Hunting in Scotland now on two fronts as the job interviews take me further and further afield. I love the Scottish dialect on girls, I really do. Could listen to it all day, which is very lucky for me, as it turns out.
I decided to change my signature, so I pulled out Instant Honesty x4. The bottle seemed to burn with a blue fire from within as the sun hit it. Sprayed twice, once on each wrist.
Oh no, no, no, no. Bad move? Maybe. Maybe not.
I stop off in Glasgow for a drink before I travel back down south and I’m sat at a long table, a free seat at the side of me. It’s soon occupied by a very cute mid-20s girl with surprisingly little makeup on. That was the first thing I noticed about her. The lack of makeup was no loss, however. Rosebud lips, clear complexion, sparkling blue eyes and a genuinely warm smile. Tousled wavy just-got-out-of-bed dark blonde hair, almost brown.
I fix her with a smile and eye contact until her gaze flickers and meets mine again. She returns it with a smile that I swear lights up the place and I take that as my cue. “Clumsy penguin.”
Another smile. That Highland dialect. “I’m sorry?”
“Just something that breaks the ice,” I say, grinning back at her. “Hi, I’m MuskCloud. How are you?”
She turned in her seat so she was facing me, propped an elbow on the table, leaned her head onto her hand and toyed with that rich, deep dark blonde hair all the time she was talking. She wouldn’t stop and hardly broke eye contact in all the time we were there. I made sure I maintained it as well as a smile on my lips the whole time. Well worth it.
Talk about opening the floodgates. The hours started to whip past on my mobile’s clock display. Customers came and went, to be replaced by others. At first, I tried to keep up my end of the conversation, but was quickly reduced to uh-huhhing, humming and the occasional “yes” or “no” with the appropriate emotional inflection as I was submerged under a tale of her life, past loves, what her 50 closest friends think about her new wardrobe, her cat’s opinion, her dog’s opinion… … all with the silky, lilting Highland in her voice.
In short, her entire life history for the past 10 years or so. When she eventually finished and had to run for a train, we had been sat there for 3 hours, 46 minutes. I missed my train, missed the one after, and the one after that one. I didn’t care. I did feel completely drained though. I promised that we would meet up again if I got the job up there and she was really happy about that. We kissed on the cheek, hugged - for a full minute - and she left.
I rescued her name out of the flood. She’s Jacs, short for Jacqueline. Ooh yeah. She’s worth moving north of the border for. Oh, and putting up with the verbal torrent. By all the gods, she had a mouth on her.
Musk