Old and redundant

For the first time since 1997, I have reached October 31 without buying a pumpkin or a neep. It feels odd. For almost three decades, the rhythm of late October has been the same: pumpkins appearing in the shops, little faces planning designs, and the smell of candle wax and slightly singed squash in the dining room. It is such a small tradition, but it has been part of the fabric of family life for so long that letting it go feels like closing a chapter.

In the early years, I was the one who did everything. I bought the pumpkin, chose the design, and did the carving while small people watched in awe and occasionally tried to poke out an eye or add an extra tooth. Later, in the 2010s, the job shifted hands. Charlotte gathered her minions around her to pick the perfect pumpkin and sketch out faces that grew increasingly elaborate every year. Thomas, ever the traditionalist, sat beside her with his turnip and a range of tools, determined to keep the old ways alive and prove he was the most Scottish of us all.

The last few years have been quieter. The two youngest still asked for pumpkins, but without the same energy. They were busy with friends, homework, or phones, and the carving became a quick afterthought rather than an event. And now, suddenly, there is no one left waiting for me to bring one home. Anna is buried under assignments, Amaia is off to a Halloween party that apparently involves cocktails rather than pumpkins, Léon is living half an hour away in the city, Charlotte's living in Madrid, and Marcel is currently living in Mexico City.

I stood in the kitchen and realised that there was no reason to go out and buy one. For a moment, that small fact hit me harder than expected. This is what it feels like when family traditions quietly slip away, not with drama but with a slow fading. You notice it in these tiny absences - the empty seat at the table, the quiet house at the weekend, the October without a pumpkin.

It is not sadness exactly, more a soft ache mixed with pride. This is how it is meant to go. The whole point of parenting is to raise people who can build their own lives, who are too busy doing things that matter to them to need you for every small ritual. It is what we hope for, even as we secretly wish they still needed us just a little bit.

So, resigned to my pumpkin-free fate and feeling slightly adrift, I grabbed the shopping list to go to Netto. At least the fridge would get stocked, even if the windowsill to the courtyard stayed bare. But as I reached for my car keys, I spotted an item on the list added by Thomas.

'1 pumpkin'

And that was it. The universe’s small way of reminding me that parenting does not really stop; it just changes shape.

It made me laugh, standing there in my jacket with the shopping list in my hand. Maybe I no longer need to buy pumpkins for the kids, but apparently, I still have one overgrown child who is not ready to give up the tradition. Thomas may have a grey beard and a mortgage, but he still wants his pumpkin. I suppose that’s comforting in a way, at least one of them still believes in Halloween magic, even if he needs reading glasses to carve it.

Watching your children grow up is strange because it happens so gradually that you rarely see it in real time. You go from tying shoelaces to teaching them to drive in what feels like a handful of summers. They slip away gently, one small independence at a time, until one day you look up and they are fully grown. You feel proud and amazed, but also a little redundant, as though you have been quietly laid off from the best job you ever had.

Every so often they still need something. A recipe. A bit of advice. Or just a chat. That is when you realise the job description has not vanished at all, it has simply been updated. You are no longer the project manager of daily life, but the trusted consultant, the person they call when comfort or common sense is required. It is a promotion of sorts, though the salary remains the same.

So, I guess I will go to Netto and thereafter to the pumpkin farm to pick out a good, solid pumpkin for my husband. 

The Country I No Longer Recognise

It is just over six years since we made the very difficult decision to leave the UK. At the time, people assumed Brexit was mostly about paperwork and would not really change their lives. But to us, that Brexit deadline was a door about to slam shut, leaving me on the opposite side from my husband and kids. If we did not move before it came down, my children and husband had an escape route but, as the only one in the family who had only a British passport, I would be landlocked.

And I had been afraid for a long time already, at least five years, of the anti-immigrant direction England was taking, dragging Scotland along in its wake and pulling us, kicking and screaming, out of the EU. I began to imagine a future, insular UK. But even in my wildest dreams, I did not think it could get this bad. In my worst nightmares, Farage as a potential prime minister was still a joke. The idea that abortion rights might be up for debate, or that fundamentalist Christianity could ever make inroads into mainstream politics, felt utterly impossible. And yet here we are. The irony is that when I voiced much smaller fears back then, I was invariably told I was overreacting.

I remember once, when Anna was in Primary 3, the children were asked to bring in their favourite book to share with the class. Most of the others turned up with well-thumbed copies of Roald Dahl or Julia Donaldson, the sort of titles every teacher knows by heart and every child has at least seen before.

Anna, though, chose a Danish book, Lotte kan nemlig cykle, a big green hardback her dad often read to her at bedtime. Her teacher picked it up, turned it over in her hands, and realised with surprise that she could not read a word of it. Instead of putting it aside or hurrying on, she was fascinated. She asked Anna to stand up in front of the class and tell everyone the story they would never otherwise be able to read themselves.

And Anna did. Page by page, she translated as she went, telling the story in English, six years old and standing there with quiet confidence. The class sat in rapt silence, wide-eyed, and the teacher stood moved, almost in awe of this small, ordinary-looking child who suddenly revealed such an extraordinary, hidden side to herself. Afterwards, a few classmates crowded round her, asking questions: “Can you really read that?” “Can you teach me?” Anna came home glowing, proud of herself in a way that made my heart swell.

The teacher rang to tell me about it. She said it was one of those magical classroom moments, the kind that make a teacher feel they have glimpsed a child properly for who they are.

But even as I basked in the warmth of that memory, I felt a creeping fear. Because I knew how quickly things can change. I was scared we were on the cusp of a time when the reaction to that very same book might be the opposite, not wonder but suspicion. I could too easily imagine a teacher leaning in with hushed tones, telling Anna to put it back in her bag, explaining it was inappropriate, bustling her off to the library to choose an English book instead. Not because it was wrong, but because it revealed something they thought best kept hidden, her “dirty secret.” I even imagined myself pre-empting it, perhaps suggesting she should leave that book at home.

That thought chilled me. I could not bear to be around for the moment when the genuine delight and admiration in her teacher’s eyes might be replaced by discomfort or disapproval. Because at its heart, what I feared was this: that my children would one day be pressured to conceal half of who they are. To shrink away from their foreign names, perhaps dropping their dad's surname from their CVs, to tuck their second passports out of sight, to pretend their bilingualism did not exist. I was afraid that what should be celebrated as a gift would instead be treated as something shameful.

So we left.

When I look back, I realise I was one of the first to go, but many friends followed in our wake.

