Friday 26th January 2007

Today was crazy, from the nine o’clock lecture which set it rolling, via a few hours with the atomic force microscope in the lab, a lunch in the middle of nowhere, a class on condensed matter physics, a twenty-minute ‘coffee’ meeting with JTA which actually turned into a walk to Sainsbury’s to buy a bottle of water, followed by an hour of Play-Dohing with an autistic kid at KEEN and finally a Burns supper.

I could really identify with my partner in Play-Doh; his initial response to the people around him was exactly what mine must have been at his age. He didn’t want to play pass the parcel because he considered it pointless and his likelihood of winning was slim (I was a child already jaded by children’s parties, even my own, by the age of about eight). My favourite part, though, was when we wondered what to make with the Play-Doh. His first suggestion was a chair. A little off-the-wall, perhaps, but nothing too weird. Then, at my suggestion, a snail (the way where you roll the Doh into a tube and then curl it up on itself).

“What shall we make now?” I asked, stroking our snail whose Doh-carved smile looked more like a well-waxed moustache. He paused for a moment.

“A robot servant for the snail!” he declared. So that’s what we made.

My Burns supper this evening was of course a day late, which doubly upset the pedant in me because it meant that I was celebrating this most Scottish of festivals on Australia Day. The other disadvantage was that I’d already had a chronologically accurate Burns Night meal in Hall yesterday, making it my second night of haggis with neeps and tatties.

Neeps, it turns out, are quite confusing. A little thought experiment involving a bad Scottish accent might lead you to believe that it’s short for turneeps and you’d be right. So, imagine if you will my disappointment when I was served tatties mixed with swede. On Australia Day.

However, it turns out that by the weird power of a culinary trivia double negative, that this was, in fact, authentic Scotch cuisine. Scottish people refer to what the English call a swede as a turnip, and vice-versa. But it was still Australia Day.

We also celebrated Robert Burns’ great poetry with a few short readings from his wide-ranging works. There was the standard address to the haggis, as well as a few extracts from other poems, but by far the best-titled work was Johnie Lad, Cock Up Your Beaver. Rather than an eighteenth-century porn poem, however, it turns out to be another mis-translation, this time not relating to root vegetables (Johnie Lad, Celeriac Your Rutabaga or something) but an instruction that wee Johnie tip his beaver hat in order that he appear polite.

In these morally depraved times, it is probably a maxim that many a young man should still stick by.

 

Comments

  1. Tom says (04:21 29/01/2007)

    Educational. Never realised that about 'neeps' being swedes. Makes sense though because, if you were having "weeds" with your "tatties", you might well complain to the chef to clean the damned vegetables before putting them on your plate.

    And that kid should produce comics or something... autism is fascinating. Usually portrayed in the media as a curse, but it's one that can come with so many benefits. Oh well, what was the event at KEEN this week?

  2. Statto says (12:02 29/01/2007)

    I tried to encourage him to come a Play-Doh character crime-fighting quest with me (you’re quite right, what better comic book duo than a snail and his trusty robot servant to get to the bottom of mysterious criminal activity?), but it didn’t really work.

    It would have been good, though, because this week’s theme was crime-solving-centric in some way. I would elaborate more, but having spent nearly a whole session with the Doh, I never found out…

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