At Home and Abroad

Hello from another cold and clear week in Glasgow! Okay, clear was probably an exaggeration; it whipped wind and poured for part of the week, but …that kind of happens so often we forgot about it. Anyway! TODAY is clear and gorgeous… okay, it was… a few wisps of fog developing… but the sun’s about to go down anyway. (Why, yes, it is only 2 p.m., thanks for asking!)

We realized that we hadn’t been taking many pictures of the inside of our Hobbit Hole. Part of this is just because, well, we see it every day, but part of it has also been that we’ve been a bit down about the place since the heater has been out of commission — it’s remarkably hard to keep things clean and dusted in a land where everything a.) is made of sandstone, and b.) your wall is leaking a fine white dust of the plasterboard. We’d just sort of come to a halt on doing anything more to beautify the place — however, the contractors have ordered the scaffolding, though, so things are looking brighter on that front, and in the next few weeks we’re planning on getting a new bed (one that is actually over six feet long, so D. can at last sleep comfortably), so we’ll eventually take more shots of the upstairs area.

Meanwhile, shown here are our bikes, hanging by the “back” door. The “back” door is actually the upstairs door, and is directly above the “front” door. Confused much? The flats are built variously; some of them have the upstairs door as the “front” doors, which means that they have upstairs living rooms and kitchens, and downstairs bedrooms. However, some of the neighbors on our floor, whose layout is the same as ours, use their upstairs doors as their front doors …anyway. We find this a trifle odd, as that means they would be bringing guests into their houses on the level with the bedrooms, rather than on the level with the living room and kitchen.

Of course, this makes sense if you’re renting a room in a flat, and the bedroom door is your personal exit. It has its own lock and entryphone up there, too. But no mail slot, fortunately; the poor postman is generally confused enough. (He calls T. “lamb” and “pet” and tells her she’s “a good gel.” Which is, to her, evidence of deep, deep confusion.)

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This sculpture is part of our daily trek through Kelvingrove Park. Now that it’s dark in the mornings, and no one will see us outside attempting to jog, we get in about 45 minutes of brisk walking (it’s generally bitterly cold at 6:30 a.m., so the “brisk walk” turns into out and out panicked running, fleeing the sting of hailstones) combined with about 45 minutes of serious weight lifting. (T. has a writing friend who once said that push-ups helped her think. T’s goal is to bench press 200 lbs. so that she can say that helps her think. Ha, ha.)

This is all part of our ongoing goal to be less hermitic this winter, and also just a good idea, in the quest to avoid getting sick. Getting up while it’s still dark in Glasgow also means that we don’t have to actually see any students, and there are only about three people at the University gym at that hour. (We avoid the weekends, when it’s tournament time, etc.)

Anyway, back to the sculpture: It’s a mother lioness, cubs at her feet, carrying a peacock in her mouth. The peacock’s tail-feathers appear to have been torn away, to be gripped in mother lion’s feet. While this just might be a sculpture of a lion, much of the sculpture we’ve seen in the park and throughout the city is symbolic. We’ve been pondering what this one could mean. D. says that he thinks the mother lioness is Britannia – the British Empire – while the lion cubs would be Scotland, Wales, and/or Northern Ireland. Which leaves the peacock. Could that be India? Since there are only two cubs, though, and since Scotland is traditionally represented as a Unicorn In Chains, we vote that the cubs are Wales and Ireland… which may or may not support the India-as-peacock theory. We’re sure someone out there knows…

As always, D. has his camera in hand during the week, and is out and about between classes, snapping pictures of the world. In a city of this size, this either elicits smiles or hostility, as some people are convinced… well, we’re not sure of what they’re convinced, but they’re sure that photography is somehow up there with all the other Things That Are Wrong These Days. Anyway, whether taking photos of the autumnal trees or the trash on the sidewalks, D. can be remarkably deaf to others when he’s snapping away, so he didn’t notice the woman who was bustling down the stairs toward him until she burst out with, “Good!”

“What?” he asked.

“Good for you!” she said firmly. “Are you taking pictures for the Council?”

“Um, no,” D. confessed.

The woman then asked if D. was doing a school project on urban sprawl…and told him where to find some other “good specimens.” (!?) Eventually, they got themselves all straightened out, and she told D. he should be taking pictures for the council — and as it turned out that she is a council member, she would like his photographic evidence for the problem that Glasgow is having with many landlords who prefer to throw furniture on the streets than to pay the city the £30 charge to dispose of it.

The woman is very nice, and also very indignant on the subject! After bending D’s ear for some time, she passed along her email address, and asked for all of the pictures he has of trash on the sidewalks.

Finally, D.’s penchant for taking pictures of chairs set atop public phone boxes, mattresses in the middle of soggy fields, and couches on sidewalks is going to have a proper outlet! (Perhaps this will stop people giving him odd looks. But …probably not.)

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We took advantage of the continuing clear weather yesterday, to get out and see a bit of Glasgow’s Merchant City. While we’ve been there numerous times before, we’ve previously somehow missed visiting Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art. A short trip on the bus, a few blocks walking through the crowds (!!!!!) of shoppers, and we arrived at George’s Square, which was filled with crowds of tourists, flocks of pigeons, and pipers and drummers dancing. Imagine, just a couple of blocks from the Square, and we’re in the second most frequently visited museum of modern art in the UK. It really is amazing, the things which are just around the corner from our apartment.

Modern Art is always… weird, but fun, and GOMA has a nicely inclusive feel that bring in work from the city’s adopted communities. There’s African art, and the Persian tile calligraphy is gorgeous. The museum itself, with its colorful windows, glass elevator, and neon sculptures and ancient columns is gorgeous. We spent a pleasant couple of hours just wandering about, and made it home before the brief rain started up again. All told, a nice break from the usual weekend avoidance of the world.

We hear that it’s in the 70’s there in California, and we… are torn between hoping that it’s properly wintry by the time we go home, and hoping that the weather saves some of the lovely sunshine for us! The late hurricanes are changing the weather here, too — but really, we’re just not going to complain about the high pressure and the lovely blue skies. (We should. We’re just not going to!)

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Here’s hoping that soon we’ll have news for you of major construction and major rebuilding! T. encouraged the property owner to fax the needed paperwork to Scotland from Australia, and has made numerous phone calls to then track said faxes down and get them routed to the right people (!!!), so really, as soon as the scaffolding people get scheduled, things will begin. Here’s hoping that it really and truly will only take the projected fortnight to the pipes get ripped out and re-installed. Fingers crossed that we’ll be able to have company someday and that with a working heater and hot water T. will get her bath tub back!!!

The rest of today will be spent in reading and writing, in between boiling and baking (and don’t forget EATING) fresh bagels. We hope you’ve had a wonderful weekend as well!

– D & T