Last week I came back from a holiday in Seattle, and I
brought various souvenirs with me including biscuits, a coffee maker, light green cotton-paper bookmarks (with pictures of presidents on them), and an expensive
pocket knife. My least favourite were sleep deprivation, jet-lag, and a
laundry-and-ironing backlog the like of which I haven't seen since the great
washing machine failure of 2012.
My favourite three souvenirs all weigh less than a gram,
they are two business cards and a tiny quantity of gold. The gold was mined in
the Klondike using traditional methods. I didn't know it but Seattle was a
travel and supply hub during the gold rush. There was probably nowhere better
to be if you were a turn of the century husky-dog-chandler or
mining-equipment-baron.
Every tourist attraction and waiting room that we stepped
into had a little rack of leaflets and business cards advertising other tourist
attractions. In one of these racks my friend found for me a card that didn't
advertise an attraction, but the business that supplies the racks and leaflets.
The other business card belongs to a pretty harpist with
whom I went out on a couple of dates. No I didn't get to pluck her strings. Yes
we are keeping in contact - by letter. Yes she reads this blog. No it doesn't
seem to have put her off.
Richard "pen-friends-without-benefits" B
Actually, that's not STRICTLY accurate about the strings... (House of the Rising Sun). ;)
ReplyDelete"Anonymous" above seems to know a lot about our first date. I assume it is the harpist's cat. I ended up back at her apartment and tried to work out how to play "House of the Rising Sun" on a lever harp. Things went no further than that.
ReplyDeleteIn the article "pluck her strings" was supposed to be a euphemism. To be clear: I did finger her instrument, I didn't finger her .....instrument.