This particular Saturday in Cambridge, the UK2011 June 04

Thinking of you.  It's been too long since I've dropped you a line. 

Here are just a few snippets of my Saturday:

     At the wine merchant: Professor Fauxpaye, have you had trouble with this card before?  The Professor, in a Spanish accent, No, I never have had before.

     Odd a Spaniard with a French name meaning "false payment" having trouble buying wine.  The merchant, generously, did not make note of it.

     At a traffic light on the way to the wine merchant's shop, a Dolly Paton look-alike jumps out of a cab, runs over to me on my bike and gives me a big hug, then runs back to the waiting cab.

     A John Cleese look-alike thinks that she has abandoned the cab.  A small scuffle ensues.  Certainly, we are all on film, now being processed for TV.

I should note that I have seen this motion-picture before.  My last cab ride from Atlanta's airport toward Emory University.

The cabbie turns to me in the back seat, pointing out the window to our right.  That's Ted Turner's building, he says proudly.  There's a commotion outside.  There's Ted Turner, himself.  He has Dolly Parton in a bear hug.  Strange. I think, What mama-bear wears a sequin dress?

Then, I have a flashback to a Christmas party at my step-parents house.  One of the guests, the then food editor at USA Today, a woman who looks as though she's truly enjoyed all of the food she's written about, has elected to wear a red sequin dress.  It fits like a latex glove.  In it, as she waits beneath the mistletoe, she's more Betty Boop than Dolly Parton.  All evening she's popping out of the dress; or, rather, the sequins are flying from it with an explosive force comparable to the seeds from an impatiens' pods.  Over the course of the next month, I count as many sequins as she must have had on the dress.  I don't recall having seen her leave.  And, I'm wondering now:  IF, . . . If I had sown them back together, might she have reappeared?

     From my home-office window, I can see my neighbour returning home.  She leaves the cab wearing a Dolly Parton outfit.

     The Strawberry Festival — more strawberry fields than strawberry fruit — is on.  Cambridge is exploding with character(s).

If this were a postcard, the tag line would read, Wish you were here!

Hope your weekend is as odd as mine . . .

And, just when Pantomime season should have been over!