Thursday 19th November 2009 - No Hanover Street

          There is, or so it is said, a calculated Jacobean insult parked in the centre of Glasgow, Scotland.  To the north of George Square, there is a North Hanover Street, which the cunning Scots abbreviated, on the road signs, to "No Hanover Street".  Pottsdown, predating, as it does, the Revolutionary war, also has a N Hanover St, but it is more prosaically abbreviated.  There are also King and Queen Streets, and more surprisingly, York and Charlotte Streets.

          My exercise program had me checking these out, and, to by surprise, two blocks from Charlotte Street, up popped a St Aloysius School and church.  It dates from 1856, a mere three years before my alma mater was founded in Charlotte Street in the Scottish Glasgow.  I guess this one must be, or have been, Jesuit, but I couldn't find anyone around, except a lady praying devoutly in the church, so not interruptable.  I shall have to go back on Sunday morning.  I expect there will be someone around then.

          [n0438]

 

          Pottstowners liked to build substantial houses.  A high proportion of old houses seem to be brick.  There was a noticeable obsession with turrets on the corner.  Perhaps they wanted to express their success by aping their manorial masters back home.  I wonder if it upset the architects.

 

          Later that night, I decided on a pub-crawl.  What am I saying!  I decided to investigate the local bar scene.  In Pennsylvania, you can tell a bar from a restaurant.  Both are likely to have a bar, with stools, but the real bar will have ashtrays.

          I proposed to try and fit in by wearing a baseball cap, but in the first two, nobody at all, in the whole bar, was wearing one.  That came as a big surprise to me.  I thought males here were born in a baseball cap.

          I managed myself well and moderately until I got to the last one.  This was a bit up-market (no ashtrays), and I met a Kiwi who had done a US road trip.  We swapped stories and beers for far too long, and I don't remember much of it.

          I woke up this morning somewhat tentatively, expecting to feel bad, but I didn't. I had, however, managed not only to cut my finger (slightly), but to have put a plaster on it as well.