Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'Absolutely. We'll see what we can do.'
McCartney looks satisfied. 'Aye, well. In your own time.'
Back to the Poacher's Bar for the warm evening; more pool, food and drink. But only
after a visit to the chalet, and our rapidly increasing stocks of fine whisky. As a result of
this I'm in a sort of pleasantly befuddled, slightly giggly mood. I go out to the old-fash-
ioned phonebox to phone home but there's no answer. Instead of putting the phone down
I kind of get fixated on the wee
bee-bop
(pause)
bee-bop
tone the phone makes just to
tell you it is a pay phone. After a while it starts to sound like it's actually saying,
fuck
off
(pause)
fuck off
and I start to laugh. This gets quite bad, and I have to put the phone
down, take a few deep breaths and dry my eyes before going back into the bar for anoth-
er game of pool. Which I only lose, I'm convinced, because I keep getting little quakey
aftershocks of giggles, usually just as I'm taking a shot.
We have fun in the bar. This is our natural habitat, on this side of the bar. The time
- the many years - when we were involved with the Clachan Bar in Dornie seems like a
long and terrible aberration. Jim ran the place, then Dave - with Dave's girlfriend Jenny
coming through from Aberdeen whenever she could - and even Ann and I took over for
a week to give Dave and Jenny some time off. There were high points, but basically it
was one long disaster. Somehow between us all we succeeded in investing over a quarter
of a million pounds in the place and then selling it for 50 grand. No amount of creative
accounting on Earth is going to turn that into anything other than a financial catastrophe.
Oh well; we're all still alive and mostly talking to each other.
We retire to the chalet to test the bamboozling nine-layer game again, drink more wine
and whisky, imbibe ourselves silly and play Scrabble.
At some point in the evening Jim comes up with another Mystery Word; an
Ashazhosh of our days.
'Awemsys.'
'Awemsys?'
'Did he just say awemsys?'
'Yes. He just said awemsys. You did, didn't you?'
'What?'
'Just say awemsys.'
'Oh aye, yeah, that was me.'
'So?'
'So what?'
'So what does it mean?'
'Yeah, what
does
it mean?'
'I don't know.'
'You said it; you must know what you were trying to say.'
