Encounters
I’m always watching
people. On our recent trip to Scotland,
I had occasion to observe people from a whole different culture and
society. What follows is a brief
description of those unique souls who caught my eye.
Waiter at Bella
Italia
On our first night in Glasgow, Jackie and I were tired, but
we were also so very hungry. We had
arrived in the city around 3:30.
Immediately, we went out and tour George Square. By 7:30, we were ready for a meal, so we took
off in search of a restaurant.
Eventually, after much walking and thinking and looking, we settled on
Bella Italia. This is a chain restaurant
that has a cozy atmosphere and solid food.
We were greeted by a friendly young gentleman who took a
keen interest in us. Then again, he
seemed to be striking up conversations with all of the diners. While we didn’t
catch his name, the waiter was a young, stocky man with a neatly trimmed beard.
He looked the part of waiter and acted with an air of authority. On one of his rounds, he stopped and pointed
at my VT sweatshirt and asked me what my “pro team” is. I honestly wasn’t sure what he was talking
about.
He continued that he wanted to know which NFL football team
I rooted for since I was a Virginia Tech person. You don’t find many Scots who like the NFL,
but this guy was for real. He knew
everything about every team. When I told
him that most people in our area like the Redskins or Panthers, he was
quiet. Then he told me that his team is
the NY Giants.
I explained that they were one of my favorites as well. We got deeper into conversation. He knew everything about the Giants and was a
huge Eli Manning fan. At some point I
dropped the family NY Giants story on him…the one about my Uncle Pete’s
brother, Ed Danowski. Ed was the
starting QB for the Giants back in the 1930’s and early 40’s. I told the Scot about “The Tennis Shoe Game
in 1934” and was shocked that he knew the story of that game. This guy was amazing. He was a walking encyclopedia of NFL
knowledge. Something you just don’t
expect in Glasgow, Scotland.
Dennis at Bosville
Dennis greeted us at the Bosville Hotel in Portree. Portree is located on Isle of Skye and is a
lovely small village. Charm drips from
every building in town and the buildings seem to melt into the stunning
landscape.
Dennis, a short, powerfully built man with a square jaw and
outgoing personality, was very kind to us and helped solve a small booking
issue. Basically, the hotel thought that just two of us were coming. When Dennis saw me drag in three suitcases,
he panicked for a moment, and then he went on a hunt and secured “the family
suite” for us. It was a lovely room,
freshly remodeled. Dennis hoisted a 50 pound suitcase
upon his shoulders and lugged it up the three flights of narrow stairs to the
room. He smiled and made small talk with
us as we settled in, then left us alone.
Later that day, I bopped into the hotel bar after our walk
around the village and surrounding countryside.
Dennis was there behind bar serving drinks to local patrons. We chatted for a bit about our walk, and he
was genuinely interested.
That evening, Dennis was filling drink orders in the hotel
restaurant. He was moving fast and
furiously trying to keep up with everyone’s orders.
I left Portree and Bosville Hotel impressed with
Dennis. A hard-working man, Dennis
seemed grounded and truly interested in the people he encountered. This is a great quality for a hotel host.
The CIA Agent
Dinner at the Bosville Hotel was quite delicious for
me. I had a beef pie which was something
akin to beef stew…but much, much better.
The beef was so tender. Callan
had a lemon chicken dish that was okay.
Jackie had a horrid penne pasta dish with “vegetables.” Both of the vegetables were excellent, but
the pasta was sterile and the sauce was bland.
While we sat and dutifully ate our meal, our own
conversation quieted as we became more involved in listening to the
conversation going on at the table next to ours. I’m sure everyone’s done this before. The people at the next table were engrossed
in a major conversation, oblivious to how loud they were. So we just listened in.
There were two couples at the table. One of them was an American couple with the
lady a native of Scotland who had married her dream-boat American CIA
AGENT. He was an older gentleman with
gray John Duffey hair (Duffey- was the front man and mandolin player for The
Seldom Scene) complete with long, fat sideburns. This ex-CIA Agent was
hilarious. He and his wife kept bringing
up their life in America while he was serving in the CIA. He har-har-harred about restaurants, parts of
Virginia, and office SNAFU’s. He sounded
like some cowboy telling stories about the taming of the West. They mentioned
the Langley site, a stone’s throw from where my wife grew up, and were telling
stories about times back then. All I
could think was that if he kept secrets back then like he talked now, then
every cover he was under would have been blown.
Justin Bieber
Actually, there was more than one. Apparently, it’s normal for rich English
school children to travel by train by themselves for months at a time.
