Tag Archives: travel

Norah Porteous — Wonderful Artist and Devoted Mother

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This is Jack’s promised post about Lindsay’s mum – –

I promised a post about Norah and her life. When she was relatively young her husband died suddenly and tragically, and she was left to look after three children – Nigel, Fiona and Lindsay. She wasn’t left particularly well off financially.

But she was resourceful and talented and made a plan. She had trained at the famed Slade School of Art in London, specializing in fiber art and water color painting. So she and the kids moved to a rented house in the small town of Culross (pronounced koorus) in Fife; the town is under protection by the Scottish Government and preserved in its original architecture and cobbled streets. Their house was called the Tron House – the most prestigious one and pretty close to the oldest; its lintel stone over the door says 1610.

Attractive historic village in Fife Scotland.

Just at the top of the alley beside it was a dilapidated medieval stone wash-house which Norah bought and converted into a lovely gift shop focusing on her art work and other up-market offerings.

Nigel and Fiona moved on and made lives for themselves, but that left her and Lindsay. Knowing he would likely outlive her, she made it her work to make him self-sufficient and independent. She encouraged his involvement in folk music, believing it would give him a life of his own, which it did.

Wendy and I always enjoyed visiting them, and we were often invited for lunch or dinner, when Norah would set the table with her best china and silver. That’s when Lindsay would ‘code shift’ – speaking very posh in front of his mum, but reverting to a broad Fife accent and language when she left the room.

Her health eventually deteriorated, and their roles were reversed. Lindsay became the care-giver, and her training of him proved important in the end. He kept her from blowing money on psychics, trying to contact her dead husband, as her mind began to wander. In the end, it was Lindsay who looked after Norah.

Probably our favorite story about Norah would be easy to misconstrue: it celebrates her survival instinct and perfect manners coming to terms in a cunning move. We visited her and Lindsay around midnight on Hogmanay one year, when it’s traditional to take a bottle of whisky, a piece of food, and a lump of coal (lang may yir lum reek). This is called first-footing, and you tend to make up to a dozen such house calls on Jan. 1.

Usually you will exchange sips of Scotch from one bottle you bring with you and your host’s, and then carry on to another house with the coal sack, one piece missing from your cake, and a few drams less of the whisky. Norah took her sip from our rather expensive ¼-empty bottle, put it on the mantelpiece behind her (out of my reach), and then said “how generous; thank you.” We smiled weakly and headed for the door, planning to stop and buy another bottle to continue our first-footing.

What a woman!!

Observations on Humanity While Cruising to Alaska

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Observations from my first cruise:

Going on a cruise is like being in an airport where everyone is going to the same place, so the entire airport’s ticketing desks and security lines are aimed at one single door.

When you get on the ship you have entered a floating airport stacked on top of itself like layers of a wedding cake. Swarovski crystal and duty free shops dominate the lower flowers. There are people everywhere. Most of these people are reallllllly excited to be in this floating airport—which is so big it kinda doesn’t feel like it’s floating. You can’t tell at first, and then you realize, every once in a while, that you are lurching toward a wall for no reason.

Many excited children (350, we would learn later) are in the floating airport. The airport is stacked, not flat, and the things the children want to do are at the top and bottom of the airport. You are going to get a LOT of experience over the coming week at dodging children on the stairs dressed in swimsuits, decked out as fairies and tigers complete with face paint, occasionally appearing in wolf and bear hats once people have visited ports and tourism shops. You will become accustomed to this changing wardrobe and also an expert at dodging the small human bullets of enthusiasm. But be wary: the enthusiastic little critters are followed by large exhausted critters, always holding an open canister of either hot coffee or sticky cocktails with fruit. Do not run into them; they will become angry if the liquid spills, and they are not looking at you; they are looking at the small human bullets ricocheting off the stairs.

The staff on the cruise ship are there to make you happy. This can become frightening. Of the just-under-6K people on the ship, 1,500 of them are staff. They are watching you. They will approach and open or shut windows so you can see better. They wipe wet seats, fogged viewing areas, and their own facial expressions when people start getting grumpy on day three. YOU are the target of their compensated kindness, and they want to make you new drinks, great food, and happy. If you are not happy, more of them will appear. Fake a smile if necessary, and they will dissipate.

If you take an Alaskan cruise going north in September/October, you are basically swimming upstream against every whale in the Pacific. The first day someone sees a whale spout, everyone on the boat will rush to that side of it jockeying for position at the railing.

By day three, someone will glance up from reading their book in a deck chair, yawn, and say “there’s another one.”

All bets are off if it turns out to be an orca. We only saw one of those, as opposed to about a thousand whales, and several groups of dolphins–or maybe porpoises. We weren’t close enough to be introduced properly.

When you pull into a harbor, everything swarms the ship. The seagulls and scua take up residency atop the lifeboats and wait for you to toss them pieces of muffin and toast from your balcony. This is forbidden, but the seagulls know human nature.

The seals and dolphins swim alongside the ship, doing cute things and picking up pieces of muffin and toast from people who overestimate compensating for wind in their trajectory. The people selling tours swarm the dock shouting interesting things you can do. Because the people who have never been on cruises before didn’t know they were supposed to pre-book excursions, they kinda wander ashore looking befuddled and are quickly eaten by the independent tour guides.

Next week we can talk about scenery and stuff.