It has obviously been the last night of our four-day 'Indian summer'... and yes, I did rather possessively explain to someone British, who thought it was British slang for something associated with India, that it is American slang for something, well, Native American. But, as has been pointed out, 'Native American Summer' doesn't have the same ring to it.
People have been dazzled by the weather, which has been an easy, uncomplicated, dry mid-70s for four days in a row. If that sounds unremarkable to you, you have never been to northern England – around these parts this is the meteorological equivalent of the seas rising as the land falls away, or perhaps of the Red Sea parting. But all that's clearly over now – by the time we arrived at the bar at 11 pm, a mild, scattered rain was falling, which gradually increased enough to assert the primacy of wet weather in these parts, in case you'd forgotten it.
Michael and Andrew and their friends... and some of my students – including one stunningly cute one – plus various scattered bartenders, Greek and Spanish. (Oh yes and there were some women there too.)
The only difficult part was that several people offered me extended, not particularly focused monologues about their thoughts – the toughest being a young student, charming, sweet, and full of energy, but he kept talking about his experiences this summer (astounding how many things he wanted to tell me, all of which had really the same ultimate point, which was that he found them exciting) and what he felt about ALL of them....
Hmm. Well, there you go: bar life, contact with people, and what Fran Leibovitz used to call the "possibility of meeting your next lover" comes with a certain cost; and that cost is listening to people talk.
I guess I deserve it, considering.
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