The Polish shops in our town told the story more clearly than the politicians ever could. Once vibrant places filled with chatter, with shelves stacked high with breads and sausages and fancy sweets, they started closing down one by one. There was one corner shop I especially remember. We used to buy white eggs there every year for Easter. It was always warm, with the bustle of people chatting in Polish while children tugged at their mothers’ coats. It felt welcoming, colourful, alive. And then one day it was gone, replaced by an empty storefront with a faded, sad “To Let” sign.

It felt like watching colour drain from the streets, a quiet exodus made visible.

For me it is not just theoretical. I have brown family members and very close friends who do not have the luxury of hiding their difference. They cannot soften their names or even tuck their foreignness away in a passport drawer. They are the ones most exposed as Britain grows harder and angrier, and I ache with the helpless wish to scoop them all up, evacuate them to the safety of my annex, and show them how much I care.

I think about them every time the news mentions another rise in support for the Reform Party, even in Scotland. Back when I left, Nigel Farage was still a pantomime villain north of the border, laughed at and jeered whenever he dared set foot there, and chased back south within hours. I comforted myself with that. But now even Scotland is not immune. The things I once believed impossible have quietly become plausible.

Saturday broke something in me. I sat in my living room in Denmark and watched footage of 100,000 people marching through London, openly chanting pro-fascist slogans. London of all places, a city I love, where I have always felt at home precisely because you cannot walk the streets without hearing a dozen languages and seeing the wonderful, beautiful range of humanity in all its colours.

I knew Britain had racism. I grew up with sectarianism and racism. But it got better as I moved into adulthood. Schools began to mix, people married across religions and races without the looks they would have got when I was a child. One of my best friend’s weddings was officiated by a priest and an imam together, and it was a truly wonderful day. I felt filled with hope for the future that I would soon bring my kids into.

To see that hope so thoroughly eclipsed, to see London, my London, overrun by chants that belonged to another, darker world, was devastating.

What made me shiver most were the undertones, the unmistakable echo of American fundamentalism. Religion weaponised against outsiders. Chants and rhetoric that sounded imported straight from US culture wars. Musk on live link calling for violence in the streets. Seriously?

It brought back a conversation I had this summer with one of Thomas’s old friends, Danish, a professor at an American university, raising Asian children in the US. Sitting at our coffee table over dessert, he told me why universities there are facing such a furious backlash.

“It is not only politics,” he said, shaking his head. “It is resentment. Ordinary people who had no chance of reaching the academic level for scholarships watch others succeed where they themselves were excluded. And instead of celebrating those successes, realising they too need those doctors and scientists even if they cannot become them, they are so angry they simply want to bar others from what was barred from them.”

It struck me as such a sad, human response, but also such a dangerous one. And when I watched the London demonstration, I recognised those same undertones. Not just a desire to close borders, but to close minds. Universities in the UK are already on their knees financially before we go in this direction.

All of this circles back to empathy. To me, empathy is the single most important human trait. It is what allows us to look at someone different and see not a rival, but another human being.

The far right thrives by eroding empathy. It tells people their neighbours are competitors, their colleagues parasites, strangers invaders. It feeds on bitterness until there is no space left for compassion. We see that same absence of empathy playing out horrifically in Gaza, where entire populations are dehumanised until their suffering becomes tolerable background noise.

That is the opposite of what I wanted for my children. They have grown up proud of being bilingual, proud of their mixed heritage, proud of their passports, their friends from all over the world, and their complicated family tree. They meet difference with curiosity, not suspicion. They want to know the people who are not like them, deeply and genuinely.

Leaving has not spared me the grief. I still feel tied to Britain. I may be Scottish, but I also have a son, his partner, and their Asian flatmate, who I have considered one of my own kids for ten years, living in London. Every time I see news of marches like Saturday’s, my thoughts go straight to them.

And yet, over this summer, as I watched small, angry white men pitifully painting roundabouts in protest instead of doing something positive about the real problems facing the world, I felt like I no longer recognised the UK. The passport I still carry feels more like an artefact than a document of belonging.

The Britain of the 1990s and 2000s was flawed, often frustrating, sometimes cruel. But it was also a place where I believed empathy had a foothold, where openness and equality could still become the norm. I guess deep down I thought that was the country I was leaving behind temporarily to give it time to sort itself out back in 2019.

The one I see now feels like something else entirely. I can see no hope for a kinder Britain in the next decade. I fear it will have to sink much lower before it comes out the other side, and I am glad my children will not have to live through that descent.

Declaration of cultural independence... in clay

 

Amaia is currently knee-deep exams, one of which is the Danish equivalent of Nat 5 Art. It’s a serious affair: two years’ worth of artistic output compiled into a neat little portfolio which she has to display in her own art cubicle, polished off with an oral exam in front of an external ministry-appointed examiner next week.

She has to display and categorise her work with all the solemnity of a gallery curator. "Famous artwork redone in the style of another artist," check. "Self-portraits over time to show improvement," check. "Animal portrait in charcoal," check. "Works with varying light sources," check - etcetcetc... "3D clay media sculpture representing your soul, but in the form of lunch," wait, what?

Yes, one category was to make, in clay, a slice of rye bread with your favourite toppings complete with a 2D explanation of the cultural and personal backstory of your sandwich. Some kind of art meets anthropology thing in the most Danish way possible!

Now, Amaia is nothing if not principled. She took one look at this brief and declared, flatly, "I’m not doing that."

"But everyone else is," said the teacher. "I know you're not fully Danish, but look at Farouk, he made a curry to represent his heritage and stuck it on a clay slice of rye bread."

I can only begin to imagine Amaia's reaction to that, she certainly told me in no uncertain terms that she wouldn't be wasting a decent curry by putting it on rye bread, not as long as peshwari naan exists!

They suggested she make something traditionally Scottish on top of the rye bread to represent her blended identity. "It’s about showing who you are!" they encouraged.

Amaia’s response? "No one in Scotland would ever put a potato scone and square sausage on rye bread. It’s sacrilege."

In the end, she stuck to her guns, making a lovingly detailed square sausage, a tattie scone, and a fried egg, layered triumphantly on what she insists is a proper Scottish morning roll.

No rye in sight. No compromise. No apologies.

When I asked if she was worried they might fail her, she shrugged and said, "If they do, it’ll have been worth it to retain my cultural identity."

I have never been prouder. Vive la sausage rebellion.

Phyllis

There are some names that seem to have been permanently cast out of fashion, and way down at the bottom of that list there’s Phyllis. Poor, unloved Phyllis.

