On the town ...

We had a jaunt today - across to Glasgow to meet my cousin and his wife for one of our irregular-but-customary lunch dates. Funny thing - it really began when my pal Face-timed me while I was having coffee before leaving for the ferry and knew immediately that I was going somewhere because I had my hair sorted! (It's a tad unruly;  hairdresser on Saturday). 

The weather was pretty miserable - chilly showers that were not originally in the forecast - and the parking in Glasgow utterly dire. The Art Galleries car-park was at least still there, in a miasma of closed-off streets and unexpected bollards, some of which may have been a remnant of the COP confusion, but the phone number for payment didn't 't work and we had no pound coins and had to buy a card in the galleries in order to get some and ... and ... We were late for lunch. It was, however, delicious. A quirky menu of little dishes in the Ox & Finch, a couple of glasses of prosecco (I wasn't driving) and non-stop conversation was all I needed to restore equanimity. 

We ended up going to inspect my cousin's new town house in Dowanhill, an area of the West End that I associate with learning to ride my orange fairy cycle when I was 4. Think quiet streets with pavements ... So I've decided today's photos should reflect the area where I spent the first 27 years of my life. The main photo is of the University of Glasgow, where I took my MA and met himself, at the time a BMus student. My parents also attended Glasgow - another two MAs. To the extreme left of the photo you can just see the corner of the Kelvingrove Art Galleries (as my cousin's wife pointed out, natives of our generation all call it the Art Galleries; others refer to Kelvingrove Museum). Wet Saturdays would often find my family there when I was a child - I loved the room full of armour then.  Glasgow, for the uninitiated, is one of the four ancient universities in Britain, founded in 1451. (The others are Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews). The current building is by George Gilbert Scott. I have climbed the tower ...

My extra is a collage of other memories - the first and fourth photos are of Broomhill Cross and the view up to the street we moved to when I was 10, though the back of our house is just out of sight to the left. The other two are very typical shots of the Dowanhill area, taken from above - these broad streets with trees down the centre are a feature, as are the sandstone buildings, both blonde and red stone.

Did I mention, by the way, that I may never eat again...?