Monthly Archives: March 2017
Day 965: Scottish Toast – Non-Limerick Verses: Loch Lomond
The tour began with a drive with stops at beauty spots along the shore of Loch Lomond: :
We left the Clyde long ere the gloamin’ 1
And north from Glasgow, went a-roamin’
To the highland, from the lowland
We drove along
Upon the high road to Loch Lomond
Famous in song.
1gloamin’ (gloaming) = evening
Day 964: Scottish Toast – Non-Limerick Verses: Introduction
Before she began leading imaginary tours, Laetitia and Granny went on a walking tour in Scotland led by tour guides, Gordon and John. At the tour’s farewell dinner, she gave a toast in verse. The toast was in the form Robert Burns used for his poem, Scotch Drink, rather than the limerick form, but she decided to post selected stanzas anyway. Here are the introductory verses:
As soon it is, we’ll be departin’
From this, the land that wears the tartan
To go back where lives Dolly Parton,
The land where we dwell,
It’s time we toasted John and Gordon
Who led us well.
But let us pause before we give it
With hot toddy from a trivet,
Or Macallan or Glenlivet
In lifted glass
To reflect, and, thus, relive it,
The week just passed.
Day 963: Cut Bank
Leading a circular tour of the western United States on Amtrak in winter, Laetitia and her group were stalled in Cut Bank, Montana due to avalanches in the Rocky Mountains. As she and her group were discussing their circumstances in the train’s lounge car, someone brought up Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express in which the murder occurred while the train was stalled waiting for a mountain pass to be cleared. As luck would have it, one of the group had directed an amateur production of a stage play based on Christie’s novel and had the play’s dialog on her computer. What evolved was an amateur performance of an abbreviated version of the play in the train’s lounge car.
When the snow stalled the train in Cut Bank
It inspired the thoughts that we can thank
For our Orient Express
One of A. Christie’s best
Staged by amateurs drawn from our ranks.