday, etc., but is shorthand for (anyday) in next week.

In both cultures, there's no ambiguity when folk say "this (anyday)". So the very next Saturday is "this Saturday", or perhaps "this coming Saturday". Also clear is to give the date: "I'll be there on Saturday the 13th" avoids any ambiguity.

I wonder how many Brits have decided they were being "stood up" when an American friend who'd agreed to meet for lunch "next Friday" didn't show up? Or how many Americans visiting the UK appeared at a rendezvous seven days late? The sentimentalist in me feels sorry for those who fail to connect because of this misunderstanding. It is a less tragic happening than the unnecessary deaths of Romeo & Juliet, but equally illustrates the importance of timing.

Then again, the romantic in me (don't look so surprised!) imagines arriving solo, to find a beautiful maiden staring into her empty glass, deciding she never wants to see that other guy again, and I "seize the day"...

Something similar happened to me over forty years ago, when I first met Barbara--but that's another story...

Holidays

In the U.K., "holidays" in the plural usually refers to what we would call a vacation. There are School Holidays, Summer Holidays, Winter Holidays, and so forth. Here in the US, the meaning is usually narrower. When you ask someone if they have plans for the holidays, it tends to mean Christmastide, maybe the period up to and including New Year's Eve, and possibly even Thanksgiving (the fourth Thursday in November).

Public Holidays in the UK are called "Bank Holidays". As Wikipedia notes, "There is no automatic right to time off on these days, although the
majority of the population not employed in essential services receive them as holidays; those employed in essential services
usually receive extra pay for working on these days."

Originally, a "holiday" was indeed a "Holy Day", commemorating a religious feast day. Few of these remain as secular "days off" ; in the UK, until relatively recently, "Whit Monday" was a Bank Holiday, being the day after Whit Sunday (Pentecost). .

Good Friday is a holiday for most folk in the UK. Generally, it is used to make a four-day break, with Easter Monday being a Bank Holiday.

In the US, Good Friday is a working day for most employed people. I remember my surprise in 1958, when I spent my first Good Friday in San Francisco. One could take three hours off in the middle of the working day, because many churches, particularly (but not exclusively) RC places of worship, offered a Three Hour Service, from noon to three p.m., the traditional hours when Jesus is said to have been nailed to the Cross. We were not released until the hour of twelve, so office workers who went to church arrived late and left early, to be back at their desks by three. It was evident that not everyone fasted or went to church: the bars did a roaring trade, and not much work was done between three and the hour of release. It has always seemed to me a defective system.

My parish church has three services on Good Friday: usually at 7 a.m., the three-hour service at noon, and an evening liturgy at 7:30 p.m. A Frequently Asked Question is "Why Good Friday? What was good about the day of crucifixion?" Far-fetched explanations point out that it was ultimately good for humankind that Jesus died for our transgressions, but English is the only major language to use the adjective "good". It has probably arisen from confusion with "God". (We say "goodbye" when friends leave, but most folk don't realize that this is a corruption of the pious "God be with ye".)

Most offices now close on the day after Thanksgiving, making it more feasible to turn it into a time to visit out-of-town family. There is a tradition that one takes children to "Grandma's House" for the Thanksgiving meal. I attend church on Thanksgiving, knowing that it was originally a harvest festival, to give thanks to the Almighty for successful crops, though now a largely secular occasion.

American children, adolescents, and adults young in years or spirits, treat Halloween as a holiday, although it isn't usually a day off work. I remember how shocked the parents of my best friend were, when they visited the US one autumn in the forties, and hordes of children came to their hosts' home, shouting gleefully "Trick or Treat!", and demanding candy.  Most revelers don't realize that the name comes from it being the day before November 1, and thus the eve of All Saints' Day: All Hallows' Eve.

An important "non-holiday" in the UK is November 5, "Guy Fawkes Day",
when fireworks and "bonfires" (where permitted) celebrate, to the
delight of young and not-so-young.

November 2 is All Souls' Day; as "The Day of the Dead", it is a major celebration for Latinos.It is a Lesser Feast in my Church's calendar, whereas All Saints' Day is a Major Feast. It isn't moveable, but in our current Book of Common Prayer, there's the very practical rule that the day can also be celebrated on the Sunday following. That will happen this year at St. Mark's, when we shall also be baptizing the newest family member, Holden James Clifford, son of Justine Lewis and Joe Clifford.

Dialects and Accents

Barbara & I accompanied daughter Kristin to the theater in Denver recently. Kristin subscribes to plays at the Performing Arts Center, and normally attends with two women friends. She was out of town for her regular Tuesday night performance, as she had been at Jalapa, in Nicaragua, attending a 25th anniversary celebration of the opening of a school building she had designed "pro bono" for the youngest children, using inexpensive "vernacular" materials. This was part of Jalapa's "sister city" association with Boulder. Kristin and her friend Susan, the mayor of Boulder, had been invited to attend the celebration (at their own expense, of course--Jalapa is a very poor city, close to the border with Honduras). So Kristin had changed her performance date, and invited us to accompany her.

