Thursday 14 May 2009

Wednesday 13th May 2009 – Nine Miles Up-the-Creek in an Irish Castle

I was shopping for curtains (as one does), when my peripheral vision saw something it thought I needed to look at: and I found myself focussing on my first Glasgow. Not a real Glasgow, you understand, just a little cul-de-sac, or 'Dead End', as the Americans say, in English. And here it is:

It's in Edina, which rhymes with Carolina, as in "Nothing could be fine-ah than to be in". Edina is a southern suburb of Minneapolis, but, as is the way here, is a 'city' in its own right. You could actually tell it's south of Minneapolis by the other street sign: 78 means its way south (I think, but I'm not certain, 78 blocks south, or south-west, of the Mississippi). So go south 78 blocks and if you stay west of Nicollet Avenue, you will eventually find yourself on W 78th Street. Glasgow Drive is on the North side near Nine Mile Creek. Protest posters in the gardens want to save Nine Mile Creek, from industrialised environmentalism. You can read the details at http://9milecreek.org/ .

My favorite Irish Pub has a huge mural filling one whole wall. It depicts a ruined castle. We were debating where it might be while the young waiter got our drinks.

"Ask the waiter", I said.

"Oh, he'll never know", she said, " he's just a youngster doing waiting".

So I asked him: "Do you know where that castle is?"

"It's Kerry (I'm not really sure whether he said this or some other word closer to 'Curry' or 'curroo', but I know 'Kerry' so, for now, 'Kerry' it is), in County Kerry. Brian Boru lived there".

"Oh, yeah, right", we thought, but we said "how do you know that?"

And he said "Because I painted it."
Turned out he was a part-owner of the place. Just goes to show. You never can tell, can you. I couldn't resist thinking "if he's the owner, he won't want a tip, will he?"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

One of the pleasures of reading your daily blog is reading the Google ads that it engenders. Mention a castle in Ireland and someone will let you get married in on of several!

It occurs to me that since you have espoused Cervantes as your muse (so to speak) perhaps you should mention castles in Spain and see what that brings forth. Afterall, might not finding Glasgows and tilting at windmills be considered similar activities?

Anonymous said...

Si senor, It is I, and as I once so famously said:

'...el que lee mucho y anda mucho, vee mucho y sabe mucho'

Vaya con Dios,

The Don