The World's Most Interesting Urinal

At the outset we must know how the Scots pronounce "urinal", not "your-in-al" as we do but "your-eye-nal", and yes the long "i" makes all the difference.

On the Wednesday that saw the final day of group play in the World Cup for Group C, England against Slovakia and USA v Algeria, I went to visit Tom Brodie.  Not to be unsocialable I accepted Tom's offer of a wee dram.  The sun was over the yardarm as we said in the Navy, and it was past noon, even a bit past 1:00 p.m.  I distinctly remember asking my host for a wee dram, emphasis on the wee.  Tom's definition and mine are seperated by a factor of four.  Tom regaled me with tales of his early days in the label business, working for an America boss, whose catch phrase, "Do we have a problem, friend?" has become our unofficial greeting.

From there to Jelly Hill to meet Callum and John, my running mates for the afternoon.  We hopped a cab to City Centre and entered The Griffin.  There we joined John's friend John, and his son, Johnny, an actor.  A couple of Guinnesses, some crisps, suffering under the shrill announcing of the BBC commentators, and a rather lackluster 1-0 win for England rounded out the afternoon.  The pub owner offered me a seat in his office to watch the USA game, a much better match as it turned out...with Landon Donovan propelling the team to the top of the group and the knockout round with an injury time goal in the 91st minute, but I chose to remain with my mates to cheer against England in a show of solidarity.

My friends then took me to two authentic, old-time Glasgow pubs.  The first was McPhabbs, where I retreated to an Irn Bru.  This is NOT a local beer, Irn Bru is the orange-colored (orange-coloured?) soft drink that outsells Coca-Cola in Scotland.  It tastes like bubble-gum.  I'm sipping some now, causing me to muse about an Irn Bru 12-step program when we leave.

Then it was another taxi ride to The Lismore.  The pub's theme is the Highlands Clearance, a dark nineteenth-century social engineering program that led to the destruction of a way of life, the deportation of thousands to the United States, Canada, and Australia, and the primacy of sheep over humans.  The pub boasts about about 125 single malts, and the young lady behind the bar, regaled by my mates about my quest to drink my way throught the single malt alphabet, found a whisky that began with an "R", Rhosdhu.  I was already sipping a Tobermory.  Callum kept urging me to go to the urinal and after a fashion I went.

The urinal, one of those stainless steep troughs, boasted three separate areas, each featurning a short biography of a villian of the Highland Clearances.  I held my water, read the bios, selected the most worthy candidate and did the business. 

Only to be interrogated upon my return.  Who did I piss on?  "George Granville was and English peer, landed gentry, so he was operating out of his own self-interest," I answered.  "Colonel Fell was a military man, following orders, but Patrick Sellar, that bastard, had a choice.  He turned on his own people and, acting as Granville's factor, helped clear the highlands.  I pissed on him."

Evidently the right choice. 

There were a few more rounds to round out the evening.

A word on the World Cup:  An unexpected benefit of our visit has been watching the World Cup in a football crazed society.  Not "soccer" as we call it in the USA, but football.  It has been extraordinary.  The Scots, nearly to a person, cheer against England.  The most popular tee-shirt (I bought one and wore it to the pubs under my USA tee-shirt) is "A.B.E.  Anyone But England.  South Africa 2010."  To plumb the depth of this enmity you need to delve a bit deeper than the apparent history and listen to the commentaries on television and the reporting in the newspapers.  Talk about "homers"!  The English press is beyond rabid, they are demented.  The expectations are outsized and have proven to be unrealistic.  The analysis is painfully indepth, the level of scutiny microscopic.  No detail is too small to be painfully probed.