A very narrow escape

I've just been writing a round robin letter for the friends we've left behind in the States. (Real life friends, not virtual ones. You know...) I gave them news of the family, and how we're settling in to our new home, with a little reflection on the adjustment process. There's a paragraph that reads:

"Life in Scotland is both familiar and new. Small things take us by surprise. We both still go to the wrong side of the car, occasionally, and our kids really have no chance at all of producing work with correct spelling. Hurrah for spellcheckers. We have had to teach them to ask “Please may I have…?” instead of “Could I get…?” and wellies have become a part of life again. (You don’t know what wellies are? Google them.)"

But as it turned out, not so much of the Hurrah for spellcheckers. Because the spellchecker changed wellies to willies. 

Hurrah for me noticing before I sent the letter. What would the recipients have made of the statement that "willies have become a part of life again"? Followed by "You don't know what willies are? Google them."

It was a very narrow escape. I suppose you're all wishing that I'd sent the letter before I noticed. Shame on you. 

I couldn't make this cross-cultural stuff up if I tried. 

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Rhyming pang

My 6-yo was being assessed at school. The assessor said she was puzzled. He can read, but he couldn't make rhymes. Being able to make rhymes is normally a pre-requisite skill for reading (if I understood her correctly). He had taken ages to come up with basic rhyming words, and had sometimes suggested incorrect ones (although she had been suitably impressed when he had produced "earthquake" as a rhyme for "take"). I wondered if this was something to do with him processing her accent, as I was pretty sure he could do rhyming easy-peasy. So I tried him out on a few at home, and as I expected, he was able to come up quickly with 2 or 3 rhyming words for each word I suggested.

So I tried the same experiment on myself. I speak French (rustily). I tried naming a French word and then thinking of a rhyme. It is very difficult. Very difficult indeed. My conclusion is that rhyming in a language or accent other than your mother tongue or accent is difficult. Perhaps it's because in your tender years you didn't learn all those nursery rhymes and have your mother talk rhyming baby gibberish to you, carving out the necessary trails in the brain to make rhyming an almost instinctive skill.

Of course assessors don't get everything right. She told me "I told 6-yo that my family had come from Scotland as I thought he'd find that interesting". He told me "Everyone else got to watch a movie, but I had to go and do extra work for this lady because she is from Scotland and I am from Scotland. It wasn't fair. ".

The Neighborhood Pool

When we were house-hunting, everyone advised us how nice it was to have a neighborhood pool. I didn't really believe them. We were house-hunting in the snow, and it is always hard to imagine what a different season brings, even if you know first hand, let alone if you don't. We're not a very swimmy family, I thought. We're too fair-skinned to stay out too long in the blazing sun, pool or no pool. We'd go for the odd quick dip, but we wouldn't hang out.

We did, however, end up buying a house in a neighborhood with a pool. They were right. It is a very life-enhancing thing. We have become a swimmy family. I am nagged daily until we go. We stay for hours. I have bought UV-protection swimwear, lots of sunscreen and have learnt to be less paranoid. I am a convert to the neighborhood pool. It is a lot of fun.

There are times since I've been here, and I'm sure this is a common experience, when I feel I am in a film. So much of American culture is familiar to us Brits through film and television, that when you experience it for real, it feels strangely fictional. Do Americans feel like they've walked into "Notting Hill" when they visit London, I wonder? Anwyay, the neighborhood pool is very much that being-in-a-film experience. Marvellously, it's like being in a film about the 60's. It starts with the architecture. The building is long and low, and has decorative features, squares and stripes, which tie it to its age. There is a pale blue telephone on the wall in the entrance, which must be the original.The pool is that shade of turquoise that all good pools used to be, before they went pastel. It's not a rectangle, but that shape that you learn the name of at school and then forget since you never have need of the word. Except now. Like a rectangle, but with the two long side slanting inwards instead of being parallel, and the top end shorter than the bottom. Trapezoid? Rhomboid? (And while we're on the subject, whatever happened to the word "oblong"? I used to love that word, but "rectangle" has won the day, and you never hear good old oblong any more.)

I digress. Back to the not-rectangular neighborhood pool. There are chairs and loungers made of soft plastic strips, so you can't stand on them as your feet will go through (although if you are a child, you'll have a jolly good try). There is the radio played over loudspeakers, lots of golden oldies. There are two lifeguards sitting on chairs at the top of ladders (two, mind, for a smallish pool: this is very reassuring for mothers of not-very-strong swimmers). The lifeguards blow a whistle if you try running by the side of the pool, or any other naughty behaviour. There is a hatch where you can buy sugar and artificial colouring combined in various forms: solid, liquid, fizzy or frozen. There are lots of children diving for rings, or playing water basketball. There are parents. There are teenagers in small groups, either awkwardly self-conscious or self-consciously confident, depending on which side of that particular line they exist. The teenagers enhance the 60s feel, as their swimwear is all turquoise and brown circles, or lollipop pink polka dots. Bikinis combining halter neck tops with little hipster shorts are the thing. One of my English friends has kindly advised me that Boden deliver such things to the US. Thank you, Fran, but get real. I've had three babies. I am making my own small contribution to the 60's theme by wearing some odd, slightly winged, sunglasses. I thought I'd lost them in the move, and was looking forward to getting new ones, some of those clever ones that go dark when you're outside and clear when you're inside, but sadly, I've found my old odd ones, so am having to work on justifying a new pair to myself before I can do that.

Anyway, this misses the point. I don't need to look the part, because it is me who is watching the film. I am someone who has inadvertently wandered onto the set and am watching the action. I don't have to be part of it. The odd glasses are just a nod in its direction.

So there we are. The neighborhood pool. The perceptive amongst you, and the pedants, will have noticed that I have not been consistent in my use of American and English spelling. Neighborhood, but colouring and behaviour. Let me reassure you. There is a logic in it, which goes like this: I'm sticking with my English spelling, but the neighborhood pool has to be the neighborhood pool. There's no such thing as a neighbourhood pool. They just don't exist. And maybe that's why I am getting so fond of the neighborhood pool. It's an extra. It's something we couldn't have enjoyed in Scotland. Not wrong or different, but a bonus!