Friday, September 23, 1988

The Best Beer I've Ever Had

I didn’t wake up until 12:45 p.m. Wow, that’s the latest I’ve slept in all year (or as they say here, I had a “lie-in.”) The Morrison’s must really think I’m a bum… but I haven’t done anything like that since my wild high school summer days when I didn’t have to be at Artworks in the Camp Hill Shopping mall for work until 6 p.m.

Anyway, I took a leisure day to recover from this jet lag. At 1:30 p.m., after a shower and some food, Glen’s friends Sean, Duncan and Stewart stopped in to chat over some coffee and cakes. They wanted me to go to a night club in Liverpool with them, but I decided to take a pass because they weren’t going to be back until 3 a.m., and since I was planning a big day with the Morrisons in Liverpool the following day, I thought that might not be a good idea. So instead I opted to go to a pub with Fiona and her friend, Zoe (pictured) that evening.

Since Dr. Morrison is a general practitioner, he is occasionally on-call, whereby his patients actually call his house in an emergency. So someone has to be in at all times to answer the phone, even if Dr. Morrison steps out for awhile. I’ve learned that house calls are still quite commonplace here in Britain, which is a noticeable difference over American doctors. Fiona got her Aunt Pauline (not a blood aunt, but an “adopted” aunt) to cover the calls. We drove to Aunt Pauline’s house, picked her up, and drove back to the Morrison’s house. During the drive back we saw a rainbow, which was quite nice.

After dropping off Aunt Pauline, Fiona and I walked to pick up Zoe at her house (I’ve never heard that fascinating name before, and she was a nice and interesting person as well), then walked down the road a bit to The Wheatsheaf for a little socializing. They serve a great beer there called Whitbread’s Best Bitter. Perhaps the best beer I’ve ever had. But then, I’m 19, so admittedly I haven’t tried that many brands.

After some time at the pub, we walked Zoe back to her house, then back to the Morrison’s for some coffee with Dr. Morrison and Aunt Pauline (I have been drinking so much coffee the past few days!) I actually got to bed at a decent hour this day, in preparation for tomorrow’s trek to Liverpool.