O Day of Rest And Gladness…

We were quitters today, total quitters. We completely abandoned the unpacking to sleep, listen to music, treat ourselves to bowls of buttery sweet butternut squash (cooked down to make a soup, but it never got there), and walk along the River Clyde. Sunrise this morning was at 7:56am, and the sun set at 6:05pm. It was deeply overcast today, the sky a cool slate gray, and the scant light made the day seem unbelievably short. (If you’re from around here, that will make you laugh.)

Thursday, we dropped into a little Thai restaurant we’ve discovered, and a man and his date interviewed us (while the fifteen tables closest to us hushed to listen. That was kind of amusing. Sort of.) “You do know it’s going to be dark here twenty-four hours a day very, very soon, dontcha?” the man asked genially, rolling his ‘r’s. Yes. We know. We know. Our mental health expert has reminded us to get outside every dry day we can.

We are losing light here at a rate of fifteen minutes per week. Next weekend the sun will rise at 8:10 a.m. and set at 5:49. That weekend, Daylight Saving Time will end so that people don’t panic that the sun rises at 8:12. Still, by mid-November, we will have six and a half hours of light. Not quite twenty-four hours of darkness, but closer to that than we’ve lived in before.

But Glasgow looks good in the dark. Glaswegians are of hearty stock; they don’t bother cursing the dark, they just ignore it, and most don’t let a little darkness stop the party. Tonight we walked home and saw the most gorgeous colored lights. Americans seem to save their pretties for Christmas, using the elegance of white lights to make a quiet statement during the summer months and saving anything else until after Halloween, but here, color flows. The Squinty Bridge is glowing purple, the Kelvingrove Gallery glows warm reds and blues. (We will eventually take pictures with something better than the camera phone, but just took these as we happened upon them.) There is a yearly Radiance festival in Glasgow, where for three nights, the city is bathed in colored lights, there are fireworks in this city at the drop of a hat, there seems to be all manner of good excuses for people to be out and about, striding along (generally without coats or hats, whereas we are horribly overdressed and perspiring) enjoying themselves while the pulse of the city throbs on.

One funny little thing we’ve seen in Glasgow are signs that say “Let Glasgow Flourish!” The phrase sounds like a typical city PR program, and we had no idea it was anything historical, until we happened across a paean by the poet William McGonagal, often remembered as the writer of the worst poetry in the English language. The poem is fairly long, with stanzas and choruses, and the first line alone makes you grin. (Beautiful city of Glasgow, with your streets so neat and clean… Neat and CLEAN? An industrial city in Victorian times?) And then there is the lovely chorus:

Then away to the West–to the beautiful West!

To the fair city of Glasgow that I like the best,

Where the river Clyde rolls on to the sea,

And the lark and the blackbird whistle with glee.

‘Tis beautiful to see the ships passing to and fro,

Laden with goods for the high and the low;

So let the beautiful city of Glasgow flourish,

And may the inhabitants always find food their bodies to nourish.

Lovely, isn’t it?

We enjoyed our ramble along the river today, and though we didn’t really get to see the science center or the Tall Ship, we have lots of time.

– D & T

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