Sunday 01.07.2012

So that was June then, the summer slip sliding away in the rain.

Have kept walking but it`s often easier on tarmac in these conditions.

So this last weekend there was much tramping round Scotland`s cities: first Edinburgh, already bustling with tourists, girding up for the full frontal festival season.
Before, during and between the walking there were tales of the kindness of strangers,large platefuls of bangers and mash,examination of some of those inscriptions on the Parliament building**, Turkish coffee and baclava, an impressive cathedral(St. Giles) and a brief glimpse of the castle itself - closed to visitors by 5p.m.which seemed a shame.

Another day and more walking, a stroll round the National Gallery, salsa dancing in the street and a trip to the Circus.

Today it was Glasgow, more specifically Govan, with much evidence of past industrial glories and Victorian philanthropy and apparently due for regeneration.......

Oh....and the current book is fantabidozy...carted it round with me, despite it being a hefty tome, to grab another chapter at each watering hole.....more info to follow.......




**Possibly my favourite:
"When we had a king, and a chancellor, and parliament-men o' our ain, we could aye peeble them wi' stanes when they werena gude bairns - But naebody's nails can reach the length o' Lunnon."
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) Mrs Howden in "Heart of Midlothian"

Though this is rather splendid too:
"But Edinburgh is a mad god's dream
Fitful and dark,
Unseizable in Leith
And wildered by the Forth,
But irresistibly at last
Cleaving to sombre heights
Of passionate imagining
Till stonily,
From soaring battlements,
Earth eyes Eternity."
Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978)