The city

Today's been ... busy. I was up early - even for a Thursday - to get my shopping done, then breakfast, then coffee (can't cope without the coffee) before going for the 11.40 ferry to go for lunch with my cousin (and our respective spice) in Glasgow. 

I found myself looking askance at Google maps the other day because where we lived when we were first married, in a red tenement in the West End of Glasgow, seems to have changed so much, so as a result realised I was peering out at buildings and once-familiar streets as we passed. And I have to say that the thing that appalled me most today was actually the subject of the main photo in the above collage: the uncollected rubbish piled up around these skips at the end of Montague Street on Great Western Road. If you look carefully, you'll see that many of the hundreds of bottles are actually piled around quite neatly - but what on earth is going on?

And of course the answer is Covid. It has to be - Glasgow refuse collectors tended to be natives, in my experience, so not Brexited out of existence. And I realise that despite drawbacks where I now live, we're still having rubbish collections. 

Another, lighter realisation came when I knew that the coat I was wearing had been hiding in the wardrobe for some time because there were no masks in any of the pockets. Are we all the same? And tell me - where are the two quite-expensive cloth ones I bought and which have now both vanished?

Lunch, by the way, was just great - Italian food, Italian wine, and non-stop conversation for two and a half hours, by which time the staff were beginning to look longingly at us. Afterwards, Himself and I went on a fruitless quest for the wee butcher shop where they used to sell wonderful Italian sausages, only to find it has vanished, like my masks. I couldn't even identify the shop where it had been - all gone. But I've taken some more photos along Great Western Road, showing the spires of St Mary's Cathedral and the former Landsdowne Church (top), Cooper's Corner (second), a cool name for a shop (third) and the spire of what is now Oràn Mhor with the halo that I'd only just spotted as we waited in a traffic jam to head for the Clyde Tunnel and home.

We've just arranged our next get-together ...