Tuesday 1 December 2009

Sunday-Monday 29th-30th November 2009 - A Bit of Recidivism

          It being Sunday morning, a good breakfast and a quiet read are called for.  Since I am in one of the poorer parts of town, I have to pass several giant Pharmacies.  On the way back, I decide to pay a visit, see if they have any of the tablets I take to mitigate the effects of the Great Five-a-Side Disaster of 2003.  But, as usual in chemist's shops, all the writing turns fuzzy, and none of the shelf-orderings make any sense at all.  But, to my surprise, something comes into focus.  It is saddle soap.  Just what I need for my cowboy boots.  And it is nearly what I was looking for.  Why would a chemist have saddle soap?  Is it reputed among the poor to have special healing powers?  I should just be grateful I don't have to mount a special search, it being quite difficult to order things on the internet when you're on the move.
 
          My US 'poste restante' has forwarded, electronically (not a service available to the common people) a story about me which appeared on the front page of the Beaver Times (no, that's not a frat-boy magazine, it's the weekly newspaper of Beaver County PA, wherein lies the Borough of Glasgow).  It is unusually accurate and perceptive for a newspaper, describing me, in the headline, as a "witty Scot".
 
           It is time to pack-up and move on.  I have done the three Glasgows of Pennsylvania: the smallest (and it's the Borough); the post office (where the address is "Glasgow, PA", with a zip code); and the oldest (I think).  The one thing remaining is to stop off in Philly and find out a bit more about the McCalls, who named the oldest.  If there are still any McCalls extant, they will undoubtedly be members of the St Andrew's Society, and, of course, I will be arriving on St Andrew's Day.
          In fact, St Andrew's Day turns out to be so wet, I could be in the Western Highlands.  It, and Philly's tall buildings, drive Dulcie into one of her turns.  I can, literally, see her twisting her knickers, as the maps she's showing me rotate through 360 degrees every time I turn a corner, and she shouts mutually contradictory orders.
          I find, in the very centre of town, a hotel where I can just justify the price.  I finally give in to myself: I decide to stay for the week.  Despite all this small-town travel, I am, at heart, a city slicker.  This may my last chance to see the second largest city on the east coast, the nation's first capital.  I've only ever been here before on a fleeting evening visit.
          The hotel didn't work out: their wifi wasn't anything near 'fi'; the tv didn't work; the microwave didn't work; and, most surprisingly of all, for an American hotel, the bathroom, though private, was across the corridor.  The last straw was after the hour I spent trying to see if I could live with the wifi, I found I was freezing, that one of the windows was jammed open, and there seemed to be no heating.  They took it on the chin and gave me my money back, so I will resist the temptation to name-and-shame.  Let it be used as a learning process for others.  But it means I'm now on the outskirts, as usual.
 
          Later that night, I find a local bar with a very grand name (the "Philadium"!).  Therein I find a local (I thought he was from NY, but he said "Italian market - you know, where they threw him the orange in "Rocky" - we have lots of different accents here") who lives sometimes in Kentucky, near another Glasgow, and a barman who, after a bit of warming conversation, fills the glass unprompted.  As Voltaire put it "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". (Well, his Pangloss character, mimicking Leibnitz, to be more precise, and he did, of course, actually say "tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes" (isn't the internet wonderful too?)).

No comments: