The Hustings in Plato's Cave

Not long ago, I went to a hustings. What is a hustings? I'm glad you asked, for I had to myself. A hustings is a political meeting in which candidates for office sit at at table and present themselves and their ideas to the electorate. It might be sponsored by this group or that.

I was invited to go to a hustings sponsored by "Women for Independence" and the very unusual thing about it, I thought, was that only women were invited. The only men in the lecture hall were candidates. The other unusual thing about the meeting, for me, was that there was a cash bar open, and I was very glad of it, for I was hot and thirsty by the time I walked to the town and wanted a gin and tonic. The women could take our glasses into the lecture hall, too, to my great comfort and joy. I guess it never occurred to anyone that a fight could break out, "Women for Independence" (and I, a unionist) glassing each other left and right.

Being so much of a part of my new Scottish community as to attend political meetings is a great thrill for me. I have met very interesting people through politically active friends, people I would never have met through church or the university because, not to put too fine a point on it, these have mostly been left-wing, non-Catholic Scots. And being Scots, they are very friendly and chatty and enjoy a nasty bit of gossip or joke about some ideological rival, and it would never occur to me to contradict their political opinions or, indeed, to discuss them. I was a pro-life activist in ab*rti*n-mad Ontario and an orthodox Thomist at Boston College, and I have learned that the best way to get on with most people who hold left-wing opinions is either to keep my mouth shut, or to shut it at the least sign of trouble, or to agree with them as far as I can. After annoying people my whole life, I really do like getting along, to say nothing of feeling like I really do belong to my community, no matter what I think or believe.

At the hustings were a male Independent candidate, a female Labour candidate, a female Lib-Dem, a male Scot Nat, a male Green candidate, and a male Tory. The local UKIP candidate refused the invitation, and if he wasn't just booked up already, I can certainly see why he might have. Whereas Tories are feared and despised in most of Scotland as the great oppressors of our race, Kippers are mocked as racist English uber-Tory nutters.

The Independent candidate did terribly badly, poor man, despite saying up front he had not come from a privileged background. He was a unionist, which naturally put him at a disadvantage, but instead of trying to charm the "Women for Independence" he mulishly argued with them. It was rather like he was in some horrible pub argument instead of trying to win votes. His worst moments came when he said there was nothing wrong with the NHS in Scotland and that men and women already have equal pay. Great murmurings ensued, and the Independent looked vexed. By the end of the debate, his shirt was undone to the third button as if he were so clueless about his audience, he had resorted to winning our votes with chest hair.

The Labour candidate was shallow and glib. Whereas the Independent was no politician, she was too much of one. She played the "woman card" at once, jibing at the no-show UKIP man, saying that perhaps he thought we should all be at home cleaning behind our fridges. Ah ha ha ha. (Meanwhile, if she doesn't employ a cleaner, I will eat my kitchen sponge.) She told a lot of sob stories about what this sad man on the doorstep told her, and what this sad woman had told her, and wasn't it awful, and Labour would do something about it. And I thought, Labour has been in charge of this area for over 40 years, so if the area is miserable, that could be Labour's fault. Staggeringly, she spoke as if the SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party) were the Establishment, which just goes to show the brass of the Scottish Labour machine.

The Lib-Dem candidate did very well. She spoke honestly and clearly, and never pulled any "women card" nonsense despite being deeply interested in such woman-dominated issues as respect and pay for caregivers. She had spent her life as a community activist and an environmental activist and as a carer for ancient parents, her children, etc. She looked like an aged hippy, but the kind that has kept the hippy faith since 1967 and you sort of respect when she turns out to be your new boyfriend's great-aunt. She wants to do away with oil, which seems impractical for the Scottish economy, however good for the environment that might be. Her audience thought it an admirable idea, however.

The Scot Nat candidate was very brainy. (Full disclosure: he is a friend of mine, a very decent and open-minded old bean who lost his temper with my conservative views only once, when I was very drunk and casting aspersions on Andrzej Wajda, of all people. He is deeply committed to social justice, including for the Middle Eastern Christians.) The Scot Nat was obviously an economist, for he talked a lot about numbers, and kept up a steady flow of facts, figures and concrete ideas and plans. It was slightly dizzying, but he was the only one who talked to the group of women as if we were actual thinkers, actually weighing ideas and proposals, instead of just having an interesting evening out, judging people on their performance.

