Squinty Bridge

Today we spent a lot of time on the open-topped, tourist bus going round Glasgow. Even though I lived in this city for twenty years, I have been away from it for an equal length of time and it is quite remarkable to see how it has changed and developed while I've been living just a few miles up the road.

Glasgow was a city that was dying on its feet in the middle 1980s, but it then made a very conscious effort to recreate itself. No longer a city that simply complained that the old ways were dying, the city was to be reborn as a global cutural centre, a cosmopolitan world crossroads. The 1988 Garden festival and the 1990 City of Culture were landmark events in the creation of a new focus of economic activity for the city, and this brave regeneration seems to be working.

One of the more recent changes to the city has been the addition of this, the newest vehicular crossing on the River Clyde. Its Sunday name is the Clyde Arc. It doesn't cross the river at right angles, however, and the illuminated support starts at one side of the roadway and finishes at the other side. These two characteristics have meant that Glaswegians call the bridge The Squinty Bridge, a name which will stay around long after people forget about "The Clyde Arc"

We visited other places today - the Glasgow Green, the city's first public park with the incredible Templeton's carpet factory, and its impressive fountain. We went to the University and I went in to the GUU for the first time in about twenty years. We passed the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, where Dali's "Christ of Saint John of the Cross" is housed. And in the evening, we watched Mission Impossible at the IMAX cinema... wow!

So, all in all a busy day!

Side note: in the absence of my usual photo editing software, I edited this using Picasa... actually, it did okay!