The play was a 1990 adaptation of Bram Stoker's ever-popular novel Dracula. Kristin would not have chosen such a play, any more than we would, but when you buy a season subscription, you end up with the theatrical equivalent of a table d'hote meal.  I had never read the book, nor had I chosen to see any movie or TV version of the story. I did remember that Count Dracula was a vampire, living in Transylvania; I had heard about the use of garlic and a small wooden cross to ward off the Evil One; and the need to drive a wooden stake through the heart of an "Un-Dead" victim, as well as that of the Count himself. The play was fun, but that's not the subject of the musings.

As I thumbed through the program, I noted that the production had used a "dialect coach". I also noticed that much of the action took place away from Transylvania, in England and elsewhere in Continental Europe. Among the characters were seamen and working class Londoners: hence the "dialect coach", I assumed. I did not think that the English "gentry" in the cast would need such training. Evidently, I was wrong.

Unlike most New York and West Coast actors, the Colorado actors apparently hadn't been trained to speak in "stage English", so necessary for an authentic performance of the plays of Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, or Noel Coward. It appeared that the dialect coach had tried to teach some of the performers to speak like upper-middle class English men and women. As far as the men were concerned, they failed, in this harsh critic's judgment. They sound phony, with exaggerated vowel sounds.

Now, I have modified my own speech during half a century in the US; I have never tried to sound like a man born in the US. My basic speech was "BBC English", as it used to be called before regional voices were acceptable for reading the news in the UK. It was also known as "U" speech, as opposed to "Non-U", with the letter "U" allegedly standing for "upper class". Sometimes this way of speaking was called "Public School" English--as opposed to the"Grammar School" version.

Some of these class distinctions have disappeared by now. When I hear younger British members of my sons' generation, and even those younger still, they use a more blended accent. (When you listen to the recorded voice of the Queen, you hear authentic old-style BBC English.) 

This is not about "dialect", of course: it is about accents. In my day, we didn't think we had an "accent": we spoke proper English. I remember the very mixed feelings I had, many years ago, when an older woman, who clearly enjoyed hearing me speak, told me "I just love your brogue".(Irish has a word "barrog", from which we derive the word "brogue", meaning a strongly accented way of speaking.) The idea that I spoke with a "brogue" seemed hilarious, rather than insulting, and I knew she thought she was paying me a compliment.

Vegemite

"Vegemite" is an extract of yeast, marketed by Kraft in Australia. Several years ago, a friend brought several jars, correctly guessing that I would enjoy it. When freshly opened, Vegemite can be easily spread on buttered bread. If there's a difference between Marmite and Vegemite, I don't know it. My guess is that the name "Marmite" has been trademarked, but that the extraction process is "in the public domain".

A few years ago, Marmite developed a witty advertising campaign, on the theme "Marmite--you either love it or hate it". I was shown some of the commercials, probably displayed on YouTube. For any readers who don't know about Marmite, it is a sticky brown paste, usually spread on bread, toast, or a plain cracker, with a salty, tangy taste.

As a child, I used to see two brands of meat extract, Oxo and Bovril. As their names imply. these were made from beef . They looked rather similar to their vegetarian cousins, and were mainly used to make "beef tea", a warm drink for cold weather, essentially just the beef extract dissolved in hot water. I seldom saw beef tea, apart from when we were spending days on long sea voyages. On cold nights in later years, keeping watch as a Naval officer, i learned to prefer the strong cocoa we called "Ki", made from dissolved bars of solid chocolate.

The other common usage for Oxo or Bovril was to add flavor and body to soups and stews. In 1951, I learned how these meat extracts were a byproduct of the beef trade between Argentina and the U.K. I took passage in a ship which picked up a cargo of chilled beef in the busy port of La Plata, south of Buenos Aires. A prize-winning article of mine (Meat Boat) about that trade was published in the Spectator later that year.

At our Colorado house, I recently finished my last jar of Vegemite, which had dried up since it was opened many moons ago. I was able to scrape out most of what was left, and even (with difficulty) spread some on an English muffin. Delicious! But there were several lumps that I was able to enjoy, much as I would suck what Brits call a "boiled sweet" and we call "hard candy". I washed out the almost-empty pot and recycled it.

Farewell, Vegemite! Now I can start the little jar of Marmite, awaiting me in the pantry!

Mary, Mayhem, and The Rotten Husband (cont.)

III.

