Mark Carroll's Journal

BBC Radio Cornwall is currently playing Alison Moyet's Weak In The Presence Of Beauty; I think she has a great voice. The song reminds me of how I was rather surprised to see the video for Is it Love?: for much of the filming I know exactly where they must be, but eight miles from where I lived for years, though the site no longer exists, yet another aspect of the world that remains in my mind but is no longer relevant. I remain troubled by the strangeness of knowing lost things well. No wonder some older people like to talk about their world as it once was, it may feel like a way to keep what mattered to them still alive. For example, on other music of the period, Morrissey's parents lived rather near where I did, as he completed his education near where I started mine; I wondered if I had happened to see them at a local shopping precinct, then remembered that at least one precinct now looks very different, its previous form lingering only in memories and photographs.

The grocery store turned out to have both pesto-infused oil and snapper on discount so I rubbed the oil onto the snapper and baked it. To accompany it, I already had butter, garlic, pierogi, so I fried those.

Having moved from Europe back to North America, I now discover that, had I remained where I was instead, I would have sooner gotten a local branch of Tim Hortons.

I now realize that it would have been easy to get the word Mosaic into both of today's previous journal entries.

Massachusetts' online ballot tracking reports,


Those are the last I cast before moving. I appreciate how the Belmont Town Clerk's office has always tolerated my reducing their 8½"×18" ballots to A3.

Last Friday was a pleasant, sunny spring day; during a stroll around the village I even took my sweater off. This Monday morning I opened the curtains only to see ice on our car's windshield.

I made myself a little bag of assorted teabags for drinking at work. When I pour the water from the kettle, I discover which kind of teabag I have as the various kinds promptly color the water differently. However, for example, my wont is to pour boiling water onto black tea but to use water just shy of boiling for green tea. I thus find that I need to know which kind of tea it is in order to perform the operation that tells me.

The Year of the Rat starts next Saturday which also happens to be the birthday of the poet Robert Burns. From Dundee we will thus pick up some celebratory foods from Matthews who describe themselves as an oriental supermarket which intrigues me because some East Asian people find the adjective oriental offensive so it abides on my growing don't call things that list. We shall also pick up traditional Scots fare, of course including haggis from a Perthshire butcher; I shan't be piping its journey to table given that the reed in my chanter is broken. It will be interesting to see how the various food goes together.

(We are neither Scottish nor Asian. Those aghast at how we desecrate others' cultures by appropriating from them may not want to be reading this journal at all.)

Listening to a BBC Radio Scotland feature on composting toilets I was amused to hear how the wee goes into a wee container. Of course that sounds exactly the place for the wee to go but I took this to mean that the urine goes into a small container. The host of the show wrapped up with unfortunate word choice about our possibly having heard a taste of the future; regardless of the hearing of tastes I am happy to keep both senses well clear of toilet technology.

It turns out to take some concentration for Americans to sing the British national anthem without accidentally switching lyrics over to Land where my fathers died or whatever, with My Country, 'Tis of Thee being sung to the same tune.