Wednesday 26th August 2009 – Back to Square One

         Before television, which was not so long ago, sports fans had to rely on radio to follow their team's fortunes.  I have it on good authority (I do!) that the BBC divided the football field into a number of squares, square one being the one where play restarted.  But none of the references so readily available online these days accepts that as the origin of the phrase, although they accept the BBC did indeed divide up the filed like that.  They offer Snakes and Ladders, and Hop Scotch as alternative sources.

But wherever it came from, we all know what it means: coming back to the beginning and starting over.  Which is what I am doing now in Minneapolis.

So I've had a day of getting documents ready for the lawyers, and making sure I've thought through as much as I can to get the most out of the initial meeting.

 

The last part of the journey up from Cedar Falls was uneventful.  Except that Cedar Falls is in Iowa, so it was raining heavily.  I stopped a lot, 'cos I didn't want to get here.  I even stopped in Chester, right on the Minnesota border, to post a letter.  If I'd had a library book, I would have stopped to change that.

 

The brewery at Cedar Falls sold large jugs, which they called "growlers", over the bar.  They were rather fine jugs, made of glass, with aluminium handles and spring tops, like old pop bottles.  They hold 64 ounces.  I bought one full of Pale Ale, and we consumed it later that evening.  It travelled very well.

 

As I mentioned before, the Glasgows after whom the Missouri one and the St Louis Village one were named came originally from Delaware.  The information at St Louis Public Library said they were from Christiana, Delaware.

         Google claims to alert me every time the word "Glasgow" is mentioned on the web.  (There is, of course, no way I can check this claim, although I've no doubt experiments could be devised.)  Anyway, yesterday it told me that a motorcyclist was injured in Glasgow Delaware, and that he was taken to Christiana Hospital.  So I looked it up, and they are very close together.