I was sitting in my car, the red Acura, at the edge of a large parking area at the end of a driveway. It was

neatly covered with a fine yellowish-brown sandy gravel. I was looking at a large country house. It was
somewhere on the Peninsula, perhaps in Hillsborough or Atherton. There were lights in the windows,
clearly visible behind the drapes. It was about 9pm on a clear evening.

Then, from the left, came the sounds of a marching band. There weren’t “76 trombones”, but it was
certainly a large band, although the uniforms and instruments were not very distinct. Somehow, I knew
that I had organized this band, and that they were there to serenade someone at the house. (The very
idea is absurd: one guitar or a gypsy violinist would do a much better job than blaring out one’s feelings
to the entire neighborhood, even in an area of huge park-like estates!)

I locked the car door, and walked over to the house. After a while, the front door opened, and I was
greeted by a man and his wife, probably in their late forties. Although it was the type of house that
would need servants to be run efficiently, I don’t recall having seen a butler or parlormaid.

The evidently wealthy couple who had let me in were contemporaries of mine. [In the dream I felt as if I
were (say) forty-five.] They treated me as an equal, and said something along the lines of “I expect you’d
like to see Mary. She’s out, but we expect her back very soon.” (Actually, the name has no significance.
If I had known the young women’s name in my dream, I had forgotten it by the time that I awoke in the
morning.) The parents were informally dressed. They did not seem surprised to see me, nor did they
comment on the music.

I have no sense of time delay, for very soon three or four people entered the room. They were young
people, but I only had eyes for one. She had medium-length black hair, a pale complexion, and bright
red lips. She was wearing a white blouse with a black skirt. She stood out, a strikingly self-possessed,
even charismatic, figure. She was very beautiful. I knew that I wanted to be her friend, and to be seen in
her company, but my feelings were of admiration, not inflamed desire.

The parents excused themselves, and left the room, together with the shadowy figures who had come
in with Mary. As soon as they had gone, she turned on me, and berated me for calling on her in this
conspicuous fashion. I was aware that I was a married man, although it wasn’t specifically to Barbara
of whom I was thinking, I just had the knowledge that I was married to another woman, and yet had a
considerable interest in Mary.

Mary said that she was very angry with me: how dare I come and attempt to woo her again with sweet
words and gifts of books? It was as if I had had one previous meeting with Mary, and had moved her to
care for me. Apparently, this had happened some weeks or months previously. For all that her parents
knew, I was a suitor, and by no means an unwelcome one. Mary was single, in her early twenties, and
given considerable freedom by her parents. Even while she was expressing her anger I felt immensely
drawn to this striking and intelligent young woman.

Mary then suggested that my interest in her was in part due to snobbishness. I knew that she was
closely related to some noble family, whose surname differed from the family title. My interest in her

was for her family connections, not for herself, she suggested. I protested at this calumny, but I was
aware that her family’s name impressed me.

Although the scene could have played in the United Kingdom, it was certainly taking place in California.

I have no specific memory of Mary leaving the room, but I have a recall of her returning and throwing
down in front of me some miscellaneous objects, which at first I had presumed to be some things that
I had given her on a previous visit, and which she was now rejecting. I also recall that there was at least
one piece of rubber – or plastic-coated wire.

Somewhat taken aback at my reception, I walked out to my car. To my amazement, I found that a front
window had been smashed, and that a lot of damage had been done to the instrument panel. Various
dials and wires leading to them had been pulled out. Mary had done a thorough job of trashing my car!
There seemed to be no way that I could drive the car, and I also noted that the hand brake appeared to
have been disconnected. I remember being concerned that even if I could get the car to start; there was
no way that I wanted to drive it off without having effective brakes.

At this point, I remember a number of other people coming to the car, expressing amazement at the
destruction, and some puzzled sympathy. I don’t think there was any doubt in anyone’s mind who was
responsible for the damage. The next thing I recall was that some family members, including at least two
males, one of whom was Mary’s father, had somehow done a miraculous repair job on the car, so that I
could drive it away.

It was at this point that I awoke for the first time, becoming aware that I had just come out of a
significant dream. I was amazed at the vividness, and the manner in which I had evidently angered Mary
because I had come a-courting. Her anger had in no way been directed at me on the grounds I was a
married man, and it is not clear to me whether in the dream I had revealed this to her. It is also not clear
that her anger was in any way affected by our age differential. We seemed very evenly matched. The
anger seemed to be a combination of her accusations that I was motivated by snobbishness, rather than
by love of her as a person, and because of the ostentation of my serenading her, catching her off guard,
and identifying me (to anyone who was watching) as her suitor. And then I fell asleep again.

IV.

There was Mary again, as striking as ever, but in an entirely different mood. She was extremely contrite
about the mayhem she had created in her rage, and she acknowledged that it wasn’t really justified. In
fact, she was very glad to see me, and she loved me.