We boarded a Scotrail train in Kyle of Lochalsh. Also in Kyle of Lochalsh is a popular Teen
Hostel. We found our reserved seats on
the train and were soon joined by a hoard of young people all about 14 years
old, both girls and boys. They plopped
down in a group of seats immediately adjacent to our seats and began a loud and
boisterous card party.
One boy, the smallest of the lot who looked a little like a
cocky, tiny Justin Bieber, seemed to need to be louder than the rest, perhaps
to ensure that he wasn’t left out by the more pubescent teens. He was a short skinny kid with mop hair and
devilish smirk. He was LOUD and
RUDE. He’d shout, spit, make farting
sounds, loudly eat “sammiches”, taunt the girls, litter, and generally annoy
everyone on the train. Every now and
then, one of the girls would tell him to stop, but he would persist, and they
sort of seemed to like his antics.
About an hour out of Inverness, Justin and his friends were
forced to move far away from us when the rightful owners of the seats claimed
them at one of the remote train stops along the way. The rest of our journey on that leg was
peaceful…
Bad Asses
…then came the “Bad Asses.”
These four boys were Mother Fuckers. They’d likely tell you that themselves.
We had to switch trains at Perth to catch the Edinburgh
train, our last of three train legs. We rushed
to make it and hopped on the nearest train car, much to our misfortune. After
stowing our suitcases, we plopped into the first four-person seating area we
could find. This happened to be right
across the aisle from the four bad asses.
Over the next hour, we learned all about them. They were teens who had traveled to Dundee on
a Perth ticket, effectively screwing Scotrail out of extra fare. They were well-pleased by their successful
deception. They were also well-pleased
with their own homosexual tendencies.
Over the hour, they spat at each other, smelled each others’
arm-pits, cursed, talked about knocking girls up and abortions, wiped
shit-covered fingers on each other, told foul jokes, and leered at us. They reminded me more than a little of Alex
and his gang of “Droogs” in A Clockwork Orange.
In short, we could see nothing redeeming about their
existence on Earth. In fact, I felt as
though I could take all four of them on and beat them to a pulp. My wife, however, held me back. But when one of them attempted to wipe snot
on his seat-mate, his seat-mate bolted from his seat and crashed into my
wife. She immediately glared at them and
said loudly, “REALLY??” There were other words, but the boys just
laughed.
Her glare must have had some effect, however. A few minutes later, the gang got up and
moved to the exit area. There they
awaited the next stop. It was there that
we over-heard their pimply leader say, (akin to Beavis from “Beavis and
Butthead”) “We’re just a bunch of bad asses.” [heh, heh].
When the train pulled into the station, they hopped off with
their bicycles and pedaled away.
Bertie
Edinburgh is a city of spirits. Bertie is the purveyor of such delights. We had spent a whole day wandering the
ancient, haunted city of Edinburgh when we came upon the whisky shoppe. Bertie was inside and welcomed us into the tight
aisles of fine whiskies. At her table,
she was serving up tastes of The Ben Raich12, a moderately priced whisky from
Scotland. I engaged her in a
conversation, and she proved as smooth a salesperson as her whisky was smooth.
Bertie was a short, stocky lady of an age somewhat older than
young and younger than old. Her hair was
short-cropped and her face was rounded with smiling eyes.
After her initial courting, we ambled out and along. Later, after great reflection, we came back
to the store and found Bertie. She was
pleased we had come back and immediately sold us a bottle of Ben Raich. Then she helped my wife assemble a sampler of
fine whiskies for her friends. As I
checked out, I mentioned to the cashier that Bertie was awesome, and he said,
“We treasure Bertie.”
Pushy Lady and Her Daughter
Just below The Castle in Edinburgh is a lovely textile
mill. In it, you can watch craftsmen
make tartan blankets, scarves, and kilts from scratch. The mill is quite an exciting place and
filled with excellent buys.
As we were shopping inside the mill, Jackie and Callan
happened upon a rack of woolen blankets.
So they stopped and began looking through the various designs. Without
warning, their shopping bliss was interrupted by a Spanish speaking lady dressed
in her too tight pants with stylish boots and with her pancake make-up
disguising her witch-like face along with her teen-aged daughter in tow. They busted right in and shoved Jackie and
Callan out of the way without so much as an “excuse me” or begging a
pardon. All we could do was simply
stare, dumbfounded, at the two bold ladies.
It was quite obvious that the son (I assume he was the lady’s son) was
highly embarrassed by his mother and sister.
We grumbled a bit, but then moved on with our life. After all, we had much more city to explore.
About an hour later, we had moved several blocks away and
were standing in line to order lunch at the famous Elephant House. This restaurant is the home of J.K.
