Shared spaces, part 3

Who are the people in your neighbourhood?

If there’s a cat type I relate most to, it’s the nervous one that needs a little space when you first meet her, but once you gain her trust she’ll suffocate you with demands for affection.

Did I ever tell you about the Tesco bus? Tesco is a popular grocery store chain in the U.K. When I did the cat sit in Dundee, the owner warned me there wasn’t a lot of shopping nearby. But, she said, Tesco sends a bus every Friday morning. The bus came directly to the apartment building to pick up the residents. At the store, they’d have enough time to do their week’s shopping and then stop for a tea in the Tesco cafeteria before the bus brought them back home. I didn’t tell her that the thought of being trapped with a group of strangers without my own means of transportation was terrifying. I told her I liked to walk and had already scoped out a grocery shop within walking distance on Google Maps.

On foot in Dundee, looking for a grocery store.

(Speaking of walking and Scotland, are you familiar with the old expression “going by shanks’ mare” as a way of saying you’re going somewhere on foot? According to this source, the expression has Scottish origins. In the 1700s, a poem by Robert Fergusson used the phrase “shanks-naig.”)