Published Press and Journal – 5 Sep 2011
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I went into the bank the other day and I asked them to check my balance. The teller came up and pushed me. It just shows you how easily people can take things the wrong way.
In a clothes shop in Stirling a friend of mine from Ness – let’s call him Mr Macdonald because that’s his name – went to look for a t-shirt. On the wall was a hastily-scrawled sign. It said: “Take one garment at a time, please. Due to cubicle refurbishment, come to the manageress’s office if you want to try it on.” Sadly, his intended was with him at the time so he never did take up the offer – at least that’s what Mr Macdonald tells me.
With a business like a shop or a hotel you never know who’s going to walk in. I’m thinking now about about the mysterious guy who popped into the Kintail Lodge Hotel in Glenshiel last Sunday. Obviously a biker, he wasn’t too keen to take off his helmet at first. There was a bit of a lunchtime session in the hotel at the time. No, not that kind of session – that only happens in the islands. This was a wee ceilidh with a band called Fiddlelore, three New Zealand girls who play Scottish fiddle.
Paul Ibbotson was on the bar and there are no flies on him. When the helmet came off, he quickly thought the cool dude with the sunglasses looked a bit like Brad Pitt. Nah, it couldn’t be. Not up here in the back of beyond, he thought.
When the shades came off, eagle-eyed Paul was in no doubt. The shades were back on though when Pitt came and ordered a pint and something to eat. Wonder what he had.
Let’s see what’s on the bar menu on the Kintail Lodge Hotel website. He probably had the Thai-style Loch Nevis mussels steamed with chilli, coriander and coconut milk. Yum. Or maybe it was the duo of locally-smoked salmon and Salar salmon with salad leaves, capers and brown bread? Lovely. Just right for a Hollywood superstar. Come on then. What did he have?
A coronation chicken sandwich. A what? A chicken sarnie. The cheapskate. I’m sure Kintail Lodge would have rustled him up a caviar doorstep with oodles of expensive salad if he’d asked. This was uber-posh Glenshiel, after all. Coronation chicken. Pfft. Paul tells me Pitt didn’t sit far away from everyone else but he did sit so most people had their backs to him. Most of them swaying to the sounds of Fiddlelore didn’t notice the star of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was behind them tapping his feet to the music. Then, suddenly, there he was … gone.
He’d slipped out but someone who knew it was him loudly asked if everyone knew who had been sat there eating a sarnie was Brad Pitt. No, the actual Brad Pitt. Honestly. Look, that’s his crusts from the corrie chicken. Look. His lips touched that.
The girls swiftly wiggled out into the car-park before the great man could clamber onto his big throbbing machine and roar off into the distance. He even posed for a few photos and said thanks for the wonderful grub. Don’t mention it, Brad. ‘Twas just a sarnie.
“He was great with the staff and said thank you. He was feeling a bit jaded after the long hours filming the zombie movie in Glasgow and he was keeping it low key,” says Paul. Low budget as well, by the sound of it. Chicken sarnie, eh? Well, I never.
You must have a good budget for shop signs or they can mislead. One single lady came from Germany to Stornoway last year looking for a son-of-the-soil husband. She thought her luck was in when she found the Lewis Crofters premises. “There are crofters here but they are not actually for sale,” a member of staff said patiently as she was ushered towards the door.
It was very embarrassing for her but a shop sign is often no indication of the wares inside. When I was in Glasgow recently, I thought I’d go into the city centre to buy some sturdy footwear for tramping through the Castle Grounds. As always, I kept bumping into people I knew. Although most of them were in the Free Church, they were quite happy to go for a few pints in the big, anonymous city. There are all these wee pubs off Argyle Street where no one is going to see them – except other Wee Frees in a for a sneaky tipple. We had quite a few that day.
Too many, in fact, because it was late afternoon and the shops were about to shut so I had no time to go up to the usual shops I go to in Sauchiehall Street. I was starving as I had forgotten all about the lunch. Maybe it was my strong Stornoway accent but I had no luck getting a quick bite. They wouldn’t give me a chicken vindaloo – even though the shop was called Currys. And when I asked for a pair of Doc Martins in the shop simply named Boots, they just looked at me funny.
See? Shop names are very confusing. They can give you completely the wrong idea about what’s inside. If only I could be sure that Mrs X would forget to read this, I would tell you all about what happened before they slung me out of the Virgin Megastore.
