Different Slants

 (# 1 of 4 chapters)

 Bendith Duw ar Bobl Cymru a`u plismyn gwaraidd!!!

(God bless the Welsh People and their civilized policemen!!!)

 

My original motivation to travel to Britain for the first and only time, in 2001, was to investigate Notting Hill.

 

Notting Hill was long famous, even before the warm-hearted film of the same name with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, for its incredibly congested, unbroken mass of bargain-seeking and perspiring humanity crushed within its mile long length, as the best flea market in Europe.

 

While I did find beautiful ceramics, overflowing tables of eccentric flotsam and jetsam, and the original 1964  Beatles periodicals I was actually seeking, as well as a priced-to-sell full suit of medieval English armor for mounted combat or jousting, the memory I find that lingers longest are my three unplanned days in Wales.

 

The distance from London to Cardiff, the capitol of Wales, was slightly less than driving from Chicago to Madison, Wisconsin.  Interesting places are much closer together in Great Britain than in the States.  The approximate size of the former homeland of the world wide British Empire is about the same size as Illinois and Indiana, together. 

 

Britannia...small, but mighty!

 

To me, the charm of travel is experiencing the unexpected, and that is what the Welsh Police Force was unprepared for, when I attempted to explore their part of that lovely little island, and they kept crossing paths with the continuously confused Jewish guy from the far more dangerous South Side of Chicago.

 

I just love those guys.

 

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In May, 2001, without warning them first, I flew from Chicago to England for four days, three of them of exploring Wales.

 

I was going to rent a car in London so I could wander through the Welsh hills, dales and towns. A helpful guy from American Express advised me that my rental car was covered by them as an additional benefit of having their Optima card, and not to take the expensive local insurance policy because that was unnecessary.  I thanked them, packed up my guide books and road maps and left the American Midwest to seek British adventures.

                                                                                                                                                           (Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: www.differentslants.com/?p=355

August 8, 2007

One morning some years ago, near Chicago, I was at a currency exchange where I would go to pay my utility bills. I suppose I could have mailed my payment, but it was faster for me to pay it in person. Besides, the dark-eyed girl working there behind the glass had a great rack on her and she always smiled at me, her blood-red lipstick gleaming on her soft, luscious lips. And when she walked over to punch my account numbers into her machine, I got a global view of all her…assets.

I didn’t mind, she didn’t mind, and the whole day was better for the experience.

So, on this particular day, I was waiting in line to see my favorite cutie. I was on the left side of the small room where she always worked behind the bullet-proof glass, and there was another young guy at the teller down the way from me paying a bill too, with about a four yards between us.

I am white. He was black. I think my sexy teller was Assyrian, but that wasn’t crucial to what followed next, on what seemed to be just another ordinary morning.

It was very quiet with the four us going about our business. Then, another young white guy, about twenty, blonde and thin, maybe five foot eight, walked in the exchange and stood silently behind me. I was almost ready to go, when the chime on the only door to the place clanged loudly as the door was suddenly shoved open and three adorable, very young black children scampered into the room, followed by a short, hesitant, and thin to the point of appearing to be nearly anorexic, man of about thirty or so. The kids were full of energy and called the petite man “Dad.”

Then, to my disbelieving eyes an enormous blob of a woman ended this little parade. She was close to six feet tall, and for lack of a more accurate description, the woman most closely resembled the evil Jabba, (Read on …)