Rowling. It’s where she wrote the Harry
Potter series. She was a struggling
writer who couldn’t afford heat in her apartments, so she would come to The
Elephant House, buy a pot of tea and sit all day writing her masterpiece.
These days, The Elephant House is a Potter destination, plus
they serve excellent baked potatoes dishes.
So there we were in line for about ten minutes when who
should appear at the door? Yup, the rude
Spanish lady, her daughter and son.
Immediately, the two ladies busted in line right in front of us-no
kidding! We were amazed at their audacity and our
misfortune of having to meet these weird people again in such a large city.
After a couple of minutes of enduring our icy glares, the
son got the hint and ushered his sister and mother in line behind us.
It took another ten minutes to wade through the line to the
front to place our order and the whole time the pushy broad kept banging and
poking Callan and me. Callan eventually
had enough and went to our table to sit with Jackie. I manned the space and fought off the lady’s
physical assaults. At one point, she
speared me in the ribs with her finger.
I quickly turned and said, “Yes?”
in a strong voice. She stammered
an apology and backed off a bit after that.
Lucky for us, they placed their order and moved to a
different part of the restaurant, and we never saw them again.
Leia
She made her appearance in our lives at the bus station in
Edinburgh. A 6’2” transsexual in heels,
bobby socks, and delicate pastel knee-length skirt with a small white shawl. Her
speckled gray, stringy, and unkept hair ran down to her shoulders and needed to
be whipped away from her hooked nose and stubble-covered face. She strode up and down the bus station corridors,
moving here and there with singular purpose, one that wasn’t readily apparent
to the casual observer. Little did we
suspect that she would share our bus and sit right behind us.
As was usual, I was ceding to my more obsessive side and was
watching the departure clock very carefully every ten seconds or so. Like other passengers, we were awaiting the
signal from the bus driver to board the bus.
It appeared that she wasn’t quite ready, so we were like patient sheep
and waited. That’s when the transsexual
in heels came striding to our gate and pranced purposefully right up to the bus
and boarded it. A decisive and bold
move. One that made everyone’s jaws
drop. Surely, the bus driver would deny
her admission for such a breach of queue etiquette. Once she got on, we all got up and headed for
the bus. Our long-striding leader had
shown us the way.
I sat by myself in the row in front of the strange lady when
my wife, daughter, and I got on the bus.
The lady sat alone as well. Since
we were traveling at rush hour back to Glasgow, the bus began to fill up stop
after stop. Soon a person sat beside me
and all the other seats filled up except the one next to the transsexual. No one wanted to sit there. It was too risky, too scary, too weird.
Finally, a passenger joined the bus just outside of
Edinburgh, and she had no seat left except beside HER. I could see her look of discomfort when she
realized her lot. But to her credit, she
troopered on and plopped herself down in the only seat available.
I immediately learned that the transsexual’s name was Leia
when she introduced herself to her seat-mate.
Her seat-mate politely introduced herself as Jackie. That was the beginning of an hour-long conversation
between the two of them about everything.
At first, Jackie was reluctant to talk. But Leia persisted. She talked about the weather at first. The she asked some questions about Jackie,
and listened carefully to her quiet answers.
Jackie was a single mother whose husband had left her with a child. Leia was compassionate and caring and soon
Jackie opened up some more and began asking Leia questions.
I learned that Leia was so very fond of her mother and tried
to emulate her. Her mother had passed
away three years ago and Leia was still heart-broken. Several times, she brought up her
mother. Leia told about her addictions
and how she beat drugs and alcohol, how she came to realize who she needed to
be, and how she bolstered the courage to just do it-to just accept that she was
a she and not a he.
She said that many people made fun of her, but Leia was
undeterred. She realized that humor
could overcome any adversity. She lived
by one rule, to try to invest herself in every minute of every day. She believed in living each moment to its
fullest, even on a bus. That’s why, she
said, that she enjoyed “…getting to know complete strangers like you, Jackie.
Because after you get to know someone, they’re no longer a stranger, and they
are your friend forever.”
Leia’s take on life was refreshing. She talked about her mother and her
supportive brother. She talked of
moments in time and places she had visited, including the USA. She had strong opinions, but had honed a very
successful personal philosophy, one that emboldened her and allowed her to
succeed in a skeptical world.
“Jackie, let me tell you something if I may… Jackie, I’ve
discovered that you have to be able to laugh in life. My Mum taught me that, and I know she’s
looking down on me now and smiling.”
“I’m sure your mother is proud of you, Leia,” said
Jackie.
An hour before, they were strangers. When they left that bus, they were friends
for life. I feel fortunate that I was
able to listen in and experience something very special on that bus ride.
