Turning up the thermostat to Hell

The start of the new week during Jamie’s visit was a day of rest; Monday’s are good for little else. We did tour the house, finally, considering Jamie had been here 2 days already. We also toured the Duke’s Country Park on a two-hour walk. After a long weekend, some jet lag and a big meal, we resigned to watching the ‘The Jacket’ with Adrian Brody and called it a night.

We met up on Tuesday at Starbucks for a short bit in the early afternoon. I finally dropped up my financial aid stuff to the University—show me the money! I should hear back in a couple weeks, so hopefully by the 25/26 May I’ll have word on my aid package. Tim joined Jamie and I at the Blue Moon for dinner. Wade and Patty, who were in town from Alnwick for a comedy show. And outside of a few verbal faux pas’s, (let’s see, there is a straight man, 2 queers and a lesbian, and at anyone one time, somebody said SOMEthing that could be deemed inappropriate). After dinner we joined some Scottish friends, Neil and Stuart, at the Street. We hadn’t seen them in a few months, and they opened with a story about their recent trip to Miami Beach. Apparently, after drinking a bottle of gin on the plane ride over, with no sleep, made their way to what appeared to be a low key bar, and had some drinks. Now, these guys thought it would be fun to wear their kilts out, so they ran back to their hotel, changed, and returned to the bar. Upon their return, they discovered it was more than one bar! Turns out, the other half of the bar was quite a hopping gay club—naturally, they fielded a great deal of attention, 2 Scots in kilts at a gay bar-- but after Stuart took too long to return from the toilet (because he met up with a new mutual friend from the evening and was chatting and a bit lost) a ‘row’ ensued. This led to them going back to the hotel. Their room was fairly close to the reception desk, and they received one or two or three calls to be quiet. Well, it was quite early in the morning, and the police were called and knocked on the door to find them, still too loud, still in kilts. The police were apparently quite rude and swore at the two of them. Stuart was very upset by this, but the police didn’t seem to care. To solve the matter, they made Neil get a different room, in a different hotel! Wow. But, it obviously worked itself out and we all had a good laugh about it. It was off to CC’s to meet back up with Wade and Patty, and too many drinks and dance songs to count later, we made our way back to Dalkeith.

Our bike trip to the North Sea took us through the Duke’s Park and passed the village of White Craig into the city of Musselburgh. The trip is an easy one to make. You just have to follow the stone wall of the estate or the River Esk, and you will eventually arrive. It was a warm day, but not warm enough to leave the jumper at home. We took pictures of us with Arthur’s Seat in the background and then sat and read our books for a wee bit.
John and Mary joined us on Thursday for our overnight trip to Alnwick. We took both our wee cars and stopped at Craster along the way for lunch and pint at the Jolly Fisherman. The views and feel of this little village are stunning and always remind me of my first trip to the UK 3 years ago, because it was one of the first places that I had visited. It always provides me a bit of displaced nostalgia when I visit. Tim drove us all to an overlook of the moors and we shared a couple bottles of wine. The haze of the midday was blowing off and providing a crisp view of Northumberland—pastures, sheep, rolling hills and tiny hamlets as far as the eye could see.
We joined up with Wade and Patty for dinner at Benvenido’s. It was a bit sad, because we found out that the restaurant is closing, permanently, and our meal that night would be our last at the quaint establishment. We patronized a hotel—one that has a replica of the dining room of the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic--called the White Swan. Or, White Dragon, White Mouse, White Horse, White Rose or even the White Rat—all names Jamie came up with; because for the life of him, he couldn’t remember the name of place we were in! Oh Jamie, he’s so pretty.

We took in the hike and sights of St. Abb’s before returning to Dalkeith the next day. A quiet evening at Sam’s allowed for us to wake up early on Saturday to head out to London for the weekend. With bags on backs and books in hand—Catch 22 for me and Snow for Jamie—we caught the 930am train to London. We arrived at the Kings Cross station and quickly made our way to the tube and eventually the Black Friar terminal. Our hostel was just a block or 2 away. We were fortunate to be staying to so close to the magnificent St. Paul’s Cathedral. However, that also meant we were staying in The City, or financial district, which meant no businesses were open on the weekends—pubs, restaurants or coffee shops!!! Not good. It just meant more walking for us, which was okay too.

We took in many sights just walking along the Thames: Westminster, Piccadily Circus, Big Ben, The Eye of London, Trafalgar Square—what was Trafalgar’s first name? Oh, that’s right, it was a battle. [We’re both pretty!] The bus tour provided us a view of Buckhingham Palace, the London Bridge, the Waterloo Bridge, the walking £40 million Millennium Bridge and lots of history. We did manage to see the show “Stomp” at the Vaudeville Theatre on The Strand. It was amazing! It was a kiosk that we saw a T-Shirt “No one knows I’m a lesbian” that we almost bought for Jamie. It could work—all the gays in the “core group” want Jamie to be gay, and this way he could still like girls ! Anywho, I think it’s a good idea. That T-shirt is still hanging on that rack, at that kiosk on The Long Acre. Our Chinese meal in Chinatown consisted of chicken clubs at the 38 bar—okay, so we were in Chinatown—we were just so hungry (and impatient). We wanted food, and beer. After some Fosters and Kronneberg 1662, it was on the way home and Jamie and I decided that, not only are we “going to hell”, as in, say/do something inappropriate and “yeah, I’m going to hell for that”, god has just started turning up the thermostat, little clicks at a time. Our dinner conversation alone notched up the temperature of hell quite a few degrees. But it was probably the later comments, which were probably spurred by the fact that Jamie was putting AMERICAN pennies into the phone booth change return trays for the homeless (and, lets’ face it, not so homeless and just greedy) folks who walk by and check every phone booth they see, when, upon seeing someone sleeping on the streets, I said, “Wouldn’t it be funny, to wake that person up and scream, ‘Get up! Get up! You’re late for work!’”

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