| December 30, 2007 |
| Unsteady Aim? |
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While my central ambition in life is to move back to the UP Michigan, my wife sometimes expresses ambivalence about moving north. She's in pretty good company, as I discern from my occasional readings of Wife in the North , a blog by an Englishwoman uprooted grudgingly to hyperboreal precincts of the UK. According to her Blogger profile: Moving to Northumberland from London was not my idea. My husband was in fact the only one terribly keen on the move. When I asked my younger son what he thought, he confided: ?Bears might eat me?. "There are no bears," I told him as I looked into the darkness and the growling started. Her exile makes for interesting prose, at any rate. I enjoyed her account of participating in a driven bird shoot posted last week. They're a bit more casual about certain aspects of hunting over there: The shoot starts with coffee and bacon and sausage sandwiches and there was much shaking of hands and making of introductions before the alcohol came out at around 9.30 am. It is my belief that country folk have larger livers than townsfolk due to the inordinate amount of alcohol they consume while still remaining sober. Ideally the more dangerous the past time, the more alcohol is consumed. Riding a horse? "Pass the hip flask." Zipping along on the quad bike - without a helmet? "The bar is in that cardboard box on the back of the bike over there." Firing a loaded weapon? "Would you like whipped cream on your Tia Maria coffee?" There was at least an administrative reason for this first round of alcohol - the local Percy special of cherry brandy and whisky. Thinking about it, there often is a reason for a drink in the country; reasons which include "I'm here" and "Well, if you're offering." The day ended without any fatalities, fortunately. Wife's post is more entertaining than anything you'll find in Upland Journal . One commenter at her site did suggest the whole thing was fabricated, and I had suspicions about that myself, but does it really matter? At times, I turn to the outdoor sports as a mental health maintenance strategy; at others, exercise of the imagination--with or without empirical assistance--does the job. It's hard for me not to like a piece in which someone joins these to help survive in a bleak spot.
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