Over the creek and through the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism to grandmother's house I went.

I'm in Honolulu now, but over the Thanksgiving weekend I was in DC, where the streets are littered with organizations pulled straight from the X-Files. This gave me the opportunity to check in with my Bracknellian grandmother in person, in her charming apartment overlooking the treetops, and to tell her a little bit about some work I've been doing on the no-longer-quite-fledgling National Theatre of Scotland.

I give you the list of things my grandmother rejected fundamentally as concepts while I was talking with her that afternoon:

Storytelling. ("What is 'storytelling'? I've never heard of such a thing," she says, disdain dripping from her scare-quotes. "It's... well... I, um, I really don't think I can give a definition much clearer than the one contained in the word itself, Nonna." She scoffs with a small incredulous noise: "We certainly never did anything like that in our family.")
Rural locales as the sites of culture. ("There's culture outside of Glasgow and Edinburgh? Really?" A slow patrician drawl: "You surprise me." Her raised eyebrows say that I haven't surprised her, because she doesn't believe me.)
Sandwiches. ("I hate sandwiches. I've always hated sandwiches." "Really, Nonna? Because a solid third of all of the meals you've ever served me have been sandwiches." This merits no more than an arch look and a dismissive flick of the hand. Of course, she also claimed on this visit that she'd be faking every single interest she'd ever evinced in her 90+ years on this earth. Maybe sandwiches just got caught in the crossfire.)
Scottish music. ("There's no such thing." "There is." "Oh? What is it then, Scottish music?" She clearly thinks she's got me there. So I pull out the most obvious example: "Have you ever heard a bagpiper?". "Yes," she says, confident in the hand she has to play, "In London." "London did not invent the bagpipes!" I cry with excessive force.)

Note that of these concepts, she only even admitted to the existence of sandwiches, and she stopped just short of calling them abominations. She's a woman of stark absolutes, my grandmother. It's for us plebians to dabble in nuance.