Wednesday 27th May 2009 – Bulls Bollocks and Mr Belvedere

I went to the Post Office to get some stamps.  A postcard to Europe now costs 98 cents.  The price has just gone up, and despite being the main post office, it has no 98 cent stamps.  I have to have a combination of 80, 17 and 1 cent stamps.  The 1 cent stamp is a work of art: it portrays a Tiffany Lamp.  I know this because I get an itemised receipt which tells me so: "1c Tiffany Lamp PSA   $0.01" it says.  With the address of the Post Office, all the stamps, the clerk's id, and some adverts, the receipt is about 10 inches long.  I don't see how they can be making money doing this.

The final irony is that I have to take special care writing the postcard (well, the second one, anyway) to leave room to stick on the stamps.

Could it all be a clever marketing ploy?  Forget all that internet efficiency; forget instant responses; forget adding any attachments you want: I like to use those loveable scamps at the Post Office, they're just so … so human.

 

I was invited to the Kiwanis lunch.  I got to tell them about my trip, and I got to meet the Mayor and the Sheriff.  I got to present the Mayor with the compliments of the Lord Provost of Glasgow, Scotland, and a small banner with that Glasgow's coat-of-arms.  The Mayor invited me to a council meeting. 

What I didn't get were any pictures, video or still.  I had a sudden clear memory of the final scene from "Mr Belvedere Goes to College", a 1950 film starting Clifton Webb, where, having been presented with his degree by the Dean, Mr Belvedere then presents the Dean with a magazine whose cover picture shows the Dean presenting him with his degree.  I think photographing what I'm doing while I'm doing it may be the stuff of fiction: back to yet another drawing-board.

 

Later that night, in the Montana Bar, contemplating the happenings of the day, I was perusing The Glasgow Courier's report on the stockyard bull sales.  Bulls, it appears, are described by their birth, weaning, and yearling weight, and by their "scrotal measurement".

I appreciate that that's a vital component of a bull, but even at my great age, I'm too shy to ask the lovely lady editor just exactly what is being measured there.  Whatever it is, I suspect the measuring of it must be a task both skilled and hazardous.  And it is (the first time I think I've seen it in the US) given in centimetres.  Could that just be to stop it sounding rude?