Category Archives: Travel

Playbill from A Chorus Line, Drury Theatre, London 1979

Entertainment, Events, Friends, Memories, Music, Things, Travel, ,

I student taught in London the spring term of 1979. I can’t say that I learned much about teaching during those few months, but I sure had a blast in London.

One night a bunch of us, mostly — perhaps all — American students, went to Theatre Royal Drury Lane to see the musical A Chorus Line. I loved the musical (and still have the LP I bought after getting back to the States). Music from that show brings back such vivid memories of sights and sounds and even smells of my time in London. On the way back from the show we danced, linked arms and kicking, chorus-line-style through the streets of London, down the steps of the Underground, and back to Southlands College.

Good memories. I don’t need to keep this. Is there a market for vintage playbills?

Small bottle of Deanston Single malt Whisky

Genealogy research, Things, Travel, , ,

I’m still in the midst of a declutter as a result of clearing out the knee wall before replacing our roof. I thought I’d blogged about this small bottle of Deanston Single Malt Whisky before but nothings coming up in the search for “Deanston”. I probably wrote about it on another blog.

When we were in Scotland we visited the home in which my ancestors lived before immigrating to the United States. We’d not called ahead — mostly because we didn’t have the telephone number, but the current owners were welcoming and told us to make ourselves at home and look around the property. They also invited us in the kitchen and when we introduced ourselves the husband presented my husband with this (then unopened and full) bottle of Deanston Single Malt Whisky because my husband’s name is Dean.

Dean kept it in his toiletries bag for years, but finally drank it at some point. After keeping the empty bottle for a while he tossed it in the recycle bin but I fished it out because it was one of our only souvenirs of our trip to the UK in 2002.

I think I am ready to give it up. Or at least move it from my box of memories to one of our China cabinets.

My Plaid Luggage

Things, Travel, , ,

Before I went to England for an extended period of time, I treated myself to a nice set of luggage. Knowing that I was going to be responsible for hauling my luggage around, I was excited to find some large suitcases with wheels. The fact that they were beautiful was just icing on the cake. This was back before most luggage had wheels, so it was indeed a great find. It seems to me that I spent around $200 on them. That’s more than $900 in today’s money.

This style luggage was seen on WKRP in Cincinnati (the only episode I ever watched) and in Rocky IV where a robot tells Rocky’s coach to “be careful with the plaid ones, they belong to the boss”.

The zippers broke on at least one. We had the zippers repaired so could still use them, and did for a while but then better roller suitcases came along so I quit using these suitcases as suitcases.

Eventually we gave them to Clare when she went off to college — they were perfect for storing under her bed. She didn’t take them with her when she left for Olympia so they sat in the knee wall, full of her stuff, for nearly ten years.

We’ve emptied one and made the sad decision to let the trashmen haul it away tomorrow when they pick up our garbage. I’m pretty sad, but since it zips up on both sides and both zippers are broken (and expensive to repair) it would be silly to keep it. We still have the other, larger one.