Free The World According to Bertie by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

learning to read as a boy, he had a book which had the letters and numbers in different colours. The figure three was probably painted in red, and that association was made and stuck. Our minds are like that, aren’t they? Things stick.
    â€œThe association between blue and melancholy,” Antonia continued, “is a cultural one. Somebody, a long time ago, a genuine synaesthetic perhaps, said: ‘I’m feeling blue,’ and the expression caught on.”
    â€œThe birth of the blues,” said Domenica.
    â€œPrecisely,” agreed Antonia. She took a sip of her coffee. “Of course there are so many associations in our minds that it’s not surprising that some get mixed up–wires get crossed. Whenever I hear certain pieces of music, I think of places, people, times. That’s only natural.
    â€œPeople are always doing that with popular music. They remember where they were when they listened to something that made an impression on them.”
    â€œIf you’re going to San Francisco,” said Domenica suddenly, “be sure to wear some flowers in your hair…”
    Antonia stared at her.
    â€œA song,” explained Domenica. “Round about the late sixties, 1967, maybe. It makes me think not of San Francisco, but Orkney, because that’s where I was when I listened to it. I loved it. And I can see Stromness, with its little streets, and the house I was staying in over the summer while I worked part-time in the hotel there. I was a student, and there was another student working there, a boy, and I suppose I was in love with him, although he never knew.”
    Antonia was silent. She looked at Domenica. She had never thought of Domenica having a love life, but she must have, because we all fall in love, and some of us are sentenced to unrequited love, talking about it over cups of coffee in flats like this, with friends just like this, oddly comforted by the process.

17. A Restoration in Prospect–and a New Suspicion
    Domenica looked about her. Antonia’s flat was a mirror image of hers in the arrangement of its rooms. But whereas the original features of her flat had been largely preserved, Antonia’s had suffered a bad 1970s experience. The original panelled doors, examples of which survived in Domenica’s flat, had either been taken down in Antonia’s and replaced with unpleasant frosted-glass doors–for what conceivable purpose? Domenica wondered–or their panels had been tacked over with plywood to produce an unrelieved surface. That, one assumed, was the same aesthetic sense which had produced the St James Centre, a crude cluster of grey blocks at the end of the sadly mutilated Princes Street, or, at a slightly earlier stage, had sought the turning of Princes Street into an urban motorway and the conversion of the Princes Street Gardens into a car park.
    One might not be surprised when some of these things were done by those with neither artistic sense nor training, but both the St James Centre and the plan to slice the city in two with a motorway had been the work of architects and planners. At a domestic level, these were the very same people who put in glass doors and took out old fireplaces.
    â€œYes,” said Antonia. “I will have to do something about all this.”
    Domenica pretended surprise for a moment, but Antonia had intercepted her glances and knew what she was thinking.
    â€œDon’t imagine for a moment that this is my taste,” Antonia warned. “I’m every bit as Georgian as you are.”
    It was an amusing way of putting it, and they both laughed. Not everyone in the New Town lived a Georgian lifestyle, but some did. And of course Antonia and Domenica would find such people amusing with their insistence on period authenticity in their houses, although they themselves were equally inclined to much the same aesthetic.
    Domenica waved a hand about her. “What are you going to