I know this because I grew up with it. Even being born in 1968, it was already an old lady name then. My peers were Gillians, Karens, and Sheenas. I was saddled with a name that sounded like it belonged to a distant great-aunt who smelled of lavender and boiled cabbage. While my classmates had those trendy little keyrings with their names on them from Woolworths, I was left empty-handed. Phyllis was not making the cut, even in the 70s.

You’d think that by now, Phyllis would have come full circle. Names like Edith, Martha, Ruby, and Maisie have all made their grand comebacks, trotting back into nurseries and primary schools like nothing ever happened. Even Agnes has had a resurgence, helped in no small part by a certain small, endearing cartoon character in Despicable Me. But Phyllis? No. Maybe I should campaign for a Phyllis character the next time they reboot the Minions?

This morning, just to confirm my suspicions, I checked the Scottish name records. And the results were bleak. Since the year 2000, many Scottish parents have dutifully handed down Phyllis as a middle name—eight pages worth of them, to be precise. Presumably, these poor children are carrying the name as an homage to a beloved (and likely deceased) granny. But as a first name? Just one. One single child in Scotland has been named Phyllis in the last 25 years. That child is now either carrying their name with defiant pride or planning to change it the second they turn 16.

My mum was definitely much more likely to have given me a common, trendy-at-the-time name - my brother is a Derek after all and she was very non-plussed when I chose a foreign name for my first born, despite him being foreign(!), and suggested very strongly that calling him 'Ryan' might have been more appropriate! I was actually meant to be a Linda, till my own granny upped and died six days before I was born. As a child I would often wonder how life would have been for Linda Buchanan? As a shy child, I would have found blending into the background instead of standing out to every teacher and child alike, quite a relief, I imagine.

I can’t say I blame them. Growing up with the name Phyllis was no picnic. While my friends’ names exuded youthful energy, mine sounded like it should be embroidered onto a lacy handkerchief. It felt like a name you were assigned at birth and somehow retired with immediately. If names had default accessories, mine came with a blue rinse and a walking stick.

The question is, why? Why has Phyllis been left to rot in the attic of history while other names of the same era have dusted themselves off and reclaimed their place in baby name books? Is it the sound? The way it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like a Daisy or an Evie? It has no cuteness rating and sounds positively frumpy. Or is it because no modern cultural icons have emerged to make it fashionable again? No glamorous actresses, no bestselling authors, no inexplicably popular reality TV stars called Phyllis have stepped forward to rescue us from obscurity.

Even the Americans, who have an impressive track record of bringing back old-fashioned names before we do, haven’t touched it. There’s no Phyllis Kardashian, no Phyllis gracing the covers of Vogue. The closest we’ve got is Phyllis from The Office, a lovely woman but definitely the embodiment of Phyllisness - older, frumpier, middle-aged, dead-end job, slightly overweight.

And so Phyllis remains in limbo. A name too dusty for revival, too clunky for reinvention. Maybe in another hundred years, when all other names have been used up, Phyllis will finally get her turn. 

To the lone Phyllis born in Scotland in the last quarter-century—if you’re out there, I salute you. You are a rare gem. And if you ever need to talk, I understand. Oh, how I understand.

"Studenterhuen" - Unravelling the Danish Student Hat Tradition

As promised, or threatened, on my previous breakdown of graduation traditions, the Danish student hat, or studenterhue, is such a legend that it needs a whole post of its own. These hats are more than just a piece of graduation attire; they're a symbol of achievement, camaraderie, and a rite of passage filled with quirky and memorable customs. Different schools have different band colours. A whole list is available on this website, if you are interested!

They are such a huge part of Danish culture that Thomas held this exchange with Amaia's teacher:

Literally: 

Hi Bjørn,

Léon's getting his hat on tomorrow, so would it be ok if Amaia leaves 10-20 mins early?

Best, Thomas

Hi Thomas,

Yes! Of course 😊 And many congratulations to Léon! It is a big day. Send him all my best regards and tell him congratulations! 

All the best, Bjørn

Can you imagine understanding these messages if you had arrived in Denmark the day before? As a non-Dane, it struck me as a truly bizarre conversation. So, someone is putting on a hat and that not only lets their sister leave a different school early, but evokes all sorts of congratulatory excitement from a former teacher! Odd, indeed!

So, let me take you on the hat journey...

Months in advance, you order it, so it can be embroidered with the name of your school, your name etc. Then, it turns up a couple of weeks before your exams start in a velvet box. (No pressure there, given you earn the right to wear it by passing your exams!) It even comes with built-in pen for your mates to write their greetings, and Léon assures me the even more expensive models come with scissors too, to cut the notches!

First off, putting on the student hat before passing your final exam is considered bad luck. But once you've aced that last oral, or for that matter screwed it up royally, the hat becomes your badge of honour, and the celebrations begin!

After your final oral exam, you walk out of school for the last time on a red carpet, reveal your final mark to your parents, and then write it in the centre of your hat before they place it on your head. It’s a proud moment, marked with cheers, confetti, and lots of Danish-flag-coloured roses. 

At that point, out of nowhere Léon's mates appeared to welcome him into the graduate ranks with the famous beer bong, that seems to play quite a major role in this whole rite of passage.

Over the month of July, with nightly parties, the kids try to earn as many symbols as possible for the inside of their hat.

Traditions and Notches

The inside of the hat, including its sweatband end up telling quite a story:

• Size Matters: Months ago, when they were measuring their heads with a view to ordering their hats, the students with the largest and smallest hat sizes were duly noted. And again after the graduation when they had all been issued their GPA, the lowest and highest scoring student in each class was again noted. Those four, or perhaps fewer if there happens to be an overlap, have to provide a drink for all their classmates to get the party started.
• Greetings Inside the Hat: Friends and classmates write messages inside your hat, cheeky, or sincere, turning it into a keepsake full of memories.
• Sweatband/Visor Notches: Various experiences earn you notches cut out in the sweatband or visor. Throwing up from too much partying? That's a triangle in the visor, a visible-to-the-world symbol of your fuck-up. Thirteen parties in and Léon’s hat remains unscathed in this regard... I don't think I'd have predicted that!
• 24-Hour Mark: If you manage to stay awake for 24 hours straight, you earn the right to turn your hat the other way around. 

Of course, from the day after the student truck (the 4th day after Léon's last exam) Léon's has been the wrong way round, but I have noticed more and more of the kids in the photos from his nightly parties have theirs on backwards as time progresses. It's quite handy even, given that means you can read their name, if you can't remember who someone is!

