Monday Jan 9th- day 3

In the morning, I go in to meet Barbara. She is triple-booked but eventually I get to enter her office. She is quite different to how she looks on her website. Amazing what photoshop can do, eh? From her photo, I had suspected her of wearing a wig, but on meeting her, I reach over and give her fringe a little tug- solid as a rock! She doesn’t seem to mind this one little bit, and is friendly enough although a bit bemused as to what my purpose of being in Seattle is. She’ll regret it when I fail to mention her in my Nobel acceptance speech. But she is pleasant enough and we chat about first impressions of Seattle, about what to do while I am here (both work and pleasure) and about the rain (of course). She lets on that she is going out of town for an interview, so maybe I will be supervisor-less in Seattle! Pointless Whiteless in Seattle? No matter, it’s up to me to make of it what I can.

I need to sort out a laptop somehow, and it seems that BestBuy is the place. A bit like PC World with a whole tin of whuppass knobs on. There’s a store at a Mall (how do you say that? Is it “Morl”? “Mal”? “Marl”?) called Northgate and I head off in the cold hard rain. I get on to the appropriate bus, and a couple of stops down, I am joined by some proper druggies. Four of them, two guys, a couple of crusties (male and female), and a bulldog in a polo shirt. They haven’t met for a while. As the crusties walk past, a bag drips something onto my knee. One of the guys, a young black fella, starts talking about what he’s been up to. Seems like it is drurgs, drurgs and mo drurgs. He describes all the different types of “Blarter” (blotter=acid) he’s been doing. The crusty guy is an intensely dislikeable gobby know-all. When the crusties get off, the black guy talks to his friend about how the girl was soooo beautiful when she arrived in Seattle. Looked to me like years of drurgs have wrecked her. Maybe it is too easy to say that she has been led astray by crusty man, but I muse on the lifestyle choices we make, how some people are almost continually up (speed), down (dope) or round and round (hard stuff). Reminds me of people I have known back in Sheffield. Seems a shame that people let years of their lives drift by riding a chemical rollercoaster. But it's their choice, and I am not about to get on my high horse about certain drugs when lots of other ones are legitimised. Coffee anyone?

The mall is a stonker, and it takes me about 20 minutes to walk through to Best Buy. Once there, the staff are all busy and so I wander round and round, looking at the same expensive shiny boxes over and over again. Eventually I do get some advice but as is my wont, I don’t plump for anything. Partly because I’m not clear on what set-up Ann has at home (she says she has a DSL line) and whether I will be able to use them back in the UK. On the way back to the bus, I buy some trainers, because I realize I will be getting porky with all the hot chocolate and cookies I keep buying. I get some New Balance ones which look like they will propel me up steep slopes with minimal effort.

On the bus home, it’s tricky to see where I am in the dark and rain. I get off fairly near where I am meant to be, but am so wet and tired that I decode to go for a Mexican instead. “Table for one please!” I have a massive fajita burrito (way too much) and a beer whilst watching some college basketball. It looks pretty good to me, buy is probably like watching the mighty Sheffield Centralians (my team) while Liverpool v Chelsea is showing on another channel…

On the way home I pop into a 7-Eleven. It is just like the Kwik-E-Mart from the Simpsons, complete with Apu. I just buy some milk and bread, and then my eye is caught by a surprisingly literate biscuit packet! Surely my family must be owed some royalties for this? I resist the temptation to say to Apu, "Don't you know who I am?"

By the time I reach 6041, I am absolutely soaking. It's not often you will hear me say "Ooooh, me Lorna Doones are all soggy..."