Food, Language, and History

A week ago Sunday we attended a wonderful fireside at the London Temple Visitors Centre, at which a sister missionary who is a Palestinian Arab with a Ph.D. told her conversion story and explained how the gospel completely changed her outlook on life.   Her account of how she used to sneak into Jerusalem to attend church each week makes any inconveniences we have experienced to attend church pale by comparison.  It is a marvelous work and a wonder to us to see how the Lord gathers His people “one of a city and two of a family” from places where the gospel has not yet penetrated, by bringing them to where they can receive it and then take it home.  This is how we have strong missionaries from such places as Karachi, Pakistan and from a very small village in Poland in our district.  We watch it happen as people from around the world come to England for study or work, meet the missionaries, accept the gospel, and return home with a strong testimony.

The weather has been too cold and wet to tempt us to sight-see, so this installment will address random topics such as food, language, and the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England.

How many kinds of chutney can you see?

Wow! Time to stock up.

Food:  Paul tried steak and kidney pie and decided once was enough (it’s hard not to attribute anything unfamiliar in the flavor to what kidneys do, and that spoils the experience).   Paul also fried some kippers he bought (to make them more like he remembered them from past visits), and his clothes and the house smelled strongly of fish the rest of the day (tastes good, but requires changing clothes if you’re going out in public).  Cumberland sausage is not bad.  The English eat a lot of vegetables, and Paul thinks they taste good even fixed plain.  Connie does not.  For example, rutabagas (called “swede” here) and parsnips are sold in large quantities in grocery stores.  This is the first time Paul ever went back for seconds on rutabagas.

Language:  “poorly” is an adjective meaning unwell.  We were poorly last week with colds.  A news story quoted a nurse saying that some patients returned to hospital “poorlier than when they left”.  A head teacher at a primary school in Yorkshire made the news when she sent a letter to parents recommending their children avoid local vocabulary in school and when applying for work—one sentence in the article that intrigued us read:  “Children growing up around Middlesbrough do not speak Geordie, and some elements of the Teesside accent sound more like Scouse.”  It turns out Geordie (pronounced “Jordie”) is a Newcastle accent and Scouse is a Liverpool accent.  One word they use up north for zero or nothing is “naught”, which is pronounced “nowt” in Geordie.  “Somewhat” is pronounced “soomit.”  Because of the way English slight the letter “r” in so many words, it was interesting to hear a news story on comets in which the scientist pronounced “iron” and “ion” exactly the same and hence had to explain to the reporter when he changed from one meaning to the other.

They gave the world Shakespeare, Milton, Churchill.  Is this what they got in return?

History:  Paul recently read Bede’s 8^th-century Ecclesiastical History of England to get a better feel for the history here prior to William the Conqueror.  It was interesting to read the troubles of the early Britons after the Romans left.  The Scots and Picts invaded, so the Britons, not being war-like, called on Rome for help.  The Romans drove the invaders back up north and told the Brits to build a wall.  The Brits didn’t do stonework well, so they made their wall out of sod, which didn’t significantly slow down the next invasion.  They called the Romans back again, who drove out the invaders again, built a stone wall for the Brits, and announced they weren’t coming back after that.  It was unfortunate for the Britons that the Scots and Picts also heard the announcement, so they invaded again.  This time the Brits hired the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes to come over from Germany and Denmark to defend them.  These people found England to be a nicer place than their homelands, so they sent for their families and stayed. The place where we live subsequently became known as the land of the West Saxons.