The Symbolic Language

Your hat can become quite the storybook, with symbols denoting your various feats either drawn or cut into the inside. Here is a list of just some of the symbols to be drawn inside or cut into the inner sweatband that Léon has told me about, and how you go about earning them:

• Wave: Jump in the sea wearing only your hat.
• Square: Drink a case of beer in 24 hours.
• Fish: Down 24 shots in 24 hours.
• Lightning Bolt: Have sex wearing only your hat.
• Circle: Run around a roundabout in your town wearing only your hat.
• Cross: Run around the church in your town wearing only your hat. (Yes, nudity, is a leit motif of graduating high school.)
• Triangle: Stay awake for 24 hours.
• House: Achieve the 24-hour triangle, square for drinking a case, and feel free to add a chimney if you smoke a pack of cigarettes that day too.
• Corn: Run through a cornfield wearing only your hat.
• Crown: Run around your old school grounds wearing only your hat.
• Signpost: Climb a road sign and drink a beer on top.
• Tree: Climb a tree and drink a beer sitting on top.
• Car: Flag down a random car and have the driver feed you beer from a funnel.
• Funnel: Drink beer from a funnel while peeing against a tree.
• Submarine: Drink beer from a bong with your head underwater, usually alongside the wave symbol.

So, basically, do anything in the nude and draw whatever you fancy inside your hat! Just as well the nights are reasonably warm at the moment!

Rotating symbols

On the front of each hat is a button-sized burgundy-coloured symbol. Most have a cross, as Denmark is traditionally a Christian country, even if there isn't much church-going still going on. But you can get it with a crescent, or a star of David if you prefer. Léon has no religion, so opted for the initials STX, which is just means grammar school. This symbol can rotate, and you apparently earn the right to turn it upside down by kissing someone of the same gender, if you are straight, or the opposite gender if you are gay. As far as I can see, everyone in Léon's photo has this upside down currently, though it is slightly subtler on the cross ones than on the STX option!😂

Biting the Skip

Lastly, the pristine hat gets a makeover from day one. Friends and teachers bite into the patent leather brim, leaving tooth indentations to symbolise leaving a lasting mark on someone’s life. I became aware of this when during the after graduation buffet, Léon's politics teacher came over to congratulate him and Léon offered to let him bite his hat, and the teacher obliged without a puzzled look. I guess that tradition was probably paused during Covid. I'm so glad the kids weren't hit by that during Gymnasium.

These are the hat rules Léon has mentioned to me but the list is even longer according to the official site (in Danish)!

By the end of the celebrations, the hat is a well-worn, personalised memento of your student days. I must have a wee look inside Léon's next time he's taking a shower, though do I even want to know?! I know he has already clocked up most of the naked ones!😂 In saying that, having a shower wearing only your hat is probably a challenge too, just to guard against your mother getting a peak at what you have been getting up to all night every night!

Broken democracy - a final update

You can probably tell, I wasn't overly pleased with the arrival of my polling card just 45.5 hours before polls opened back in the UK. However, I was maybe overreacting, given how much worse things could have been...

In a final instalment of the saga, guess whose polling card had the cheek to turn up today?! At 11am, no less!

How can the UK even pretend to be working, if postal votes can arrive five days after the polls close? There's even a complaint questionnaire you can fill out for the electoral commission but for the question: How many days before the election did your polling card arrive?, you only have an option of 0, or positive numbers, so I'm not sure what to make of that. 

Bottom line: if they can't even get a polling card to Denmark, an hour's flight away from Edinburgh, I wonder if those of us who've moved to Tahiti will get theirs even in time for the next election!

All hail the tornado

I drove Anna to work on Saturday for 3pm. As I drove home, the sky took on an interesting shade of slate grey, and an impressive lightning bolt forked the sky from left to right (it would have made a spectacular photo). Turning into my driveway 25 minutes later the heavy rain began. It looked like one of those quick summer showers, so I figured I'd wait out the five minutes before going in. Something hit the roof of my car; it sounded like a medium-sized rock. I was quite surprised given that size of rock could only have been thrown and I wasn't exactly driving under a bridge or similar, I was parked in my driveway! Then the rock noises multiplied and I honestly thought they might come through the car roof; you can hear my shock and fear in the video I linked to above. I'm not usually one for sitting swearing to myself alone in my car, but it was scary as hell! I was imagining it looking like an acne-scarred teenager by the time I exited the vehicle!

After less than a couple of minutes, it all calmed down and I got out to find the weirdest hailstones I have ever seen in my life all around me on the ground.

The car seemed unharmed, so I went back to business as usual... until the sun came out. Between our two houses, we have a perspex roof with grapes growing. I could see circular shadows all over the patio, that I had never seen before. I looked up to notice the roof was completely destroyed, with hundreds of holes where the stones had simply come straight through, and now the sun was shining through them. And then noticed the patio was covered in shards of perspex.

We sit under this roof in the rain, we dry clothes here too when the weather is changeable. What a nightmare! Then, to my horror I realised that this was probably the least of my problems. This 30m2 of wrecked perspex was nothing compared to my 90m2 shed and toolroom with electrical lights and sockets, which is housed in an outhouse on my field. I wandered up and found it in an even worse state.

But, imagine my even greater shock the following morning when all the local newspaper headlines talked about a tornado hitting the coast at 3-15pm the day before, 15km from my house ripping through a popular campsite and causing all sort damage because of the unique large and oddly shaped hail tornados cause! Who knew? 

I'm now waiting on the insurance assessor, who seems to be very busy in our area today!

Graduating STX grammar school in Denmark

I left school in Scotland in 1985. If truth be told, I didn't particularly want to leave school at that point as, at 17, I felt too young to go off to uni, but being a February baby in Scotland before age deferrals existed meant I had been sent to school at four and had therefore completed all 13 years of education on offer. This is why both of my kids who had the option of deferral (ie who were born after Jan 1 and before Mar 1) were deferred. I felt I spent my whole childhood catching up socially, and I didn't want that for them.

When I left school, I sat my three CSYS exams (Advanced Highers these days) and on the day of the last one, German, I believe, I was told I needed to 'sign out'. Signing out consisted of going to the school office and asking for a form where I was to write my name and the names of my French, German, and Maths teachers. I then visited each of their classes in turn where they signed on the dotted line to say I had completed their course and the corresponding exam. 

My best friend back then was studying CSYS History, English, and Higher German, so we had no classes together and that meant she left school on a different day and we didn't even see each other. In fact, as the only pupil in the school sitting CSYS German, my signing out was quite a depressing and solitary anti-climax to thirteen years in the school system.

