In which I ask myself: could I be a New England Puritan* Witch?
In a week where I have juxtaposed puritanical values of hard work and turnip cookery with silly nonsense tomfoolery in the bars and public houses of Dumfries township, I have invoked a curious aesthetic extension to my brooding gothic start to the autumn. Add to the mix a haunting at my parents’ house and my deep dive into a new narrative based game set in New England and you have a recipe for the best possible end to September. Read on for this week’s tale…
*A clarification on the title. I cannot be a true puritan because I am a martyr to homosexuality and also because I could never succeed in doing justice to a wide-brimmed hat. I here refer to puritan to denote people of a set timeframe and (woefully misguided) cultural arena.
Monday:
The drudgery of a typical Monday unfolded before me and I fell into step. When the tribulations of the working day drew to a close I embraced the spirit of frontier resourcefulness and produced an egg fried rice with a mixture cobbled together in no small part from the leftovers of Sunday’s roast pork. Pleased with my cost saving endeavour, I retired to bed full of puritan self righteousness.
Tuesday:
Another day of monotonous workday business took me through the daylight hours. But, undefeated by the cares of social work or the media, I maintained a spark of life by 5pm. Thusly, I prepared a crustless quiche, flavoured and textured with the remainder of the pork mixture I prepared for the rice the previous night. Unsettled by the fact of being in a place both mentally and physically where a crustless quiche is a tension relieving solution to my weekly concerns, I surrendered myself to the mercy of Instagram and passed the evening scrolling pages and pages of relatable memes.
Wednesday:
Monotony, oh monotony. The endless expanse of “nose to the grindstone” working behaviours in this week has piqued something of the New England puritan in me and I have found myself surrendering further to the aesthetic advent of the autumn. When the days work was completed, I immediately crossed the village and visited my mother so the two of us could watch “Emily” on Netflix. Bizarrely, phantasmic events started to unfold which harried and harrowed us, but ultimately, to my credit and as a consequence of my interminable Virgo nature, did not stop us completing the film.
It began with the distinct and incredibly loud “knocking”. From somewhere behind my mother’s TV in the corner of her living room, or at a push, from the adjacent entry hallway, there was a distinct “bang” or knocking. Investigation yielded no return. What’s more, she advises me that said knocking had begun two days prior and was periodically to be heard to no explanation.
Again, a knock, inspiring us to pause the movie and me to lose patience with the supernatural entity exhibiting such cavalier disregard for etiquette or propriety. This time, I curiously noted that the tray of the DVD player (in itself a now antiquated piece of apparatus which could feasibly be haunted in the same way as, say, an old gramophone) was open. Curious. I closed it and we continued on.
Lo! Another knock resounded. As we investigated we noticed that the DVD tray was again open. Curious. I closed the tray and turned my back to return to the sofa when, spine chillingly, the tray opened again of its own volition. This time I switched the DVD player off, but in the spirit of hilarity and supernatural hijinks, within ten minutes it switched itself back on AND for good measure spat the tray back out again.
Frustrated by the cheek of our paranormal visitor and both of us too exhausted by our professional dalliances in public relations and the law to be hassled with the business of witchcraft, we simply removed the power cord from the haunted device and completed the movie.
Entirely exhausted from these exertions supernatural, I returned home to make a pasta dish centred on delightful roasted turnip, further entrenching the spirit of New England purism in my tired bones.
Thursday:
Thursday arrived, ushering in the 27th birthday of my oldest sister. After the obligatory representations were made on social media, and the days work was completed, we descended as a familial unit on the delightful Thai restaurant in Dalton, about fifteen minutes from home.
Curiously we were joined by my grandfather who, as a hardy fellow of 91 years of age and utterly unshakable in his old world sensibility, has never tried anything more exotic than a dry popadom and who flatly refuses to eat onion. After monopolising our waitress with enquiries after her grandparents and making arrangements for her relations to contact us about a possible hedge cutting contract, he tucked into his prawns and satay chicken which he saw as remarkably palatable. Onions may still be banned from his diet, but there is place yet for Thai cuisine and the growth is to be applauded.
More jollity ensued and my sister’s birthday was marked in great style.
Friday:
On Friday I reclused myself and am better for it. At last night’s dinner for my sister’s birthday, Leslie, my sister’s partner’s mother spent some time bonding with me over the fact that we are both, now, Golf widows. And it’s true! Derry has fallen inexplicably into an infatuation with Golf in the last few days. The fervour with which he has bought into the franchise is, I must say, alarming.
Tonight, he has excused himself to go golfing with friends and then to my sister’s house to watch Golf with my brother in law. An invitation was duly extended to me to join them, but golf inspires nothing in my spirit and I was also exhausted from the exertions of the day. A determination was made to stay home.
In pursuit of distraction I decided to explore the benefits of my new PlayStation plus subscription. I happened across a game I thought I’d try which is predicated on being a ghost hunting Scotsman investigating paranormal happenings in a brooding New England landscape.
Apart from resonating with the themes of the week prior and connecting viscerally with the curious haunting of the blueray player in my parents’ living room, I have also fallen deeply in love with the main playable character who happens to be named “Ruaidhrigh”, which is my name but spelled differently, a Gaelic flavoured version of the interplay between the nuance of Elisabeth and Elizabeth.
Taken in entirely I gave myself in body and spirit to the story, pausing only long enough to whip up a hasty chicken paprika before returning to the sumptuous gothic depths of this tale.
Saturday:
We have taken to the streets! In celebration of my sister’s birthday we set out in Dumfries for revelry and merry-making. Filled to the brim with a dreadful cold, I allowed myself to follow the folk advice of my culture and imbibed of a good deal of whisky. I then followed the trajectory of the night in an endless parade of spicy cocktails, glasses of prosecco, and, at one curious and inexplicable juncture, a half pint of tenants lager.
The night came to an end in a mysterious Chinese takeaway I’ve never seen before. Whether a hallucination fuelled by drink or a genuine happening I cannot say, but my final recollection of the evening was seeing a woman barrelling down Loreburn street in what was very clearly the Oscar’s De La Renta dress made for Emma Watson for the 2011 premiere of the Deathly Hallows. A taxi was called and I nursed my Chinese takeaway all the way home while worrying for the safety of that dress on the streets of Dumfries.
Sunday:
Pestilence. Not a hangover, but true pestilence has me in its grip. My throat is closed, my skin feverish, and my visage pale and dewy. I have done naught but fall deeper into the sumptuous narrative of this video game, searching for ghosts and witches and meaning in the leafy hamlets of puritan New England.
I did briefly interrupt my time to visit my parents for dinner, where my father excelled himself with his chicken Schnitzel. After dinner we watched “The Miracle Club” on Netflix which was a delight and further illustrated to everyone in the room that Cathy Bates and my mother are one and the same in looks and temperament - in all other of her roles but with specific emphasis on the unsinkable Molly Brown (and, when her fettle is piqued, the crazy woman from Misery).