The Green candidate also did very well. In the charm department, I would say that he won with the audience, and I was not at all surprised to find out afterwards that he had had a career in radio. A really splendid public speaker, and much too attractive in himself to need to undo his shirt buttons. Like the unbuttoned Independent, he hinted at a background of deprivation--and indeed the place he is from is deprived--although both are army/air force brats, actually, which can't be THAT horrible. He said the benefits system is broken, which it certainly is.

The Tory candidate was a walking Tory stereotype, and so I thought he was terribly plucky to show up and air all his unpopular views. He was young, callow and English and had the wrong accent for a chap announcing that his father was a "Tyneside shipyard worker." Apparently his family "worked their way up" from its working-class roots, which was not a felicitous thing to say to a left-leaning audience. (That "up" was a terrible blooper.). But at least he didn't describe welfare as a "begging bowl" like the Independent chap, eek. At any rate, he was almost charming in his apologetic stance although actually, now that I think about it, if he had been an Old Tory type, he would have been even more charming with it, like Clarissa Dixon-Wright. Maybe his accent was more Geordie than my untutored ear could detect, for he certainly sounded Public Schoolboy to me. At any rate, I would have liked him better if he had worn the Young Fogey uniform of tweed-wool-pullover-tie-and-red-cords instead of that horrible blue suit.

As for the ISSUES, the women  seemed to be most interested in improving life for those on benefits (welfare), in affordable housing, in the much-hated bedroom tax, in the much-hated Trident nuclear deterrence program,  in the proposed "right-to-buy" council housing at a tremendous discount which, of course, leads to much less council housing, in issues surrounding the aging population, in respect and decent pay for carers, in federalism (i.e. all the countries within the UK having home rule), in centralization (e.g. of the police force), in protection of historical landscapes (that was my question) and, to my great shock and discomfort, in ab*rti*n.

Blast. I had been having such a good time, too. Someone had to bring up aborti*n, and it wasn't even a pro-lifer, as far as I could tell, although I was busily trying not to listen because I was hideously embarrassed by what was about to happen.


DISCUSSION OF AB*RTI*N FOLLOWS WITH SAFE-FOR-WORK IF ANATOMICALLY ACCURATE ILLUSTRATION

To explain, the right-to-life is almost a dead issue in the UK. Despite the efforts of SPUC, legal ab*rti*n isn't going anywhere.  Women who want (or whose parents/partners/mothers-in-law want them) to get rid of the baby growing inside them have to get two doctors to sign the certificate attesting to this being a good idea, and technically a baby can't be ab*rted after 24 weeks or just because she is female. However, there are people who want to get rid of the checks and balances, and spare the doctors from all the winking-and-nodding going on, and just have ab*rtion-on-demand. The question at the hustings seemed to be about whether or not ab*rtion rights would be more or less restricted in Scotland if  the issue was devolved here.

By the way, here is an illustration of a living 24--no, let's make it a 21 week old unborn baby:

Anyway, one after the other, the candidates all burnt their pinch of incense before Moloch. I made my notes in thick uncompromising words and symbols: "Labour-pro-aborti*n; Lib Dem-ditto; Green--ditto; PC--pro-ab*rti*n, however doesn't want a change to the time limits, or there to be different time limits across the UK." (Scot Nat: There already is, i.e. Northern Ireland). The Scot Nat wants "termination" "evolved", whatever that means, and I bet it doesn't mean what I would mean. My idea of evolving the issue is extending human rights to all humans, especially before extending them to chimpanzees.

I didn't bother writing down what the Independent thought. And Labour got the microphone back so she could spout all the code words through her heavily lipsticked mouth: "It's not a health issue, it's a woman's issue." (The Lib Dem, who was not made-up, didn't feel a need to repeat shopworn slogans.) Then there was all the stuff about "human rights", such a sick joke to anyone who allows herself to admit that unborn babies are human and as such perhaps ought to have rights.

And I was sad because I was reminded that I live in a civilization that keeps two sets of books when doing the human life accounts. There is the book for expectant mothers who intend to keep their babies, and there is the book for unhappy women who want to have them removed. In the first book, the baby is a baby, and in the second book, the baby is an embryo or a fetus. In the first book, the baby is human, and in the second book, the baby is subhuman. In the first book, the baby is growing, and in the second "a pregnancy" is "terminated."

