Perth

Last Tuesday I drove to Perth, a pleasant Tayside city. Perth has some good street sculptures, among them the rather 'browned-off' woman pictured here and the fascinating sculpture in the middle of town of two men supporting a ring, one blindfolded and apparently struggling to push the ring away while the other rests nonchalantly allowing the ring to support him. I interpreted the meaning of the sculpture as the ring being a metaphor for life being balanced between pain and pleasure, effort and leisure. For an excellent discussion about the sculpture, including a comment by the sculptor and information about William Souter whose 1941 poem, 'Nae day sae dark', was sculptor David Annand's inspiration for this work, go to:

 http://lifesscience.blogspot.com/2009/10/nae-day-sae-dark.html

McEwens department store, something of an architectural anachronism, has a well stocked outfitting department where I made some additions to my meagre wardrobe. This otherwise mundane event was made interesting by a sudden failure of the store's internet connection just as my debit card was being processed; the store is apparently dependent on an internet connection for both card processing and telephone connections! This was something for which the staff had had no training. I asked them to hold on to my would-be purchases for an hour or so while they solved their problem and I refreshed myself elsewhere with a cup of tea.

Around the corner from McEwens I found another of Perth's wonderful anachronisms; 'Goodfellow & Steven' is an excellent cake and pastry shop with teashop above, everything that 'Starbucks', 'Costas' and 'Cafe Nero' are not, I can personally recommend the excellent tea, Cream Croissants and Cream Danish Pastries' served at 'Goodfellow & Steven'!

Later, back at McEwens, the necessary internet connections had yet to be restored and the payment had to be made manually by means of a triplicate paper set and a once commonplace but now practically forgotten plastic and metal machine; yet another anachronism.