Friday October 2nd 2009 - Caught on the Rebound

          Attempting to live a sterling life in dollars (or do I mean a dollar life in sterling?) has some drawbacks.  One of them is that I have to sit down once a month and do sums.  I used to be good at sums.  I like to think I still am.  And in a competitive situation, like when I put a total on a restaurant check, 'cos I'm too lazy to work out the tip exactly, and the cashier looks dumb and I berate the youth of today and he gets his calculator out, even upside-down I can usually still beat it (come on, we're only talking addition or subtraction here).  But when I have to float money in different currencies between different accounts, the numbers do now seem to take on a life of their own.  Especially when some accounts are credit cards, striking balances on different dates.

          I am also again being reminded that the quickest, easiest and cheapest way of converting pounds into dollars is to use a cash machine (ATM here) to turn it into cash, then put it straight back in again.  It reminds me of the early days of computer networking, when people would commonly surmount access difficulties of one kind or another by downloading files onto floppy disks, then going to another machine and immediately uploading it again,  a technique commonly known as 'sneakernet'.

          Life is being further complicated by having to hang about the library to print out and check documents.  But it reminds me how pleasant libraries are: grown-up ladies, happy to drop everything and cater to my merest whims; old people looking up their ancestors whatsits; teenagers apparently enjoying sitting quietly and up-straight, and looking apologetic when their phones ring; and children laughing and sounding excited.  I think the pleasantest re-discovery is that nobody minds you hanging about.  They even provide quality WiFi.  I think I may start hanging around libraries again.

          While I was hanging round, I did a bit of recapping on the maps I'd found.  And noticed they had changed.  The 1875 Atlas had a 1908 map in it.  Of course, what I had failed to notice was that the library had done a bit of rebinding, and bound two old atlases into one cover.  So I've now got what amounts to a posh version of the additions to the plat map of Glasgow between 1873 and 1908. So I will know exactly what I'm looking for when I get to the Courthouse.

 

          Later that night, I follow a skinny lady to a perfumed-tea den, where I buy myself some extremely expensive grass.  And drink some rather unpleasant water.  I think my inability to remember to tell them not to use ice must be the culprit: it is probably the flavour of the ice machine I'm tasting.

          In among the old furniture, the local chess club is having a meeting. (I can tell it's a club, rather than just casual games, because they are using clocks.)  One of the members has an irritatingly loud voice, doubly surprising for being found in a chess club.  I expect that's why they're not meeting in the library.