In British society, as in Canadian society, it is considered extremely rude to talk about unborn babies being killed, although that is exactly what happens to them, without anaesthetic--which might be an issue to the 2% of ab*rted babies killed at or after 20 weeks (i.e. an estimated 3,706 in England-and-Wales in 2013).* No decent Brit--the Brits love animals--would do to a frog what happens to unborn babies.

Of course, many doctors really, really hate doing those things, and although the time limit is (almost always) 24 weeks, I see that the NHS advises it before 12 weeks, and really would prefer before 9 weeks, when the pregnancy has fingers.

Well, I'm sorry to have brought up such an unpleasant subject, and I know all the counter-arguments about all the horrible things women will have done to themselves if they don't have access to "aborti*n services", and I am horrified that women have ever felt they "had" to do that, just as I am horrified that palliative care is still so unevolved that people want doctors to kill them. We should be creating a society in which women never want to undergo ab*rtions, for this is the only way to stop them. What would a world in which women never want to have them look like?

But the world we have now is the world in which we live, and justice includes admitting what it looks like, even if I kept my mouth dead tight shut at the hustings.

*Then again, it might not. So far as we know right now, we can at least hope that the poor things don't feel it.

Update: And here's a Canadian baby born during his 22nd week, just so you know.

Conquering the Citadel

Yesterday I had a most exciting lunch, for it was in the Mecca of Edinburgh Fogeys, Young and Old, the New Club. It was founded in 1787, but Our Chap, i.e. our favourite member of the family who once owned the Historical House, did not bother to join, for he had given up social life by then, says B.A.

It comforts me strangely that Our Chap did not want to join the New Club.  

Anyway, the New Club has moved about Edinburgh a bit, and most recently had a whole new building built for it in the brutalist 1960s, when there was a plot afoot to destroy all Princes Street and turn it into a fashionable concrete wasteland. Fortunately this plot was thwarted before Princes Street was entirely demolished and some pretty buildings have been allowed to remain. 

The effect of the newest New Club is rather odd, for  it looks like it was built for the more important members of the Soviet Communist Party, with lots of mirrors and paintings and china stolen from British aristocratic houses by unsavoury servants/spies. However, after being in it for fifteen minutes, while a Pretend Son sorted out some paperwork, I decided it reminded me of the modernist academic buildings of my extreme youth: lovely fabric panels on the wall, very tall windows, wall-to-wall plum carpeting. The "ladies' powder room" has lovely thick paper towels, but no chaise longue, alas. (The "ladies' powder room"--more of a "ladies' powder warren"-- at the Oxford and Cambridge in London has a most satisfactory and dramatic chaise longue, for fainting on after having been broken up with/propositioned at lunch.)

I first saw the New Club  on Wednesday, and I thought that even if I were never invited for lunch, at least I could use it as the backdrop to some story--like a bit of fluff about Amy Brown of Craigmillar whose head was almost turned by Wicked Cedric who took her to lunch at the New Club and was rude about her plebian origins. ("I'm proud of my dad," flared Amy, etc.) However, on the way to Mass, the visiting Pretend Son invited Benedict and me to lunch, and great was my joy.  Members are always proposing to take me to the New Club and never do.  It's like they are saying "How are you?" and expecting only "Fine, thanks" in response.

Member:  Have you never seen the New Club? I should invite you for a drink/lunch.

Seraphic: I am sure I would enjoy that very much.

Member: We must fix that up one day.

Seraphic: What about now?

Member: Ha, ha, ha! 

However, at last Benedict Ambrose (who had already been) and I were properly invited and I, who had started to worry that there was something terribly wrong with me that nobody wanted to be seen with me in the New Club, realized that I was wearing orange rubber boots and had not brought shoes. 

The difficulty was brought home to me by another Member, to whom I chatted at after-Mass tea, who suggested that orange boots might look unusual in the panelled dining-room. "Of course, it might be different if you were the Countess of  [Such-and-Such]," he reflected. "She might arrive in orange wellies." 

