yonmei

07:47 am: Montreal, Day Two
Well, I was going to write about eating the most delicious cheese-and-tomato buckwheat crepe for my tea, with freshly-squeezed orange juice, and strolling around St Louis Park looking at the houses that look on to it, and down a pedestrianised street of restaurants and buskers and fountains and giant pink fish art swimming across walls, with a North American-sized scoop of Reeses peanut-butter-and-chocolate icecream, but it's nearly breakfast time, I'm not going to be late, so I guess you will just have to imagine it.

There are pics on Photobucket: Around Montreal: Aug 5





Tags: ice-cream, montreal, photos

02:42 pm: Plockton is pretty
We had a long trip up by car, with stops in Perth (to collect wedding favours), in Dalwhinnie (which is twinned with Las Vegas, according to the sign at the pub where we stopped - where we had a very nice lunch, but saw no gamblers or white tigers), and in someplace I don't remember the name of because for two hours of winding hilly road I was feeling increasingly carsick and I didn't care where we were, or indeed appreciate how lovely the castle was, until I had breathed some fresh air and had a cup of tea and a cheese scone. But on the way out of the castle tea shop, I looked out over the sea loch at the castle and the hills and said in a bemused voice to the woman next to me, "It really is lovely, isn't it?" feeling a bit like Tommy Lee Jones in MiB where he confesses to Will Smith that the stars are beautiful, though he hasn't looked at them in years. Anyway. We got to Plockton and checked in and I found I had a room to myself (which I hadn't been sure about, because when they were booking us in January, I'd been asked if I minded sharing and of course I'd said No) and a nice bathroom just a few steps away, and a complimentary towelling dressing-gown to take those few steps.

So I wandered around Plockton, which is tiny and pretty, for an hour or so, and then came back to our hotel and we all had dinner*, which was lovely. My friends' friends are also lovely: it's very nice to meet them all. (I admitted to two separate people who asked, since everyone else present was thespian to some degree or another, that my sole connection with the stage was the O-Level Drama I did back when I was 15, and the drama group I belonged to for a year after that: I had met RiK when we were both in the same gay youth group, in 1984. Nobody seems to be prejudiced against non-thespians, though, which is nice.)

A sound night's sleep, followed by a lovely breakfast** - the food here is glorious, a focus on seafood, but there are enough vegetarian options to keep me happy for a longer stay! - and another wander round Plockton in the rain. I'd discovered this morning I could get online via the Plockton Inn's wifi, though T-Mobile has let me down. Then I went back to my room, packed up the half-bottle of wine I'd bought last night and not nearly finished, went down to the fish bar and ordered a vegeburger and chips, and took this and my wine up to a bench overlooking the sea and the houses, and ate and drank wine and admired the view and read The Guardian, and it was really very perfect. (The friends are lovely, but one can have too much togetherness, you know.) It's five past three. Time for another half hour or so wandering Plockton and taking more photos, then I need to come back here and dress for the ceremony.

I am very disappointed to hear that the Californian Supreme Court has decided that a majority vote in California can take a civil right away from the minority - I mean of course the freedom to marry, which has been established in the US as a civil right necessary to the orderly pursuit of happiness since 1967. I'm very glad and relieved, though, that they didn't decide to forcibly divorce the thousands of couples who had got married - and hope things will change for the better by 2010, if not before.

But I'd like to promote to your attention a petition to the UK Government (and ask you to sign it, if you're a UK citizen) to amend the Civil Partnership Act so that same-sex couples who want to register their partnership at a religious ceremony can do so.

*Grilled vegetables in pitta bread, followed by vegetarian haggis with clapshot (mashed neeps and tatties) and followed by Crannachan ice-cream. I'd ordered a bottle of very nice Merlot, thinking I'd share, but everyone else at my table was on gin-and-tonics or beer.

**Muesli with dried fruit salad, orange juice, coffee, brown toast, scrambled eggs which tasted like the eggs had been laid this morning, baked beans and a grilled tomato, more coffee, oatcakes.




Tags: being queer, breakfast is a good meal, eating some delicious food, evil american politics, ice-cream, just my life really, seeing friends, travel, wine

07:01 pm: Pineapple sorbet, Sun King, and yew trees
I spent most of the morning waiting for the man to test the boiler, and trying to do some work for work, neither of which is a good state to be in.

But, then the man confirmed my boiler is in good health, and I did the work I'd planned to do, and I bought fruit (and sweet potatoes) at the community centre co-op, and at last I could fulfil my long-held plans (at least since Sunday, when eileenlufkin suggested it) to visit Luca's, the one in Morningside as nearer, and buy a flavour of ice-cream I had not tasted before.

Luca's in Musselburgh has a whole array of ice-creams and sorbets, and a full-scale cafe: the one in Morningside has only six, and while it does have a cafe, it is upstairs, from which alarming noises were coming like a large number of children being tortured being fed lots of sugary treats to make them hyper.

So I stayed downstairs, and made a choice between Idgie-Widgie Toffee Fudge, Pineapple Sorbet, and Irn-Bru Sorbet.

I didn't think I could say the first without giggling, and I didn't think I could eat sorbet made in Scotland from girders without throwing up, so that really left only the pineapple, which, while nice enough (I had a single scoop and a cup of coffee, since I'd nearly fallen asleep on the bus) was nothing to write home about. Maybe I will have to go out to Musselburgh, after all. Unless there's not much of a queue and some unusual flavours at the Ben'n'Jerry's in the cinema this evening?

Afterwards I browsed through the charity shops of Morningside looking for pint glasses (having broken my last one Sunday) and a lidded pan for rice etc (which I did not find) and finding a marvellous copy of Nancy Mitford's life of The Sun King, hardback, with lots of colour plates, priced at 69 shillings, for sale in the charity shop at £3. How could I resist? I didn't. I read a large part of the building of Versailles and the ditching of La Valliere, while eating a very nice late lunch at the Yellow Cafe. (A grilled wholemeal baguette, with roasted vegetables and hummus, plus chips with brown sauce, plus a reasonably nice salad, all for £5.) Afterwards, I got my new library card - I'd lost my old one, ages ago, but kept forgetting to bring a recent bill with my name and address on it out with me when I knew I'd be passing an open library. Morningside Library used to be my idea of what libraries were, though it's changed substantially since I used to go there from Bruntsfield Place with my three library tickets, and my brother's and my sister's. Nowadays instead of three small cardboard tickets apiece, each one good for one book, so that even borrowing my sister's and brother's I could only get 9, one small plastic card does for 12. But the building is still the same.

And then I walked to the Commonwealth Pool, and went swimming. On the way there, I passed by where I used to live between 1981 and 1986 - my parents sold it some time in 1987 - and stopped to take photos of the house and the yew trees. It's been 22 years, probably, since I stood underneath the arch the yew trees make to either side of the gate, but they seemed just the same. Yew trees can live to be 5000 years old, though these are just babies - they can't be much more than 120 years old, because that street isn't much older than 1890. Anyway. I don't think yew trees really notice anything that lasts less than a decade, but I said hello.

Now I hope to get to the cinema to see Wolverine, but Bob is sitting on my lap being all purry at me.





Tags: bob, ice-cream, just my life really, swimming