My last night on Islay brought a doozy of a storm. I wouldn’t have minded being stranded another day but the next morning, ferries were running. However they were only running from Port Askaig, which is more sheltered than Port Ellen. We were taxied up the high road and rushed unceremoniously onto the car deck of the ferry just before it moved out into the Sound of Islay. By then it was a beautiful warm day with clouds and blue sky but the wind was still strong.

I got a cappuchino on the ferry.

“Did you want chocolate with that?”

I couldn’t think what he was asking. Did he mean chocolate covered espresso beans like in Seattle or did he mean a Cadbury flake?

“Chocolate, “I repeated. “Where would I put it?” (It was chocolate; why did I care where he put it?)

“Where do you think?” The Scottish, I notice, can be blunt like that.

I sized him up. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe a drip into my veins?”

He laughed. “Maybe in five years” and sprinkled chocolate powder on the coffee.

I was truly sad to leave Islay. I loved the wild and stark look, the feel of an island, the scent of the sea, the friendliness of strangers and the warmth of the people I had met, especially the wild and magical Rachel; and Margaret and Harold at The Grange.

Glasgow replaced the wind in my face with a batting around of people but I had come back to a little corner of the city that felt familiar. When I arrived in Glasgow a week earlier after nine hours on the plane and five on the train, I felt dazed. At Glasgow Central, a policeman had set me in the right direction to my hotel, which was just around the corner on Argyle St, a few blocks from the Clyde. I walked down to the Clyde after getting settled and crossed the river on a foot bridge, the Tradeston Bridge. That was the extent of my adventures in that first 24 hours of travel.

In Glasgow Central

Breakfast the first morning was at “sex-thairty” and it was a country house spread: a row of covered hot dishes and islands for fruit, cereal and bread. A compote of berries was called Forest Fruits, which tickled my imagination. Were they picked by piskies?

As I ate I watched a woman with whom I had ridden the elevator and who was ahead of me in the breakfast room: a gratuitously rude person who sighed with Weltschmerz when the hostess asked her for her room number. She signaled how put upon she was by tossing her head and saying, “I don’t know. Three something.” To heap insult upon her, the hostess asked for her name and finally located her on the list of guests who had paid for breakfast. The hostess and I had a gossip about her after she swanned into the breakfast room.

Arriving in back in Glasgow after the week on Islay I taxied from Buchanan Street Station to the same hotel around the corner from Glasgow Central on Argyle St. To stretch my legs, I walked the opposite direction from the River Clyde. I found a little loop called the Argyle Arcade, which was shop after shop of jewelry, each window glittering like a million stars. The shopkeepers were all in severe black and looked like they might possibly be armed.

I carried on past the public library where someone had put traffic cones on a statue of Wellington and his horse. A group of Japanese girls were giggling and taking pictures. At George Square, I turned back and turned in early for the night.

Wellington with Traffic Cones

I pulled my suitcase over to Glasgow Central early the next morning, the better to partake of anything on offer in the first class lounge. The first class Brit-rail pass that one can get in the states is ridiculously inexpensive and is worth all the perks, one being all the free food, drink and comfort in the lounges. I hit the jackpot in Glasgow: a huge bowl of little gluten free Bakewell tarts, which were yummy in the extreme. Every time I went by them (for a coffee, fruit, water, a paper, the toilets) I stuffed a few more into my pockets. I savored them for the rest of the trip and still had five when I landed in Seattle two weeks later.

In the train in first class, one has already paid for everything that is offered. The tea trolley rolls down the aisle regularly and on long trips like Glasgow to London there’s a meal served. I luxuriated in the comfort and the space and peace at least until Lancaster when a ghastly couple with whacking great colds sat down across the aisle from me and hacked all the way to London. I thought, So help me, if I catch your cold, I will hunt you down like dogs.

Using the loo on the train is always interesting. The first class loo is as big as a walk-in closet whereas in other cars there’s hardly room to sit down. It’s also as complicated as a Smart TV with buttons here and vocal instructions there. I lurched into one with ear-buds in, listening to a playlist I had collected. I didn’t quite get the door shut properly. Over the music, a strident American accent shrilled “Door did not shut, door did not shut!!!” I fumbled with a button. “Door did not lock, door did not lock!!!!” I pushed the button harder. “Door is locked, door is locked!!!” The drums of Verdi’s “Dies Irae” had started and I found myself staring at the toilet, which was purple. A garish purple. The strident voice, the “Dies Irae,” the train rocking, a purple toilet, just a bit surreal.

In London, I bussed from Euston to Paddington and to my home away from home, the Paddington lounge, familiar to me because the west country trains leave from Paddington station and the west country is where I always go sooner or later because my cousins are there. I helped myself to a handful of GF Flapjacks baked by Mr. T.G. Pullins bakery in Yatton, Somerset; I came home to Seattle with several of them still in my possession. I also pinched biscuits for my cousins, Wendy and Sue, who I would see in a few hours. The three of us would embark on a new adventure.