"Oh dear," I said, thinking that that which was permitted to the Countess of [Such-and-Such] would not be permitted to Mrs McAmbrose. So I abandoned B.A. and the Pretend Son to walk to the New Club on their own and prevailed upon this Member to drive me to an adjacent shoe store where I bought a pair of feminine flats, having hurt one of my feet on my long trek to the RBG on Friday. Then I met B.A. outside the Club, Pretend Son already being in, and divested myself of my coat on the Ladies' Coat Rack before following P.S. to the exciting antechamber where one fills in one's lunch request on a little card (or tells one's host what to fill in for one) and then into the panelled dining-room with its Raeburns, club servants and elderly lunchers in tweed. 

The dining-room looks like a miniature version of a dining-room in a London club, only with a very funny white 1969 sky-lit ceiling that looks as though the architect cried when the New Club insisted on keeping the wooden panelling from the old dining-room. The chamber also has a huge portrait of Queen Victoria, who was rather small, and therefore her portrait was literally larger than life. There is a portrait of Earl Haig, too, which was cozy, as I have never been able to shake the impression, formed in childhood, that Earl Haig had been a leading light of my Toronto neighbourhood, "Earl" being his given name. A waiter appeared wordlessly with baskets of bread, and I hesitated, being unsure if I was supposed to take a whole basket or just a slice of bread. Fortunately I guessed correctly, but then disgraced myself by attacking the butter with my fish knife.

The fish knife was eventually taken away and replaced by an asparagus knife, for I ordered asparagus wrapped in Serrano ham, 'coz of having seen Seranno ham on telly the other night. And I also ordered roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and gravy because if there is one thing a British gentlemen's club should know how to do better than anyone, it's roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and gravy. Yummy, yummy, yummy. I was offered a sauce boat of horseradish, too, which I love, and we all drank down a flask of the club claret. Slurp, slurp, slurp. By the time I finished my claret, I was holding forth on the importance, for a clergyman, of having grown up in a house with a dining-room table. This wounded healer stuff, I announced, was all bosh, and really what helps you help people in all kinds of terrible situations is the dining-room table right smack in the centre of your psyche.

"No, thank you, I don't think I had better have any more."

B.A. ordered pudding, and P.S. ordered a savoury, and I ordered coffee only to be told I could have that afterwards in the coffee bar, which was almost as crushing as the mistake with the butter, for it proved that I had never been in the New Club before, the shame. But actually, the coffee bar was great fun because it was just a MACHINE sitting on the bar, and to get your coffee, espresso, cappuccino or what have you, you press a button--just like in the hockey arenas of my youth, only the machine being much smaller and one not having to pay. And we took our coffees into the "Ladies' Sitting Room" and admired the Jacobite paintings, the fabric panels and the wonderful view.

Naturally having conquered the citadel of the dining-room, my brain puttered away thinking of how I could become a Member myself. It is not all that terribly hard on paper although it is All Very New for women to become members. So it occurred to me that actually the proper Fogey thing to do would be to make lots of money so to pay for B.A's membership, should he stand for membership, and then come to lunch with him and withdraw to the Ladies' Sitting Room to drink cappuccinos and read the club copy of Vogue all afternoon.

The New Club was very quiet both times I was there. (B.A. says it isn't like that in the evenings.) I think it must be the perfect place to be elderly. It's so peaceful, and the club servants, though slightly scary, are helpful, and there are magazines and nice views of the street, and equally quiet members lurking about in tweed, plus Club notepaper. 

I proposed to make a fortune writing romance novels, so as to secure us a happy old age in the New Club, and B.A. agreed that I should get on that. 

Racial Incident on the Rough Bus

At last I went outdoors. It was sunny but not really warm. There was a cold wind, so I wore my green-blue tam, scarf and mittens with my green-blue coat. And, not to put a fine point on it, three days of virus had left me the colour of mould, so I had put some make-up on. Off I went in the direction of the train station, thinking of curry.

I terribly wanted curry. Curry would taste like something. Food has not really been tasting like much lately. Proper food, I mean. Doritos, yesterday's craving, taste like Doritos, no matter what. 

I ran out of energy before I got to the train station, so I took refuge from the wind in a bus shelter and panted a bit and blew my nose. The Rough Bus appeared over the bridge, so I got on the Rough Bus and took a seat near the front. 

Eventually and surprisingly, a very tall, clean-shaven, western-clothed South Asian youth got on. It was surprising because I don't see a lot of South Asians on the Rough Bus and never at that bus stop. And this one was extremely tall, had neither bag nor baggage, and looked a bit crazy. He folded himself into a seat, looked around with huge empty eyes and then stared at the ceiling.  After observing him nervously, I decided that he was probably simple rather than crazy and also completely harmless. 

