City lights

Just for a change, to show I sometimes get away from sheep and sunsets and food, here's a blip of the Christmas lights in Buchanan Street, Glasgow. I like the red lights on what used to be Wylie & Lochhead's building, and the illumination of the front of Princes Square is an improvement, I think, on the black metal leaves that crawl all over the front of that building in a slightly sinister fashion.

It's interesting that I always find winter dusk in the city a vibrant, cheerful period, whereas an hour later, say about 5.30pm, there's a more depressing vibe when people are heading for home and the smaller shops are putting up the shutters, heralding that sense of vacuum after the business of the day before the night-life begins. When I took this photo it was decidedly lively, with street musicians playing at different pitches and the guy who plays the fiddle on a tightrope just putting his gear up - and we still had shopping to do.

Lunch, after all, had gone on till 3.40pm ...