Friday 17th April 2009 – Blue Stockings and Red Socks

My trip is now gradually getting into gear.  I suppose this is a roundabout way of saying the gross mistakes are beginning to show up and be straightened out.  Like somehow having brought European plug converters instead of US.  I have to find an electrical shop with only minutes left on the computer battery.  In the old days, I would simply have stripped the cables and connected things up with a couple of matches, but I'm older and wiser now.  But I can't bring myself to sign up for a day's WiFi with no guarantee of being able to use more than aforesaid minutes.

I give a bit of ground and accept that staying a few more days in the expensive hotel solves some immediate problems.  At least I won't have to trek round Boston with all my worldly goods.  And I can use the hotel's computers to locate electrical suppliers.  I find a Radio Shack near the Red Socks stadium.  So the electrical problems will soon be solved. 

It turns out that staying in Boston was a good idea, because it's coming up Patriots' Day (note the punctuation, they're very particular about that), which is not only a long weekend in this part of the world, it's the Monday they run the Boston Marathon, the original city marathon.  This weekend sees the 113^th year of the event.

Out at Fenway Park, the Red Socks are slogging it out with the Baltimore Orioles.  It turns out to be a bit like the film 'Groundhog Day', because every time I look at a television, the game is on.  I think I'm seeing replays, or highlights, but the game is live, and they seem to have been playing for a week.  In fact, it's a playoff series.  I think it's nine games, but I'm not sure.  I don't know what trophy they're playing off for either. But it doesn't matter: I really enjoy watching baseball.  I have to find a bar to watch it in.  I contemplated going to a game, but it's impossible to get tickets, and, anyway, it's too difficult to follow without the aid of the television graphics (unless you learned it at school).  The Red Socks will actually play a game on Monday morning so as to end while the Marathon is finishing.  Sounds like a crowd-control nightmare; I can't imagine the Met Police going along with that.

I find a bar close to the Fenway Park to watch tonight's game.  It has a star lady cocktail barman, who works frenetically the whole night.  I suggest she takes Monday off, and runs the marathon, just for the rest.  I missed the last out of the game watching her perform a particularly daring shake. She even gets the boys to eat their greens, by pulping them into their drinks.

 

As soon as the game is over, the TVs all go off and get shut away behind cupboard doors.  This is obviously a classy bar. 

 

[I was going to work all the smart young ladies at these fancy Boston colleges into the story, with the barmaid as the star, but I'm getting hopelessly behind, and I don't have time.  That will have to wait for the rewrite.  But it's such a good title, I refuse to change it.]