One or two stops later, a Typical Rough Bus Young Couple got on, by which I mean he was skinny and violent-looking, and she was almost as round as a ball. They were, naturally, Scottish (or, to give the word its Rough Bus pronunciation, Scaw'ish), and he had red, which is to say, orange hair. Orange hair, orange eyebrows, orange eyelashes, insofar as he had eyelashes, rather like me. If I had had a son, he would have looked like Carrot Top. He was the same dead white colour as my coughing self. He could have been my second cousin.

However,  he was not one of our beautiful redheads. No. In fact, when I saw him, I was very tempted to move farther back down the bus. Had the bus been an elevator I would have got off at once. He horsed around with his giggling girlfriend until he spotted the tall South Asian chap, and then his dead white face creased with hatred and contempt.

"Aw," he said to the clean-shaven South Asian chap. "Whut are you daein' here? You're disgustin'."

"Oh mah goad shu'up," murmured his round dark-haired girlfriend. "Oh mah goad shu'up."

She shook with silent giggles. 

"Disgustin'," repeated Carrot Top.

"Oh yeah, and you're a member of the Master Race," I thought sourly, as he made nasty remarks about the "benefits" (welfare) he assumed the thin giant was on. But what could I do? I was as weak as a kitten, and I knew from long experience that Edinburgh bus drivers do not leave their protective booths for anything. If I told Carrot Top to shut his racist face, the Incident would escalate and involve little me, who probably shouldn't have been out of bed. 

Eventually Carrots lost interest in his victim, but I wondered what I could have done, if anything. Maybe I could have got up pointedly and sat beside the South Asian guy. At very least that might have cheered him up. When I glanced at him, he was looking out the window. Although a head or more taller than Carrots, he hadn't said boo. 

I am not exactly a saint of political correctness. I have been contemplating the powerlessness of founding peoples in the face of mass migration since "the Italian girls" were mean to me in elementary school.* But one thing that gets up my nose more than anything else in Scotland is Scots racially bullying others on public transport. 

I realize that these bullies are usually Scots of the "socially excluded class" and that British post-war history has handed them a raw deal. I understand that there are fewer than 5 million Scots resident in Scotland whereas there are 38 million Poles resident in Poland and a billion Indians in India. When you're talking world minorities, the blue-eyed, red-haired, Scotland-born Scottish one is mighty small, and if such Scots go south for work they run the risk of being called "Ging-er" and "Jock" and given a hard time about the SNP. Heck, when my red-haired great-grandfather George emigrated to English-speaking Canada in 1900 he was called "Scotty" for the rest of his life, and his son was generally known as "Red." 

However, bullying people on the bus for their origins is lower than low, and it happens way too often for my liking. People can think whatever they like, and they can certainly say whatever they like in the privacy of their own homes, and if they are that exercised about migration, they can vote UKIP and give the other parties a good scare. But on public transport everyone can and should keep a civil tongue in their heads. 

Finally I decided that what I could do was get up when the South Asian guy got up and stand between him and my fellow ginger, so at very least Carrots couldn't hit him on the way out. And when we both got off the bus, I said, "I'm sorry you had to put up with that."

"Thank you," he said in a high, flute-like voice and eventually loped across the street.

*And, yes, that most certainly includes the various tribes of 16th-19th century North America trying to cope with the sudden and overwhelming influx of Europeans.

Embra is Beautiful

mbra, apparently pronounced AIM-brah, is a local word for the city of Edinburgh. I would never dare call it that myself.  I stick to "ED-in-bur-ah." Only tourists call it ED-in-BURG, as if it were next door to Pittsburgh, PA. In Polish class we call it ED-in-boorg (or Edinboorgu, Edinboorga, Edinburgi-eh, depending on the case.)

Edinburgh is a beautiful European city.

I am Toronto born and bred, and I confess there are moments when I find my very 20th century, very North American birthplace beautiful. These are always in winter when it has been buried in snow. On visits home, I enjoy tramping about the older downtown neighbourhoods with my friend Trisha, getting a hipster vibe from whichever pre-1950 shopfronts allowed to survive. The University of Toronto has some delightful Victorian Gothic vistas, also improved by the snow. Toronto has a population of 2.5 million.

