It is a beautiful day, and fairly warm. Spring is most decidely sprung. Minneapolis is at the same latitude as Bordeaux, but, of course, a thousand miles from the ocean, so it can spring a few weather surprises.
There is a park opposite, and, in the American way, it is 18-20 square miles. Here you have to drive somewhere to go for a walk. But a short walk allows me to indulge a favourite childhood passion, throwing stones into ponds. I'm very civilised about it now, and only throw small pebbles, being careful not to disturb the wildlife: not when anyone is looking, anyway. When I was very small, I would drag the largest rocks I could, and nearly go in with them in the final heave. A bit of harmless recidivism is good for a chap.
Suitably fortified, I start to size up the packing problem. As well as the old camera and computer I lost in Philadelphia, I also lost, more importantly, it turns out now, the bag they were in. I'm fairly sure that, no matter how brutal I am at disposal, I will have to replace it.
So I took myself off to the local shopping mecca, a giant mall much like Bluewater. But where you might have expected them to call it "Blooomington Mall" or "Minneapolis Mall", or ,even in a frenzy of hubris "Minnesota Mall", they chose to call it "Mall of America": no hidding behind bushels there. The road signs tend, rather diffidently, to the more prosaic "MOA". They could open a cheap one for the lower classes and call it "MOAB" (that's a rather obscure biblical joke).
They claim people fly in to the nearby airport just to shop: from as far as Europe and Asia. Bluewater was pleased when it got a rail station. Typical parochialism: it should have been aiming for an airport.
To my way of thinking, it's just expensive shops and mooching children. I look at the immense, expensively-finished fabric of it, and wonder how all that could have been paid for. I managed to find a bag. But I couldn't find a pond to throw a rock in.
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1 comment:
I know you have been away from London for some time and may have missed out on the latest developments in the long-running saga of the debate on the third runway at Heathrow.
The Mayor (remember Boris?) would like a new airport in the Thames Estuary. With some judicious planning he might be able to arrange Bluewater to be the terminal building and save all the trouble of providing duty free shops to occupy our time as we wait for non-flying, strike-bound, BA aeroplanes this Easter! (Oh yes, another piece of news you may not be aware of)
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