In a Dear Green Place

This trip has gone very easily…until today. I’m now in Glasgow, drying my backpack out after an unfortunate encounter with a jar of jam.

I left Minneapolis last Thursday and a couple flights and a day later I was in London. One weird thing about the trip over. On the first leg of my flight there was a guy just ahead of me playing a movie that totally fixated me. It was some sort of adventure film, kind of like Lord of the Rings from what I could tell without any sound. What made me do a double-take was that all the characters were puppets, marionettes with strings all over the place. I do not like dolls so this was freaky to watch. Not hugely freaky like Dark Crystal beetle puppets freaky but still really weird. I was disturbed and absorbed at the same time. Any one heard of a movie like this?? I’m hoping that the weirdness factor will go down if I can watch the movie all the way through with sound so I know what the heck is going on like when my best friend Tracy bought me a copy of the Cat Returns, a weird Japanese cartoon about some girl getting carried off to cat land. Watching it with sound made it a whole lot less weird than the first time we saw it which was on the screen which First Ave in Minneapolis puts down in front of the stage before the bands play and all we had were subtitles. Maybe it was less weird because we knew the actors who did the voices and that was comforting. Anyway, if anyone knows about freaky marionette adventure movies, let me know.

After landing in London I stayed the weekend with my good friend Mel whom I met in France while on my mission. I saw her a few years ago shortly after she was married and now she has two kids, Jacob is 2 and his little sister Susanna is 2 months old. It’s just weird. She makes me feel really young now even though we’re about the same age. People with spouses, kids and a mortgage feel like real grown-ups whereas I just play one (most of the time). We spent the weekend running around to parks with the kids, playing in their back garden and stuff like that. We all went to Windsor on the Saturday and we saw the castle and the changing of the guard but the highlight was watching Jacob watch the swan and geese on the Thames. He was so excited which was incredibly charming as only two year olds can be and the adults all wondered when we had lost our zest for life.

I left their place early Monday morning and took the Tube into London. I hate, hate, hate trying to get around London with luggage, especially this time when I was trying to drag my worldly possessions for the next year up the stairs out of the Tube station. Luckily I pack pretty light and people were very helpful and patient. Plus I was going into town just after the morning rush so it wasn’t too busy.

The train ride up to Glasgow was a pleasure and in just 4 or 5 hours I arrived. The helpful people at the University brought me to my housing and I spent the rest of the day unpacking. I hadn’t eaten much that day but I had too little energy to try and find food that night. I woke up sore from dragging my luggage around and starving. I found a cool little shop for breakfast and then a bank and everything was going swimmingly.

Now, anyone who knows me knows what a huge klutz I am. In the last year and a half I’ve severely sprained both my ankles and there wasn’t a city that I served in while in France where I didn’t not fall on my face. I should’ve known that this trip was going too smoothly. Getting stung by nettles retrieving Jacob’s ball a few days ago doesn’t count as klutzy does it?

Anyway, today three of the girls on my floor and I decided to find the closet supermarket and get groceries. After a thirty or forty minute walk we found Iceland. During my mission and my last stint of study abroad I got groceries by cramming them into my backpack. At the checkout today I was doing the same thing and I was so pleased that I hadn’t overdone it and it looked like everything would fit. Then my pack fell to the floor as I was paying and not keeping a hand on the bag and I heard a crunch. Please don’t be broken, please don’t be broken….no such luck. I inaugurated my stay here in Glasgow and my pack much like a new ship is named, only instead of champagne on the prow of an easily-washable boat I did it by breaking a glass jar of black currant jam all over the bottom. Not only was it klutzy but it was also wonderfully public humiliation. My lovely cashier helped me get all the glass and most of the jam out (and this bottle was not just a little bit broken) and then took me and my bag to the back room to wash it out completely.

If you are ever in the West End of Glasgow and you need groceries, may I suggest Iceland on Byres Road? If Jenny is working get in her line. Wonderful customer service plus she soothed my klutzy feeling by telling me about the time she was working and broke a bunch of wine bottles. We’re kindred spirits now.

I walked home with a wet bag and wet trousers from wearing a wet bag but all in all it could’ve been much worse. It could’ve been the eggs or the spaghetti sauce. I feel like I have really arrived now that I’ve made a complete fool of myself in a public place. Two lessons learned: Always pack breakable things in a plastic bag even if you want to save the environment from one more plastic bag. Two: If a backpack is already on the ground while being loaded it cannot fall to the ground and break something. Welcome to Glasgow!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 at 9:15 am and is filed under Glasgow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.