A Weekend of Sport

Since the weather is still a bit unpredictable and the days are short, we didn’t get too ambitious about this weekend. On Friday, John had a sleepover at a new friend’s house so the rest of us got fish and chips for takeout and watched a movie. Our rental house features a decent collection of DVDs, which is nice because one can only play Region 2 DVDs in the UK, and those that were purchased in the US are for Region 1…i.e., they won’t work here. Our rental house also has a DVD player, but it’s very old. The rental agency left a note for us regarding the DVD player that warned us, “The DVD will make a severe jutting noise when it is turned on. Don’t be alarmed, as it will quickly settle itself.” Periodically, Leah will try to turn on the TV, but the DVD player will come on and start jutting about, and she will run into the room screaming, “I turned on the TV but it’s too loud and now it’s scary!”

On Saturday, I left David with the kids for the morning and met a friend for “hot yoga.” This is apparently a trend in the US and in the UK, and neither of us had tried it before so we didn’t know what to expect. It’s basically hatha yoga done in a very small room that has been heated to about 102 degrees F. The concept is that the heat is supposed to warm up your muscles and make the poses easier to attain, and since I am about as inflexible as a human can be, I appreciate any assistance I can get. It’s also supposed to make you sweat a lot, and the folks who run the facility share all kinds of theories about how this is supposed to release toxins from the body, etc. I don’t buy into any of that, so really I was just going to try out a new workout as my Body Revolution DVD collection is already getting old. The yogi for this class was a male, and my friend (who is English) leaned over at the start of the class, once the instructor began to speak, to point out that he was an American. I said he definitely wasn’t, with all those rolling “r” sounds he was making. She said, “Canadian, then?” but I shook my head. “No, definitely Scottish,” I said. She didn’t seem to buy it, so when he asked us to lower our chin so much that it “fell onto the costume” I gave her a look. “Definitely not an American,” I said. “Costumes to us are only for theater and Halloween.”

After I sweated through the yoga class, I went home to meet everyone else for lunch. We had grand plans to walk to the beach, but it was really raining at that point, so we decided to bundle Leah into her “pushchair” and go into town instead. We lasted for only a few hours, and most of that was spent talking with one of our students and her parents who were visiting from the U.S. Leah was sleeping in the pushchair, but was getting pretty soggy since we didn’t have a rain cover for her (really, what a novice mistake…) so we cut our trip short and went home for an early dinner and another movie (we looked through the house collection of musicals and chose the fitting Singin’ in the Rain).

On Sunday, we drove up to the seaside community of Montrose for a rugby fixture. This was to be John’s first game, and he and I were a little nervous since neither of us really know what’s going on in the game. The coaches are very gracious to John, and manage to give him the ball from time to time and just tell him to “Run run run! Before we left home, we tried to assemble a uniform for John. John’s friend Scott had loaned us an old jersey and some rugby socks since we hadn’t ordered one for John yet. He also gave John a pair of Canterbury rugby shorts, and though they were the right size, John absolutely refused to wear them because they were so short. David showed him pictures of how short the pros wear these shorts, but John wasn’t buying it. He tried to talk us into letting him wear his Nike basketball shorts he has brought along, but we told him that he would just look ridiculous in them when all the other boys were wearing proper short shorts. Luckily, it seems that none of the boys go to the game in their “costume” but turn up in trousers, collared shirt and club tie instead. John didn’t have a club tie either, so he used his Madras school tie, and we packed a variety of options in his sports bag.

We arrived at the club in a complete downpour, though it was actually so windy that close to the ocean that it was really more of a sideways pour. We all hustled into the tiny clubhouse, and John was appalled to realize that we were the first ones there. The coach from the Kircaldy team asked if he was from Madras, then pointed to a corner and told him to wait there for the rest of his mates to arrive, and he instructed me to stand right next to him until someone else appeared, and then to go away as quickly as possible. He was very worried that none of his teammates would be wearing their jackets and ties, so we were both relieved when one showed up wearing just that. I dutifully disappeared and John followed his teammate into the locker room. When the team ran out onto the field, I noticed that every single one of them was wearing the short shorts, and so John had put his on as well. However, he was also wearing a pair of white compression pants that he had used during football season in the fall at home underneath the short shorts in an attempt to make him feel less exposed. In the end, this worked out well for me because it made it easier to identify him in a big scrum on the field (see photos below).

After the games (which John’s team won easily, though I’m not sure he made much of a contribution) we drove a few minutes south to the seaside town of Arbroath. We stopped in the city center at a tea room I had read about online, and had a lovely lunch. Arbroath is famous for the “Arbroath smokie” which is a piece of haddock that is tied with twine and hung over a smoking barrel covered in wet jute sacks. The sacks create a very smoky fire, and so the fish has a strong smoky taste. I’m really the only one in the family that likes them, but I don’t like how many bones are in them, so I decided to order them in a pate served on oatcakes. Emma had a delicious baguette made with melted Brie and vegetarian bacon, and Leah and John ended up with huge mountains of homemade “macaroni cheese” served with chips. John taught her how to eat her chips with “salad cream” and the two of them were so impressed with this new option that we brought most of the macaroni cheese home for dinner. After lunch, we stopped at a little shopping center in Dundee to set John up with some rugby gear. To my surprise, he allowed us to buy him the shorts, though he chose the ones with a white stripe down the side to go with his compression pants and so I assume it will be a while before he goes bare-legged!

Of course, our night ended with the Superbowl. The kids and I had gone to the grocery store for supplies to make our usual nachos, and we didn’t have too much trouble finding suitable versions of what we needed. There had clearly been a run on avocados by the other Americans in town so we had to settle for store-bought guacamole, but since this often happens at home the kids weren’t too disappointed. Emma tried to convert her chocolate chip recipe into milliliters and grams, and had moderate success. We intended to watch the game on the TV as it was being broadcast by the BBC, but when David realized that the BBC had brought in their own announcers and color commentary team and were broadcasting from the tiniest suite possible in the stadium, he shut it off and streamed it online instead. That way, we could also see the American commercials, which we all know is as much fun as watching the game anyway!