I handed my form in to the office and was told I was no longer a pupil and was therefore no longer allowed on school grounds. I remember slowly walking down the school driveway to the exit for the very last time. It felt like a sad and solitary end to that era.

There was no graduation, no prom, no party, nothing.

So, when my two older kids left school in Scotland 30/33 years later, I was pleased to see they now got not only a graduation ceremony in the April before the exams, where they were presented with a certificate, and the teachers and pupils gave uplifting talks that made them feel warm and fuzzy but also a prom at the end of the June term so they could all meet up dressed in all their finery in a fancy hotel in town and touch base a last time after the exams were completed. It felt like they were being celebrated and encouraged to remain in touch rather than simply tossed out into the rain, alone. I secretly wished things had been like that back in my day.

Then we moved to Denmark, which meant that my three youngest would be completing their schooling here rather than there and I hoped things would be as celebratory for them as they had been for their older siblings. I needn't have worried!

My oldest Dane just finished school, and omg, do these people know how to celebrate! I'm actually beginning to think the two oldest were hard done by, and my experience was bordering on abuse! The order and magnitude is different, but here is what his Danish school leaving consists of...

At the beginning of May, a week before exams began, they held their equivalent of prom - 'galla' as it is called. Every kid arranged to be driven to school in a fancy car (or, as it turned out at his school on horseback, on a vintage tractor or in a horse-drawn carriage!) They turned up in their evening gowns, suits or in the case of Léon... well, you can probably guess how he dressed.

That night started at 6pm. They had a fancy three-course meal, and the staff gave speeches. One of the students had been chosen a few weeks earlier to give a talk on behalf of the kids. Three guesses who? Shy, he's not. Despite me asking on several occasions whether he wanted me or Thomas to vet his speech for appropriateness, he kept it under wraps and his reminiscing about their three years together was apparently a great hit with the 150 or so kids, though I am not sure what the staff or headmaster made of it. Especially the point in the speech when he thanked everyone's favourite and most diligent co-student 'Chat-GPT' hahahaha.

Things then became serious for a couple of months. In May, they sat written exams in all their 'A' subjects, and then in June, they sat oral exams in their 'A' subjects and defended their SRPs. The SRP is a thirty-page dissertation written in Danish on two subjects and submitted in the spring of their last year. Each student chooses their own topic and which two of their subjects are to be the main focus and those two teachers plus the ministry examiner then mark it for content. Having not seen their mark, the kids are then taken to an oral to defend the dissertation. 

Léon chose Samfundsfag (Politics) and English, analysing Scottish Independence political speeches and ads for both the Yes and the No sides back in the Scottish Independence referendum from the perspective of populist content. 

A fortnight before the end of June, I heard there was to be a graduation ceremony two days after the final exam, so figured Danish graduation was following the pattern of Scotland. Little did I know that the galla and the graduation were merely the warm-up acts for the main events!

Days before Léon's last exam, a mate asked if he'd been into town to buy his 'white clothes', to which Léon replied 'what white clothes?'. That's when they sat the poor foreign kid down and talked him through his next few weeks. 

Firstly, at his final exam, he was meant to wear his white shirt for the first time. His parents were to take the afternoon off work(!) and turn up with his student hat, Danish flags, and a picnic to greet him as he left his last oral. At oral exams in Denmark you are given your mark on the day. After your 25 minute oral the class teacher and the exam board external discuss your mark then call you back in and tell you it. It's not for the faint-hearted, I can tell you, having sat exams here too! 

And orals aren't like back home. For starters they aren't a language thing, you get orals in everything from PE to Physics, from Maths to Psychology, from History to Ancient Culture, and of course also in languages. Every kid does at least Danish and two other foreign languages to one of the two highest levels. Léon's 'foreign' languages are English and Spanish, others have English and German or English and French, and before you say he's at a bit of an advantage over his classmates having English as a foreign language, remember, unlike them, he's not only doing Danish at advanced Higher level as it is compulsory, but he's also doing his History, Politics, Spanish, and his dissertation in Danish, which more than balances that out, poor bugger.

So, after the oral you come out of school on the red carpet which has been put down for the graduates, where your parents shower you in confetti, hand you bouquets of red roses and place your hat on your head after you tell them your mark. Possible marks are -3, 0, 2, 4, 7, 10 or 12. If you get -3, or 0, you've failed. If you get 2-12 you've passed. 7, 10 and 12 correspond to A (with 12 being like 90-100%, 10 being 80-90%, and 7 being 70-80%) in Scotland, 4 is B, 2 is C. No one had told us about the confetti or the roses, so we stood out as the weirdo foreigners when we only had his hat and flags, though some of his middle-school friends who hadn't gone to grammar school turned up with fireworks, so that kind of distracted people from our faux pas, especially when the headmaster came running out to tell them exams were still going on, so could they maybe cool it just a little😂.

The last exam is completely random, so Léon was more than pleased to draw English out of the hat, so came out to announce he'd got 12! 

The disadvantage to that would unfold later... 

Having had his hat placed on his head, it is now meant to stay there for the whole summer! Everyone knows what the hat means. Different types of institutions have different colours. Dark red means grammar school, but I've also seen light blue, dark blue, purple etc. If you have this on, it means you just passed your final school exams, so the streets are full of kids in these.

We had our family picnic in the school grounds with Amaia, who had been allowed out of school early, Anna who was already on study leave, and the kids' friend from Scotland, Emma. Again, looking around I could see so much Danish culture. Despite being a mere picnic, families had brought along crystal champagne flutes complete with fancy red and white ribbons attached to the stems for the occasion. The most intricate Danish smørrebrød were assembled, and stunning cakes pulled from boxes as champagne corks popped. Tablecloths were unfurled, and glass vases of tiny flowers placed on tables. Everyone's grandparents were in tow too, elegantly clad. Danes are such sticklers for detail when it comes to table dressing and formal occasions. Our tablecloth-less, rose-free bench with plastic cups and baguette sandwiches looked like a pigeon amongst a party of peacocks.

That day Léon and his mates went into town to see the Denmark match, and went on to a club till 5am. Technically, it's a great ruse for getting into a club too. No one IDs a kid in a hat as the youngest you can be is 18, but you're more likely to be 19 or even 20. So, if you're 17 and fancy a clubbing holiday, buy one of these hats and go to Denmark the last week of June!

The following day the other half of his class had their final oral, so again it was out clubbing till sunrise and Thursday was even worse as there was a music festival on in Odense... Funen's answer to Glastonbury. I was in serious doubt that Léon would make the 'white clothes photoshoot' at 8am the next day, and the graduation, but he surprised me by being out and showered by 7am despite coming home after 1am. 

