St Andrew’s Day

Because it was St Andrew’s Day I had anticipated blipping a Saltire somewhere on my recce walk of Pollokshaws and Pollok Park. There were none, and the cricket club which had a fine one last year was displaying the Union flag, it’s been up for a while.
I did though find the memorial cairn to John Maclean, the Red Clydesider, dubbed the most dangerous man in Britain, and an advocate for radical Scottish Independence. He lived close by on Auldhouse Road. When it was unveiled in 1973 (the fiftieth anniversary of his death) beside the Pollokshaws Shopping Centre would have been thriving, it looks very grim these days. The cairn looks worse for wear too.
I returned to the sanctity of Pollok Park and decided to blip the bridge and a somewhat foreboding sky. According to The Times ‘Weather Eye’ the Saltire was inspired by a phenomenon at an ancient battle involving the High King of Alba and the Angles. During the battle clouds formed into a white diagonal cross against a blue sky, the Angles were defeated and subsequently St Andrew became the patron saint of the new kingdom of Scotland and the saltire the white cross on a blue background representing the cross formed by the clouds.