In a few moments we were touching, laughing, kissing, and playfully happy. Mary had apologized
and I had forgiven her. That’s as far as things went in the dream, and I awoke again. Darn it!

Mary, Mayhem, and the Rotten Husband: An Unusual Dream

April 14, 1993

Mary, Mayhem, and the Rotten Husband:
An Unusual Dream
By Nigel A. Renton


I.

I often have amusing dreams, and on several occasions I have awoken from a dream, and later fallen back to sleep, finding myself starting another chapter of the same story. In this dream I played the part of a rotten husband, had my car trashed as a result of chasing after a younger woman, and then – but let’s not spoil the ending.

My dreams remain very vivid in my memory immediately after I awake. Since this is usually in the middle of the night, it is rare for me to relate the dream (which would mean waking my wife) or to go upstairs and dictate the details while they are fresh in my mind. If I don’t do this, it is all too easy to forget the details. On this occasion they remained with me, and I felt impelled to record them. Barbara was out of town.

II.

It is often easy to relate my dreams to events in my waking life. Very often there are a number of different happenings which affect my dreams. It is as if I take a little piece from many different parts of my waking life, including plays, movies, and the TV screen, and put them into a kaleidoscope. Then my brain shakes them all up while I sleep, and turns them out as marvelously complex and fascinating dreams.

There also seems to be some correlation between my having eaten cheese and having vivid dreams. I was told about this as a child, but this “old wives’ tale” may have some basis in fact. On the evening of April 13/14, 1993, I had liberally sprinkled a large salad with parmesan, before realizing that a similar amount would improve the flavor of the left-over spaghetti, which was the main course of my supper.

I had been talking to or thinking of women all day, but not with “evil thoughts”. That morning, I had had an intense conversation with AL. I had then arranged with my young friend from church, MB, to be my guest at the forthcoming DRA theater evening. I had also had good reasons to think about JK and MS, young women friends, and of RC and KL, women priests.

I had later been to the doctor, (the only man in this account), where there had been talk about a relatively minor operation for the removal of toenails, deferred until a possible future date: and of possible future urethral or prostate surgery. I had then gone up to a blood-drawing station, only to find that it was closed for the afternoon, and I would need to return the following morning.
During the evening, I had a phone conversation with Barbara in Colorado, where I plan to join her for the coming weekend. The call was more in the nature of passing on messages than a lovers’ chat. I should add that Barbara had worn a white blouse and black pants when I last saw her.

We also discussed whether Barbara would take Kate Learson to Rocky Mountain National Park on the day of my arrival, or whether we should spend part of my precious few hours in Colorado amid those glorious snow-capped peaks. (Kate is the daughter of the former chairman of IBM, and I vividly remembered how we had been drawn to each other’s company at the outset of the trip Barbara and I made to the Antarctic. Kate was unaccompanied: I remembered how I had come to terms with the realization that to maintain this friendship it was important that she and Barbara becomes friends, which they did very easily, while I worked through my feelings about this glamorous and intelligent younger woman who had found me a good companion. At the time, Kate had confided in me, and later to us both, her complex feelings about her lover, who subsequently became her husband. John won’t be with Kate in Colorado, so the three of us will be reunited, as we were for a couple of delightful days in New England last fall.)

On my rides to and from the office and for part of the evening, I had been listening to a wonderful recorded book about the Borgias, and the passionate involvement of male clergy, of all ranks and including the Pope, in licentious affairs, sometimes involving incest. A few days before, I had re-viewed the scene where Orson Welles as Citizen Kane trashes his mistress’s room in a violent rage.l

Then, after supper, I had watched Steel Magnolias, a movie I had recorded earlier. The main theme concerns a young woman (Julia Roberts), as a severe diabetic who rejects the advice of doctors and her own mother to avoid becoming pregnant. She wants to have her own child, and gives birth to the son and heir ardently sought by her husband. As a result of this, she had kidney failure and in due course, the kidney transplant from her own mother is rejected, and she dies. The movie is much more about middle-class white society in a small town in Louisiana, not too far from Shreveport, than it is about death, which comes at the end of the movie. It is generally upbeat and funny, and also stars Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, and Darryl Hannah. These are the strong Southern women of the title, each very different, involved to some extent with men who are felonious, foolish, out of work, or pathetic. This affected me, because the mother of my own sons had also been a severe diabetic. We were not warned to avoid having children because of potential danger to a diabetic mother. Had I unwittingly put Lola into a life-threatening situation – twice? Had she deliberately – or unwittingly – downplayed the dangers to her own health?

Then, somewhere on the news, I saw a picture of a car that had been broken into, with bits of window glass on the floor. And so, to my dream …


to be continued in next week's post ...