Montréal is a bit more European in feel, in large part because of all the French, but it still strikes me as 20th century North American, with some 19th century hangovers.  I love to wander down the rue St-Denis, looking in the shop windows, buying a notebook, sitting down for the cup of coffee I  order, heart thumping, en francais. And my brother's and belle-soeur's old neighbourhood, with its amazing pastry shop, was very handsome though also improved by snow. Montréal has a population of 1.6 million.

Glasgow is not exactly beautiful, but it is a hoot. No Edinburgher worth the name ever praises Glasgow, but I am quite fond of Glasgow. Glasgow looks like Toronto with the skyscrapers and almost all the post-WWI immigrants thrown out.  Glasgow is a Toronto stuffed under a force field and forced to continue being British. It has the same Victorian Gothic buildings and the same crumbling mid-century buildings. I suspect that whoever designed Toronto up until 1962 designed Glasgow, too (or vice versa). It kind of plays to Edinburgh what Toronto plays to Ottawa. Yeah, it's not a capital city, but there's a lot more going on. Glasgow has a population of just under 600,000, and wouldn't be improved by snow: anything weatherish in Glasgow is sheer misery.

Edinburgh has a population of just under 500,000, except in August, Festival month, when it almost doubles. And it is absolutely beautiful--at least in the parts that the Festival visitors see. It is so beautiful that after the bus take me through various slums, I forget all about them as soon as I see the Royal Mile, or Arthur's Seat, or the Old Town from Princes Street, or find a crumbling-yet-charming street of Victorian tenements huddled below St. Anthony's Chapel.

There are so many wonderful walks in Edinburgh. There's the promenade along Portobello beach between lovely Georgian houses and the Firth of Forth. There's the paths beside Georgian and Victorian building and parks at the University of Edinburgh. There's the stately, planned, Georgian avenues of the New Town, culminating in the Stockbridge streets of shops and cafés. There's the hike up the hill known as Arthur's Seat which makes you forget you're in a city at all. There's the long ravine in which you can follow the Water of Leith, or drown fictional characters from time to time. There's cheerfully chic Morningside and shabbier chic Dalry. There's smart Dean Cemetery with its carefully tended rows of the respectable dead, and there's forgotten Dalry Necropolis with its ruins hiding the names of the lowly. There's the mediaeval riotousness of the cobblestoned Royal Mile: down through Canongate towards Holyrood Palace, up the High Street towards Edinburgh Castle.

Edinburgh was built on seven hills, and depending where you are, you can see higher hills--the Salisbury Craigs, the Pentlands, Berwick Law--and the Firth of Forth stretching out towards the North Sea. When I go for a walk in the fields behind the Historical House, I can see the Firth, with the Kingdom of Fife on the other shore, villages, planted fields, fallow fields, and prehistoric Arthur's Seat.  When I wait for the bus home across the street from the Waitrose in Morningside, I can see the Penland Hills in the distance to my right. There is just so much variety in the landscape: town, fields, hills, forest, sea.

"I'm so glad you married me so that I get to live here," I often say to B.A. as our bus rattles above Canongate Kirkyard. And this needs to be said because I also moan about the public behaviour of various Edinburghers, particularly on the bus although--so far--not on that particular bus.  The truth is that the young foreign traveller who sticks to the Old Town and the New Town, to Morningside and to Stockbridge, to the University and Portobello (if they take a cab to Portobello) is unlikely to see any trouble.

I am sure that Edinburgh is ONE of the most beautiful cities in Europe, but I am not as confident that it is THE most beautiful city in Europe, for I have seen Kraków and Kraków is very, VERY beautiful, crumbly bits and all. And Wrocław deserves a mention, too, despite having been bombed to smithereens during WW2, just for Ostrów Tumski. But those are cities deserving of blog posts of their own.

Meanwhile I regret to say that Edinburgh is not at all improved by snow. Snow is, of course, very beautiful in itself, but Edinburghers do not know how to drive in it. They don't know how to walk in it. They don't know how to shovel it. They don't know how to dress for it. In all my life, I have never come across a people so ignorant of the ways of snow. Knowing what I know now, I would never wish a White Christmas on poor Edinburgh. I just look forward to seeing the stuff when I go to Canada in February.