And it seems almost everyone was sober enough to remember the memo about turning up in white! 

We then went along to the graduation ceremony which seemed very un-British to me, or at least very un-Newton Mearnsy. Back home my kids had gone to Mearns Castle High, a state school that prided itself on its consistent place in the top ten in the country. It was a lovely school, caring, and friendly, but also concerned about protecting its image. Speeches at graduation were grandiose, about achievement and the perfect futures the kids would all be able to obtain thanks to their outstanding results etc etc. Not so here, graduation speeches by the head of each of the five main study lines were anecdotal and fun, describing the kids as having arrived in the school as wild beasts who'd needed taming, joking about kids who were less than diligent, whole classes with reputations for doing anything to avoid assignment deadlines. It all seemed more laid-back, and more relatable, given they also praised them for their ultimate success, and the futures awaiting them. There was no covering up the real or less desirable side of things, which was interesting for me as a non-Dane. Those speeches would just never have happened in the school they would have attended had we lived in that parallel universe.

After the ceremony, they disappeared to celebrate again! But given Saturday was to be the biggest day yet, studentervogn day, Léon wasn't too late home. The studentervogn is the thing the majority of the kids had been most looking forward to from the first day three years earlier when they started grammar school. In fact, some kids probably only do the three-year course for this reason, and I am not exaggerating! A studentervogn is a large truck, decked out with banners prepared by the kids, a dance area, drinks etc. Here's a photo of Léon's.

The disadvantage touched upon above is this: If you get 12 in your last exam, you don't get to join the studentervogn till the second stop, having to run behind it all the way, mind you getting the lowest mark in the class is worse as that person apparently has to run in front of it instead, trying not to be run over!

A route is planned stopping at everyone in their main class's house where food, alcohol, and other refreshments are served. Each stop takes around 25 minutes, other than the stops for breakfast, lunch, and dinner which take longer. Between stops the truck is a mobile dance room and the kids party, drink, dance, and sing. With 27 kids in Léon's class and distances of up to 15km between stops, the truck tour was scheduled to take 15.5 hours so had to set out at 7am! They even dropped by their English teacher's house on the way to give a farewell cuddle to Mummy Sussi as they call her. At each person's stop the classmates lined up to welcome the student to their own stop with a beer bong ceremony. I'll include a video of the arrival of the studentervogn, and the beer ceremony. We got it from 5:35 - 6:05. 

Apparently another tradition is to moon at passing cars! Danes love nudity! Given it was Léon's stop he got to moon at the car passing our house, except the car didn't then pass, it stopped and the driver and passengers came up the driveway to congratulate the students as it turned out to be Léon's coworkers driving to the local restaurant for their shift. He had to laugh that his workmates were now in possession of a photo of his bare arse hanging out the back of a truck!

Thomas had set out sandwiches and sangria and they were more than pleased with how exotic (ie un-Danish) that was! We did water the sangria down with a bit of ribena just so they would survive the 15 hours, but no one seemed to notice! We were spontaneously joined by the neighbours too which was lovely!

That night they were determined to earn the right to wear their hats backwards - apparently you do that by staying awake for 24 hours, they were also determined to win the right to draw the symbol of a wave inside their hats by skinny dipping in the sea wearing only their hats, not the most sensible combo, but I did notice his phone pinged at the coast around 2am and he returned home the next day looking like this, complete with wave!

That was 30/6. And since then Léon has rarely been seen! Every night he's at a studentergilde (a graduation party) from 6pm to 6am, always staying at someone else's house. He drops by occasionally for a shower, or to pick up clothes, showing off new symbols in his hat. An ear of corn means you have run the length of a cornfield naked, apart of course for the hat! And so on... He's having the time of his life. 

Graduation isn't a prom, and a ceremony here, it's a prom, a ceremony, a hat, a picnic, a truck and a party a night for over a month. They sure know how to graduate in style. And now I know why most Danes take a gap year before uni... it's to recover from the graduation ceremony and sober up long enough to actually decide what course to take at uni!

I don't think I've missed any details, but I will update if he fills me in on anything else!

U can make all the difference

When I moved to Denmark, I registered as a resident but wasn't issued a residence card because I was an EU citizen. Two years later, thanks to Boris Johnson and his cohort, I was informed by the Styrelsen for International Rekruttering og Integration (SIRI) that I needed to obtain the same kind of card issued to third-country nationals to be allowed to remain in Denmark. 

I was summoned for a meeting, fingerprinted, and photographed, transforming me into a more "alien" type of foreigner. Since then, I’ve had to present this card along with my UK passport every time I enter or leave the Schengen Area. This process means my passport is never stamped, preventing the activation of the restrictive 90-day rule for my nationality. It also gives me the right to work here, rather than just tourist rights.

I realise I shouldn't complain too much; I've heard about the numerous challenges EU citizens in the UK face due to the Home Office’s stubborn refusal to issue any physical proof of their residence status. Each time we arrive in the UK, Thomas’s status is checked on the computer at the border, but he lacks any physical proof of his UK settled status. 

However, having to undergo biometric registration back in 2021 was a wrench. It demoted me from being "one of us" to "one of them," making me a second-class immigrant. Every time I show that card, I’m reminded that my EU citizenship was stripped away against my wishes, setting me apart from my husband and children, as if I am simultaneously part of my family and yet somehow inferior to the others. I became the odd one out, unable to queue with them at the airport, always needing to justify my presence. 

 

Today, I was issued with a new card. At first glance, it looks identical to the old one, save for the issue date and a new, less flattering photo (they insisted I tie my hair back, giving me a tired, fierce look). But, the last word reveals a world of difference to anyone who's good at proofreading. 

The old card labelled my status as "TIDSBEGRÆNSET," while the new one says "TIDSUBEGRÆNSET." What difference does a single 'u' make? It signifies an upgrade from temporary (tidsbegrænset) to permanent (tidsubegrænset) Danish resident. This change means I can no longer be deported if something were to happen to Thomas, which is a comforting thought given his recent health scares. Although it’s not citizenship, this status grants me the same rights as a Dane, other than the right to vote in their General and European Elections. 

After over five years in post-Brexit limbo, this feels like a significant and reassuring milestone. It's as close as I can get to a passport change for now, and has gone a little way to making me feel like I am back in the European fold as a permanent resident. And what better day for it to happen, than the one when I was disenfranchised once again back in my chaotic home country?

