England and Scotland for Dad's 70th
Day 13 - Tuesday - Scotland/England
Got up and continued daunting task of packing
delicate sea shells with
shell smashing jam jar, and slipping extra stuff into Dad's suitcase
whenever possible.
Our last breakfast with Rod and Rhona, and Rod gets
ready to leave for
work. He's exchanged his bicycle since my last visit for a
motorbike (unsolicitedly telling me more than once I can't ride it), so
instead of putting little ties around his pant legs to keep them from
catching in the bike spokes, he's decked out in leather jacket and
motorcycle helmet. Quick hugs and he's off. Several hugs
with Rhona, from inside the house to the bus stop where's she's dropped
us off on her way to work (and thank goodness, because the suitcases
are heavy -- we'll never make it to Victoria Station in the morning
with
the ones we left in London). We get off the bus at the Burns
Monument and cross to the train station, where I buy up our picnic
lunch for the day-long ride on the train (egg mayonnaise sandwiches,
chicken sandwiches, Cadbury chocolates, boxes of Ribena blackcurrant
juice) and check out the magazine covers (Hey! R.E.M.'s Pete Buck
on MoJo!). More sitting
and staring at the train sign, a bit of a
wait, one more duck into a trendier shop for some take-away
scones. Then time to get on the train.
And what a pain!
Even though we bought our tickets in advance, we
didn't get reserved seats, so we pass several cars packed with
"Reserved" cards on the seats. We finally find a pair unmarked,
and park there for the duration of the trip. Again we have to
travel the long westward way to Birmingham, but not change trains, I
think. Then Dad asks the very nice Scottish ticket-clicker guy if
this train will go directly to London, and he looks over our tickets
and pleasantly explains we'll have to change trains but not
stations. Whew! Good call, Dad! I would have ended up
in Brighton (on the south coast, and putting us very late for dinner
with Francesca).
So we ride and ride. I want scones and tea, so
I train-surf
through the cars (smashing into one chap's shoulder and head, nearly
landing in his lap, and he didn't even look up) to the snack car, which
doesn't have scones but will sell me tea. I return to our seats
and get some scones from my scone bag. Dad passes on the tea, but
will have a scone (flashbacking to our starvation ride to
Edinburgh). More riding, a family with two ridiculously giggly
teenage girls sit across from us ("Wot? Eh? Sorry?
Tee-hee-hee! Eh? Wot? Sorry? Tee-hee-hee!") and thankfully
leave a few stops later. We have lunch, more riding, and a
pleasant couple of elderly ladies sit across from us. They chat
with each other, keeping to themselves. Then we hear the
conductor apologize for the delay as we pull into the Manchester
station. Dad and I look at each other, what delay? We
discover our train is nearly 20 minutes late -- we may miss our
connecting train to London. The ladies smile and assure us they
usually hold the major trains when there are delays like this.
They don't. We miss our train by minutes,
maybe moments, but are
happy to hear the next train to London leaves in a half hour, and we
arrive in London a few hours later. I call Francesca from the
station to tell her about our delay (she's cooking dinner), and we tube
it to Sloane Square.
Francesca is all hugs and smiles as we return,
pleased to hear we had a
wonderful time and shocked to hear it was with so little rain (light
drizzles on the way to but not at the Local
Hero beach, bits of light
drizzles in Edinburgh). Before our Scottish expedition, we asked
her if we could take her out to dinner this evening, maybe to the "good
pizza place" she likes (I was certainly curious to find out what an
Italian called good pizza), but she was also a member of the packing
and pre-travel club tonight (first for an overnight business trip in
south England tomorrow, immediately followed by a trip home to Sicily
for her birthday) and wanted to stay in. Besides, she promised to
cook another pasta meal for Dad (their favorite).
So I visited with Francesca in the kitchen while she
put together the
meal, demonstrating the "proper" way Italians cook pasta -- once you've
drained the pasta and prepared the sauce, you put the pasta in the
sauce and continue heating them together (she says Italians would never
put hot sauce over cooling noodles on a plate -- the tastes must blend
together).
After dinner (which was delicious -- penne in sun
dried tomato marinara),
I asked her how her evening with the House of Lords went. She
brightened and said this one was particularly fun! She got into a
terribly interesting conversation with an older man, who invited her to
join him and his friends for dinner -- he was Earl Grey! Don't try any
jokes, he assures her, he's heard them all. What amazed her was
that his family gets nothing from all this tea being made with his
name. Here's the story: some generations ago, a Mandarin
important guy presented an important English guy with a custom blend of
tea as a gift before he returned to England. The English guy
liked it a lot, and wanted to find a tea company to figure out the
recipe and reproduce it for him. His pal, Earl Grey (the
great-grandfather of the one Francesca met, I think -- maybe another
great or two), recommended he
use the tea-makers who made his tea. The recipe was such a hit,
the tea-makers named it after the client who recommended them, rather
than after the man for whom the tea was actually made.
The rest of the evening is spent packing,
re-packing, and chatting away.
England and
Scotland for Dad's 70th
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