Saturday 9th January 2010 - A Whole Lot of Bull

          Having written the car out of the story last night, I have to write it straight back in again.  A nice brisk walk in the morning snow, and it turns out I can remember where I left it.  It didn't seem to mind having been left in the middle of an empty parking lot all night.

          I have been told it is normal to tip about 20% here.  The staff in most of these establishments will be on minimum wage, counting the tips.  I move the decimal point, double it, an go to the nearest round number.  Sometimes I don't, but it really has to have been a bad experience.

          So I was a little surprised when the waitress at breakfast came rushing over to thank me effusively for my tip the previous day.  She had gone off-duty between serving me and me paying.  I generally pay by credit card, just for the record-keeping it does.  The boss had kept the tip for her.  She was a grown-up lady, so I asked her if it was not normal to do that.  She gave me some frank opinions of my fellow-customers.  Apparently some are just mean, and some are, well, less than mean.

 

          I got some shopping in today.  Went back to where I'd had the bump, which I thought was jolly brave of me.  I could still see bits of Rozzie lying about the road.

          Then I came back and settled into a bit of writing.  It took quite a long time, with a whole wasted story that ran out of steam.  But I eventually got something that might count as a first draft of what I'm after, so I was quite pleased.

 

          Later that night, I went out for my evening stroll.  When I went out early morning to get the car, the big sign outside the bank had said 16 degrees.  When I went shopping at lunchtime, it said 18.  And now it was saying 20.  So hopefully the worst is over.

          The bar was quite busy.  I got into a conversation with the local Repo man.  He's the man who recovers cars and things when the payments are not being made.  There was also a tobacco buyer, here to buy some special kind of dark tobacco.  There was a Virginian who waxed quite eloquent about the pink tobacco flower, which, rather surprisingly, I'd seen in Missouri in the summer.

          But there was one really fascinating job.  It came out as quite a chat-up line: "What do you do?" asked the barmaid.  "I sell semen", he said; a real show-stopper.  The barmaid, who is a nice (ish) young lady, was nearly lost for words.  "What, you're a donor?"  Someone tried to help her out: "sounds like a lot of bull to me" they said.  The barmaid then wanted to know if the bull enjoyed donating, but she was howled down: a bit too close to home, that one.