Broken democracy - an update

 

What a fucking joke! My ballot paper finally drops through my door at 10:41 on 2/7. Next uplift from the post office in the next town is 7am on 3/7 and it needs to be in East Ren no later than 4/7. I think the chances of that are about as high as they are of Sunak getting a landslide majority… though I guess it depends how many other postal votes have been sabotaged. To make matters even worse, only mine has turned up today. Léon’s still waiting. So much for enjoying his first time voting. Democracy in the UK is completely broken.🤬

And it's not just an East Ren to Denmark issue. Charlotte is registered in Glasgow North and living in Central Madrid and as of lunch time today has not seen hide nor hair of hers yet either.

Just like in 2019, my right to vote in the UK GE is nothing but an empty promise.

Coloured filters on B&W photos

I took this photo of Amaia the other week when we were down in Germany for the afternoon. It's very her; as you can see she becomes quite a walking freckle in the summer months. I suddenly remembered years ago when I still had an SLR camera rather than a DSLR that I used to carry around heavy piles of lens filters wherever I went so I could get the look I wanted in my photos. This was long before post-processing was invented. I'm sure without that heavy camera bag as my constant companion weighing me down through my adolescence I could have been at least 5cm taller! 

Whenever I was using monochrome film, I loved to play with reds and greens to bring out the contours of the clouds, or hide the blemishes people had on their skin.

Of course, these days the same can be done so much easier. So, I decided to see the difference between Amaia using an orange filter to minimise her freckles and a green one to maximise them. The effects were quite different, but fun all the same, especially as compared here side by side. 

The green one feels more authentically her.

The joke that is UK democracy

I could go on about the obvious whole first-past-the-post voting system that according to this interesting graph, published recently in the Financial Times, gives voters the least level of satisfaction in their democracy. Having lived both under the Danish and the UK system, I would say this graph more or less tallies with my lived experience of things. 

In fact I am sure there is a whole list of things about UK politics I could rant about but I'll keep this short and to the point, as I did last GE too.

What is the point in defining the franchise of an election and then not making it possible for those people to vote? You can argue the franchise should be different, if you are so inclined, but currently UK citizens living abroad have the right to vote in the UK General Election. I feel that seems fair given I am not eligible to vote where I actually live, not being a citizen of that country, and on paper there is nothing to stop me to returning permanently to the UK during the next parliamentary period (well apart from my sanity and the kids' schooling perhaps) so I feel I should vote. I moved because the government of my country became intolerable to me and my EU family and therefore would not consider returning unless it reverted to a saner standpoint on its relations with Europe and European people, ie my 6 closest relatives! So, I have the right to vote and I want to vote. Moreover, my son turned 18 last year, so this is first general election. That should be a real right of passage. And he too would like to gently nudge the UK back in a direction he could find more tolerable.

But just like in 2019, when I desperately wanted to vote against that unspeakable buffoon and his desire to destroy the country I once held dear by getting Brexit done, whatever that was meant to mean, I am sitting here at lunchtime on the Monday before the election with no polling card as yet. So, the earliest my polling card can now turn up is tomorrow morning, ie July 2 at 9am. The next uplift from the post office where I live after that is 7am on July 3. And it needs to arrive back in Newton Mearns no later than July 4 to be counted! What are the chances of that then? Zero.

If they are never going to send out polling cards on time to vote, why can't they come up with some other method of voting. Danes living abroad can vote at the consulate, French living abroad can vote online, but I have a choice of postal, when they never send the cards out on time, or proxy, when I know no one who votes in the polling station I used to use back home, so I'd need find a trustworthy friend to inconvenience who already has their own job and vote to fit in that day.

In a way I would feel less offended if they told me I had no right to vote than the current carrot dangling followed by the let down. But whatever the outcome on Friday morning, it looks once again like neither me nor my son will have any say in it. 

Addendum: Any thoughts I had that the late sending problem was unique to East Ren, or that the Danish postal service was to blame have been hit on the head this evening when my older daughter, who is registered to Glasgow North constituency but living in central Madrid, mentioned she too hadn't seen any sign of her UK polling card, though as a French citizen had easily been able to vote yesterday.😡

A health warning

For the past two or three years my husband has been having problems with his back and also some issues with arthritis, so it didn't strike us as particularly odd that he had become so tired he could barely function. As time went by he seemed to be needing more and more rest and sleep, usually going to bed around 10:45pm, wakening at around 7:15, and needing to go to bed for a nap of two to three hours on work days after work, say from 4 or 5-7pm. That seemed excessive but his back problems meant he wasn't getting a good sleep so it didn't ring any major alarm bells.

This year things have been worse. He's barely done anything in the garden, which is usually a great passion of his and we've done nothing on weekends either, no day trips, no sightseeing, no entertaining. He has stopped blogging and given up on all his usual pastimes such as language learning, and other computing tasks. When I went to visit my two older kids in London and Madrid, he stayed home. Whenever our oldest daughter needed picking up from work at 10pm, he said he couldn't do it because he was too exhausted. Any time Léon needed driven home from a party, I would have to go alone as he was unwakeable. Over the past few months I noticed he was finding it harder and harder to waken up. His alarm would go off in the morning but even though he'd sit up in bed, instead of taking in the morning news on his phone as he would have done in the past, he'd sit almost comatose for up to an hour before coming to. He tried various physiotherapists but nothing helped. 

So to be honest the only thing he actually managed over the last six months was work. Even simple things like asking him to help me with my tax return on the computer was too much. And I had to do all the distance driving as he couldn't. But both of us were convinced that the reason behind it all was his disturbed sleep due to back problems. Then, fortunately he developed a constant sore throat. He visited the GP who sent him to a throat specialist as he could feel his thyroid was enlarged. He discussed that issue with the throat specialist who has sent him for biopsies and other tests which we are still waiting for, but he pointed out that an enlarged thyroid should not be giving him the dry, sore throat he was complaining about. He asked if he had any issues with snoring or sleep apnoea.

Thomas has always had what we considered very mild sleep apnoea issues. They run in his family so he knew the signs to looks out for such as bad snoring, difficulty staying awake during activities such as reading, meetings, watching TV, or driving, morning headaches, choking sensations but he suffered none of these, well other than the snoring, but don't all guys snore a bit?! Once awake, he was awake. He never once fell asleep in front of a movie or in a meeting, so figured if he had it at all, it wasn't worth treating. He simply seemed to need more and more sleep to function. I had pointed out nearly twenty years ago that his night-time breathing wasn't even; he often paused for a moment or two but then it would correct itself, so again we both figured that once it got to the stage where he was falling asleep in front of the TV, he would look into it.

