The weather of Scotland was different. Not different from any other place I’d been, but different from one moment to the next. A fog could roll down the moors and trap you for hours or maybe even days, forcing you to eat the upholstery in your hotel room or risk starvation. Or the sun could shine down on you and warm you through and through, leaving you with that warm fuzzy feeling you get from clothes just taken out of the drier. Then thirty seconds later it would be drizzle again. I experienced everything except the forced starvation on my journey northward. That was just as well because the cloth upholstery on the train wouldn’t have been near as tasty as hotel bed linen.
I glanced out the window of my compartment and watched the sun shine its rays across the wetlands that made up the moors. My train rattled along the tracks toward what I hoped would be a vacation I wouldn’t remember. With nothing better to do, my mind wandered back to the boardroom after a tense meeting between my boss, the chairman of the board, and the representatives of another company situated in the United Kingdom. If somebody had brought a knife they could have cut the tension and made us all some nice tension pies.
