M8 ...

This is a true emergency blip - one I remembered to think about as we travelled through the centre of Glasgow on our drive home from Edinburgh. The top half of the photo is taken where the road dives down through the underpass at the Mitchell Library before the Kingston Bridge; the traffic is heavy, though no longer at a virtual standstill as it had been slightly earlier. I was struck by the horrors of teatime traffic - the rows of brake lights above us to the left, on every overpass we went under, in front of of. And then there had been the two cars which screeched past us ten minutes earlier, one on either side, weaving in and out of the lanes at what must have been close to 100mph. I don't know if they were fooling, racing, or one chasing the other, but at the time it was clear that if we'd made a move out of our lane for any reason we'd have been smashed.

The lower photo was taken 20 minutes later, still on the M8, where it approaches Port Glasgow. Almost all the cars that had surrounded us earlier have peeled off - to Paisley, to the Erskine Bridge - and we are left, as always, haring down an almost empty road. The Clyde is on our right; there are trees and a garden centre on our left. It feels like the country.

But it isn't. And fifteen minutes later we were crawling once more. Port Glasgow and Greenock have their own rush hours ...