The throat specialist thought, given his family history, that he ought to take a sleep machine home one night to measure his breathing and oxygen levels just to rule that out.

I delivered it back to the clinic the next day and before I had even made it back home the specialist had phoned him in a complete panic. Not only did he have sleep apnoea, but it was so severe that he was in real and imminent danger. He stopped breathing altogether more than 50 times an hour, the highest acceptable number is apparently 5 times an hour. His blood oxygen level overnight hovered around 51%. Anything under 90% is dangerous and under 80% is critical.

He was moved on the patient list on our island to the number one spot and called in the following Monday as he was at imminent risk of death, they told him flat out. This was not to mild apnoea that causes you to fall asleep, this is the severe version that starves your brain of oxygen and kills you without warning. The doctor looked at him sternly and told him he was not to underestimate why he was called in urgently before all the other patients on their list. So, of course when we got home we read the leaflets we'd been given and checked some health pages and these are apparently the issues he faced:

• Cardiovascular Problems: Chronic low oxygen levels can cause high blood pressure, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke. 
• Heart Failure: Prolonged hypoxemia can lead to heart strain and eventually heart failure​.
• Cognitive Impairment Memory Loss: Hypoxia can damage brain cells, leading to memory problems. 
• Dementia: Chronic low oxygen levels can increase the risk of developing dementia and other cognitive impairments​​. 
• Stroke Increased Risk: Severe sleep apnoea significantly raises the risk of stroke due to fluctuating oxygen levels and increased blood pressure​. 
• Diabetes Insulin Resistance: Sleep apnoea can lead to insulin resistance, increasing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes​. 
• Arrhythmias Irregular Heartbeats: Low oxygen levels can cause abnormal heart rhythms, including atrial fibrillation, which can be life-threatening​. 
• Pulmonary Hypertension Lung Complications: Prolonged hypoxia can cause high blood pressure in the lungs' arteries, leading to right-sided heart failure​.
• Metabolic Syndrome Cluster of Conditions: This includes increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol levels, raising the risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. 

The bottom line was that untreated severe sleep apnoea with chronic hypoxia significantly increases the risk of premature death​ by 300% and I was lucky not to have woken up one morning beside a dead husband. They insisted he go home that night with a machine to pump oxygen into him constantly and told him he shouldn't even nap without it on as oxygen levels of 50% during sleep were life threatening.

What a fright that gave us both. Life has been tough enough that last few years with my own brushes with cancer, our moving to a place where we have no friends or family close by to support us. The thought that I could have woken up one morning to find him dead is unimaginable. The kids need their daddy and I need my rock, my soulmate. We can probably get through anything life throws at us together, the last few years have shown that, but alone would have been unimaginable. I'm not sure who it would have been worse for: him dead at 52, or me entirely alone in a foreign country without a steady income and three kids to see through to their end of their education. We are truly shaken.

On the positive side, he's now had his machine six nights and I hardly recognise him. He's now only stopping breathing 3-5 times an hour and he's so refreshed in the mornings, he's jumping out of bed at 7am and reading the news before skipping out to the garden. Of course, he's still meant to take it easy as his body has been damaged by the years of oxygen deprivation but it is so nice to see him slowly reverting to the man I knew, rather than the barely conscious and exhausted one he had become. Somehow it was hard to be fully aware quite how ill he had become when it happened as gradually as it did. 

He's already so much better, I'm half scared he'll now need to trade me in for a younger wife as I am suddenly the more tired of the two. But, joking aside, if you are experiencing any of the symptoms above, go an ask your GP. It could be nothing but it could just turn out to be life threatening.

More on the maybe-aunt

Maybe I'm just slow, or naive, or dare I suggest too sweet at heart, but it has taken me a good number of days to realise I may have jumped to some premature assumptions on my grandfathers' front the other day.

When I was mulling over the mystery of the internet stranger who's in her 70s and apparently, according to DNA at least, a direct descendant of one of my grandparents and therefore a younger half sibling to either my mother or father, I naturally assumed one of my grandfathers must have been a naughty boy. That was quite a logical conclusion of course, because in my head the only other option was one of my grandmothers having an affair and giving birth a few years after my mum or dad, then giving the child up for adoption, all without anyone noticing their new addition... sounds fairly unlikely, no? Also given it was pre-DNA-test times, would they not just have kept the sibling and passed it off as a full sibling?

So, once again during my night time musings, it suddenly hit me that there's in fact a third option! What if one of my grandfathers actually wasn't my grandfather!? What if one of my grannies had an affair that resulted in my parent and simply pulled the wool over my grandfather's eyes? Then, none the wiser, the biological father could have gone on to have this maybe-aunt with a different partner; they'd still be a half aunt to me genetically. Bloody hell, my life is turning into an episode of Dallas!

This, of course, means I'm now sitting here with a magnifying glass and some very old and blurred black and white photos trying to ascertain whether my mum looks like gramps or my dad looks like granda. If that turns out to be the case, then my money would now definitely be less on mum's side of the family given rumour had it my maternal granny, how shall I put it, preferred a nice cup of tea to anything in the bedroom department, no comment there. And I could add that mum and gramps are very similar looking, the only dark-eyed, dark-haired members of what had been up to then a very blonde, blue-eyed family.

Sadly, my knowledge of Phyllis Buchanan Senior is quite limited. I was named after her as she died just six days before my birth. This untimely loss left my father orphaned at the tender age of 24, and as a result, discussions about Phyllis were infrequent and emotionally charged throughout dad's life. She, like many who depart prematurely, was revered in our family conversations, her memory enshrined as an almost celestial figure. Consequently, I am left with scant insight into her personal character or potential actions. Might she have been inclined towards indiscretions, could she have passed another man's child off as my granda's? I simply have no idea. I do know dad and granda had a wonderful and loving relationship and that granda was distraught when he lost Phyllis at the age of 50 but is this enough to rule it out? Dad had Phyllis's eye colour and his beard was red like her hair but I think he still looks like granda, a bit at least. 

And given neither of my parents had any siblings, I have no one to compare them to either physically or in personality. Arg! If mum was still about, at least I could have quizzed her about these options, and maybe asked her what her mother-in-law had been like. And I've still not tracked this woman down geographically which would help.

I think on balance last week's grandfather having an affair is still the more likely scenario, but in the meantime I'm not ruling today's option out fully.

I'll stick a pic or two on here to see if anyone else has any theories.

Mum's family: gran, mum, gramps

 

Dad's family: gran, granda, dad