Old haunts

We've been Over The Water (yes - it's a place; hence the upper case letters!) today, despite a very choppy sea covered in white horses which broke over the car deck and our car, leaving it encrusted in salt for the rest of the day. (if you look at the top of the main photo you can see the salt on the upper part of the windscreen, through which I was taking the photo.) The occasion was another of our cousinly lunches, this time in the well-known West End restaurant The Ubiquitous Chip. Actually people of our vintage know it as The New Chip, because the original, opened when we were newly married, was in a lane behind Byres Road in Glasgow which is now occupied - or was when I last looked - by another restaurant, the Hanoi  Bike Shop, while the one we were in today is in Grosvenor Lane, on the other side of Byres Road. All of which, of course, means nothing to people who haven't frequented the west of Glasgow, or who didn't attend Glasgow University ...

But it means plenty to me. All through my teenage years and twenties, Byres Road was the centre of the known universe. My schools, Hillhead Primary and Hillhead High, were on the same hill as my university, Gilmorehill, overlooking this busy shopping street, all small shops, pubs and cafes. There were two cinemas, an Underground station, the Western Baths of which I was a member - all reached from the same bus stop that brought me there from further west. You sometimes saw faces from these early tv programmes, because the home of BBC Scotland was just off the far end where Byres Road met Great Western Road, and you (or at least I) almost always met someone you knew. 

So that was where we spent three hours over lunch, catching up and gossiping and marvelling at how old we become. My cousin now owns a flat very nearby, which I envy because he and his wife can now once again regard this cosmopolitan area as home. I've put four pics from the restaurant in as an extra, because the decor and structure is interesting and the walls on the stairs are covered in fascinating collages of photos varnished into place. We ate in the upstairs gallery, and I finished off with a distinctly unwise pudding (I've eaten nothing since). 

My main photo is typical of my youth, the red sandstone tenements of the West End of Glasgow. I took it as we left the car park where we'd been lucky to find a space; I was wildly frustrated that our time was up as I wanted a wee wander around. Where we had parked, just off to the left, was a row of town houses, now demolished, in one of which Himself lived after he left University, in an extraordinary establishment run by two sisters, The Misses Flounder. Their house was known as The Floundery, and residence there was by invitation only and strictly controlled. Himself thinks that he was approved of because he was engaged to be married - this meant I was allowed to visit him in the sitting room - and would be there only until he'd bought a house. There were no students, but lawyers, musicians - quiet professionals. 

The street running left-right in front of us is Great George Street, a hill I walked up to Primary School and then to Secondary; a hill I sometimes came down for a change when I was at university. Along the street in front of us, Cranworth Street,  is the Western Baths, where I was a member for several years. And in Byres Road itself, which is off the left of the photo, is the Curlers' Tavern, now called the Curlers' Rest, dating from the 17th century. Instead of my waffling on into the night, you can see more about it here.

We were struck by how quickly we found ourselves back on the M8 heading home after we left; we stopped to shop in Tesco's en route to save me an early start tomorrow, and realised how much better our own Morrison's is these days. The sea was still bouncing as we came home, and the car even saltier - but it's raining now.