Monday 14 December 2009

Sunday 13th December 2009 - Wondering about Travel Arrangements

          We got over an inch of rain yesterday.  I was planning to go and have a mooch round Glasgow, because there are usually more people about on a Sunday, but it would have been difficult doing it even by car.  So I decided I would contemplate my next move.
 
          I think Kentucky is next, but it's 750 miles away.  That's a hard slog in a day, and there is a distinct likelihood that it might be unpleasantly cold for sleeping in the saddle.  Rather to my surprise, Dulcie recommends that I go past Glasgow West Virginia, but she makes it a 7-4 split in hours of driving, and 7 is just a bit long for me.  Philly has kind-of cured me of big cities, so I'm going to pass up DC and the Post Office records.  I shall be travelling that long thin strip of Maryland that stretches out west above West Virginia.  But I think I will avoid the weekend before Christmas.
 
          Apart from a couple of breaks in Minneapolis, and one in St Louis, I've been on my own now for eight months.  I have, consequently, developed some fairly sophisticated rules about talking to myself.
          I used to have two quite simple rules: firstly, I think it's alright to talk to myself, but not to people who aren't there; and secondly, if I talk to myself, there's no need to do it out loud or even to move my lips.
          Now I'm prepared to take the view that speaking to myself out loud can be a help in remembering something, a bit like writing notes, so that there is an output process as well as an input one.  Of course I have to be alone to do this.  I am well aware that sitting in a corner muttering to myself, or just moving my lips, is one certain way of ensuring solitude, if not the summoning of men with white coats and a net.
          I have also developed the rule about talking to other people when they're not there: it's OK if it's a rehearsal.  And rehearsal means shortly before I actually speak to them, rather than sometime afterwards.  And rehearsals can't go on for years.
 
          Later that night, lots of people were talking to themselves out very loud.  The local team were playing New York.  I think New York teams are like Manchester United and Chelsea: because they're so rich, everybody else likes to see them getting beaten.  The local team won, so a lot of people were telling the New York players some of the things they could do to themselves.  One young man got so carried away, the almost-naked barmaid asked him to leave on the somewhat dubious grounds that this was a family restaurant.

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