Rainy Days and Mondays

Do you remember The Carpenters? Karen Carpenter used to sing this song, "Rainy Days and Mondays Get Me Down." What if the rainy day IS a Monday, too? But I will put my prejudices about Monday aside, and let myself enjoy a rainy day.

When a rainy day gets me down, I watch a Harry Potter movie, it doesn't matter which one. The location is modeled after the Highlands in Scotland, with lots of bleak, mountain vistas and wind, snow, rain, and/or winter going on. But all of that fits the magic going on in the plot. And so, on rainy days, I imagine I live in Hogsmead, and just have to trip up the road a bit to be outside the gates of Hogwarts. It cheers even the most gloomy of days.

Of course, I could always pretend that I am living in the Scottish Highlands, and really, the only thing lacking is the different sheep everywhere, lots of farms, and things that catch the eye, like fences built of huge slabs of shale, set on end into the ground. The trains are very clean, and the horses in that area are a bit more rugged that I could see, built for the cold. And the pastry shops! Oh, ye gods! No where in this small valley is a pastry shop that comes close.

You step in out of the cold and rain to greet the phalanx of pastries under gleaming glass counters. Tuna sandwiches are made to order, and there are soft drinks in a small cooler in the corner. For some reason, there is corn mixed in with the tuna. There are pastries oozing raspberry, and currants and fluffed with powdery sugar. There is no blackberry there, that I could find. Coffee is not an idea that is entertained, it being a prohibitively long way from South America for the casual offering up of coffees that you see in America.

What is offered is the lightest, flakiest bun, each with it's own halo of powdered sugar. You can eat all you want, because you have to walk or take the bus the rest of the day. For one breakfast there, my brother and I shared a dozen of the best raspberry pastries I will ever taste, straight out of the oven. I think I lost 2 lbs. that day from walking.

If you can't tell now that I haven't had breakfast, you haven't had that second cup of coffee, and so cannot think straight yet.

Run and get some. I'll see you tomorrow.