I just got back from a vacation in Scotland and England. Mr. Neville and I both had a couple of… ah, interesting encounters with some of the locals while we were there.
My interesting experience happened when we went to a pub in Edinburgh, where they were playing traditional music. Someone who I think was one of the locals came up to us and talked to us, asking us where we were from, and how we were enjoying our time in Scotland. Pretty standard stuff that we’d been hearing from other people while we were there. He then went back to his drink. The weird part happened when we were leaving the pub. The guy who had been talking to us shook my hand and kissed me on both cheeks as I was leaving.
You should know that I’m not exactly what most people would call attractive. I’m not as young or thin as I used to be, and I wasn’t much to look at even when I was. “Drink 'till she’s beautiful” is a pretty tall order in my case. I was with Mr. Neville the whole time, it had to be obvious that I was with him and probably married to him.
Mr. Neville stayed after I came home, for a conference in Durham. His interesting experience happened after I came home. He was on a train with some women who were very drunk, “some of the drunkest people I’ve ever seen,” as he described them to me. One of them decided that he “absolutely looked like a Bob,” and kept calling him that through the rest of the train trip.
After he got to Durham, he took his bags into the city center looking for some food. He got a sandwich and some crisps, then stood in the doorway of a closed shop to eat them. Some teenage girls came up to him while he was eating, and asked him if he was homeless.
Anyone else have some interesting tourist stories to share?
Meh, it sounds as though in all cases you should ditch the for :). I think the first lot were just being nice to the visiting overseas people, the second lot the same, only more eccentrically and drunkenly, and it’s sort of sweet of the girls who enquired whether your husband, eating sandwiches in a shop doorway, was homeless, as it sounds as though they were concerned and thought they might be able to offer advice or some such. The chap with the cheek kissing and the hand-shaking, well, I’m sure he did know you were with Mr. Neville and therefore knew you would not assume he was trying to pick you up - just a memorable goodbye. See? It was memorable.
It’s never a good trip unless you have encountered a few interesting locals.
I hope you had a great time and were here while it was sunny (it went thundery at the weekend, but now hot again).
Oops, I ought to be able to offer my own tales of interesting encounters but it’s really past my bedtime. Tomorrow, perhaps.
edited to add - just thought - the drunken ladies on the train - perhaps they had wisely decided that “Bob” was a name they would pronounce very easily, such that everyone they met had to be called “Bob” for the sake of simplicity.
The explanation is simple: due to your lack of familiarity with the UK, you attribute these encounters to cultural differences. If all of the above happened at home, you would simply conclude the obvious: you met some drunk people.
Anecdote time: many years ago I went to the Apple Store in London to buy a new Powerbook. I brought a backpack with me to put the computer in, and because I was staying over at my brother’s that night. When I got to my brother’s place he was still at work, so I sat down on some steps to wait for him. A guy came up: “are you homeless?” “No,” I replied, “just waiting for someone.” He walked off. Then came back five minutes later. “Are you sure you’re not homeless?” “Yes, I’m sure, thanks.” Five minutes later he came back again with a leaflet. “Here, just in case - this is a list of the local shelters.”
I was kinda skinny at the time with a shaved head, and I probably wasn’t dressed very well, but I was actually packing £3k of computer in my bag at the time. It was kind of him all the same.
I play handbells in a newbie-friendly group. A few months ago, we had a new person come to rehearsal. He introduced himself and said “no, I’m not homeless”.
OK, hadn’t occurred to me to wonder. Yes, he’s rather heavy, and not especially well-dressed (nothing out of the ordinary, we get people in everything from t-shirts to suits(just came from work)). But, OK.
Later I found out that members of the other bell choir (which rehearses immediately following the first group) had seen him the week before listening to the bell choir rehearse, and since they’ve never seen anyone watch a rehearsal who wasn’t closely related to a bell choir member, they assumed he was a homeless guy not in any hurry to go back out into the cold.
So they asked him. Nope. Not homeless, just curious about how hand bells work.
