Hold On to Your Hat: A Series of Odd Occurances

So I wake up Monday morning and I go into the kitchen and the entire kitchen floor is covered in something sticky, the mop is out, and the room smelled faintly of citrus. My flatmate Stephanie comes in looking like she’s going to kill someone and proceeds to tell me that when she woke up this morning and went into the kitchen for a glass of orange juice, she found that the entire kitchen floor was covered in one huge puddle of OJ, (her OJ, by the way). The empty carton is crumpled on the floor in the corner, and looked like it had been squeezed from the middle, squirting the juice everywhere. Steph tried to mop, but unfortunately we don’t have any soap/cleaner so all it did was spread the stickiness evenly across the kitchen and living room floor. My shoes stick to the floor when I go into the kitchen, it was quite yucky. Anyway we have no idea who did it, but our other flatmate Eileen seems to think that one of our flatmates may have let someone in late the night before. Anyway, it is quite a mystery, fortunately the housekeeper came today and it was mop-week, so no more yucky floor.

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s day…I was in Scotland…on St. Patrick’s Day. We are one island over from Ireland, so when I decided that I was going to make corned beef and cabbage for dinner I did not realize it was going to be such a culture-gap situation. I went to two grocery stores and they weren’t even familiar with the term “brisket,” but kindly offered me spam-style cans of corned “beef.” Then I went to the butcher, asked for corned beef brisket, and the girl told me there’s no such thing. She had corned beef (sliced deli style) or brisket, so I decided to just get the brisket and do it with mustard and allspice and herbs de provance, onion, garlic, etc. Granted, I’m no expert on brisket, but this cut of meat that she gave me looks nothing like any brisket I’ve ever seen… As it turns out, corned beef and cabbage is not a real Irish tradition. Americans made it up.

Last night we went to an Irish pub called Waxy O’Connor’s where they were having a giant St. Patrick’s day party with all kinds of free hats and t-shirts and glow-sticks and beach balls. I caught a SWEET hat that I quite enjoyed wearing. It started to get really crowded so we went to another pub called Frankenstein’s which was way more mellow. After that we decided to go to our favorite place in Glasgow, Best Kebab. (Kebabs are like gyros, but we don’t get kebabs there, we usually get chips with cheese…) So we were sitting there eating our chips when this guy came in but did not go up to the counter to order something. I noticed that he was staring at me so at first I ignored him, and then I looked up thinking perhaps we knew each other, and he snatched the hat right off my head and ran out the door! As I had a few pints last night, I did not find it so funny at the time, but this morning I have decided that losing a 25¢ hat was WAY worth this lovely story I get to tell. I haven’t stopped chuckling about all day, what kind of loser steals a hat right off a person’s head…?

Reason to Love It: Afternoon tea at Buchanan Tea Room
Reason to Leave It: Hat-thieving Neds

Cheers,
J