Category Archives: home improvements

Two to Tango

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Jack’s Wednesday guest post makes it on time for a change – –

A belated tip of the hat to my long suffering wife after our recent twenty third anniversary –

We are complete opposites – I’m a lazy bugger and she’s a workaholic!

When we first met she was a community storyteller, a swimming instructor and a strawberry picker. She had had a degree in journalism and another in German and had just completed her Masters in Education. She headed off to St Johns in Newfoundland to start her PhD in Folklore.

When that was to the thesis stage she joined me in Scotland and we married. Off she went again and started a very successful non-profit storytelling co-operative, was appointed to the board of the Scottish national storytelling forum, the board of the US National Storytelling Network and the traditional arts committee of the Scottish parliament. Shortly after to Lancashire in England where she worked for two years with refugees and asylum seekers and learned Arabic!

During all of this she was writing. Academic papers and then the first book which was a collection of newspaper columns published by Lingham House. We moved to Big Stone Gap and opened a bookstore so the next book was a memoir about that and a best seller for a big New York publisher. Since then there have been two more books and another three are in the pipeline!

But then she got another Masters Degree – in Public Health, and is now the Director of GMEC which encourages and helps newly qualified medical professionals to set up shop in Appalachia.

But enter Covid 19!

So, for the last few months she’s been sourcing PPE all over the world and getting it to clinics, medical centers and hospitals throughout SW Virginia – while finishing three books!

Just now and then she has a wee lull in her timetable and she can’t abide that, so it’s time to reorganize the cupboards or the backyard – – – or can stuff!

Did I mention the cat rescue or the chickens?

I can never keep up, but it’s been a wonderful twenty three years –

Here’s to the next twenty three!

Dinnae Fash (see below)

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Jack gets in on time for a change – –

What a bourach (see below) we’ve just gone through –

Wendy and I try to be as self sufficient as possible and that includes doing our best to fix technology when it goes wrong.

But the last couple of weeks have been a test –

First of all our dishwasher started to leave everything less than clean, so it was time to dismantle the birling (see below) arms and clean them. In the process of re-assembling them we noticed a wee tube thing in the front corner that we’d never examined the last time. When we lifted up the cover over it we found it was really manky (see below). Of course we broke a few small clips trying to remember how the arms came off and on!

Then the dryer suddenly stopped working in mid program and nothing would make it work. Since we rarely use it we gave it away to a friend for spares. So now we have more cupboard space.

The waste disposal unit in the sink began making nasty noises so I decided to take it out and examine it. These things are a hooer o a wecht (see below). I checked it out and it took both of us with much testing of the marriage vows to get it re-installed – and it still made the nasty noises. So we bought a new one – –

The ice maker in the freezer stopped dispensing ice so we took the tray out and found a bag of bread twisted round the turny roon screwy thing (see below). We had to cut the bag into pieces to get it disentangled and were sure we’d buggered (see below) it. But no – once we’d checked everything else out it began making ice and dispensing!

Now the weird thing is –

For most of my life I’ve never had any of these things so I wonder why I felt the only one we could get rid of was the dryer? Who needs an ice maker or a waste disposal, or even a dishwasher? But we made the bread from the bag into French toast and it was no bad (see below).

Bourach – a lovely Scots gaelic word meaning a terrible mess.

Birling – a lovely lowland Scots word meaning turning fairly fast.

Manky – a more modern Scots word meaning horribly dirty and smelly.

Hooer o a wecht – Scots again – rather heavy.

Turny roon screwy thing – do I need to explain this?

Buggered – – –

No bad – almost good – the highest compliment a Scot is willing to pay.

Dinnae fash – another good and useful Scots phrase – keep calm and carry on.