Tuscanny in Glasgow

With a new tree in town I just had to pay a visit and check it out - especially as it's roots like mine are Italian :)

The Italian cloister gardens at St Andrew's Cathedral opened today and at their heart is this fine 200 year old Tuscan olive tree. It's kind of sobering to think that it was growing strong in Tuscanny when my great great grand parents were living quiet lives in Lazio hill villages with no thought of life in Scotland yet today here we both find ourselves in Glasgow outside the cathedral precincts - life is certainly interesting.

The gardens are a memorial to the members of the Italian community who died when the SS Arandora Star was torpedoed by germans on 2 July 1940 as they were being deported to labour camps in Canada as alien enemies - you can see the plaque in the background with the names of the almost a hundreds of Scots Italians who died (although over 400 UK Italians died in total)

My family weren't interned during the war but I have friends whose family members were so it was a poignant visit - one of those experiences where the past and the present form together ever so closely.

It's hard to believe that you can find a place of such beauty, peace and tranquility so deep in the heart of the city but strangely it kind of works.



'Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.'

Marcus Aurelius