It's Saturday again

Three weeks, baby. The laughter, the tears, the second pitcher of sweet tea chilling in my fridge in as many days...

I heard about the farmers' market around the castle today, so, fondly reminiscing about Pepper Place and Murphree's, I headed over this morning to see what I could find. The biggest difference, aside from the crowds of tourists I had to pass to get there, was the range of items for sale - Birmingham's idea of a market involves tomatoes and various grits-like substances, but Edinburgh's market consists mostly of meat and fish products, with one lone fruit stall thrown in for good measure. Still, there were two guys playing fiddles, neither one particularly in synch with the other, so it sounded vaguely like Pepper Place...

£4.40 later, I emerged with 250g of fresh frozen raspberries, 100g of yellow cherry tomatoes (surprisingly earthy and good - I didn't know they did tomatoes well over here), and a baggie of tablet (sounds like something illegal, but it's actually this really sweet butter and sugar confection). What amounted to $8 didn't get me that much - it's not like anyone was selling 10-pound baskets of peaches - but it's a beautiful day, the walk was good, and the best part was when an English couple stopped me to ask for directions. Did I know where to send them? No. Did it matter? Not really.

On the way back, I stopped in at the store attached to the Whiskey Experience place (sounds like overpriced fun) and did a little window shopping. I have orders to bring home as many bottles of The Macallan as I can fit into my suitcase, and so I've been doing a bit of price comparison. These folks actually had Macallan 18, and it was only £75 per bottle - a steal if you've grown up with Alabama's alcohol taxes. They also had a spiffy Christmas idea - a special Millennium crystal bottle of Macallan 50. Yes, 50. As in produced in 1949 and left to mature for 50 years. I'm sure it's superb, and if my dad would like to advance me £2,650, he could find it in his stocking this December.

Yeah, the chances of that happening are statistically akin to the likelihood that I'll find the keys to my very own gilded Boxter Christmas morning. Though really, what would one do with a gilded Boxter? Go through the McDonald's drive-thru? Get gold spinners? Fuzzy dice?

I'm sure I'd think of something.