at leisure

It's fairly rare that I get to trundle around Glasgow for trundling around Glasgow's sake as I'm usually passing between train stations (often lugging enough bags to make trundling sweaty and laborious) or just using up the odd spare half-hour after or before performing some other task but the odd dedicated session of wandering around for no reason other than wandering around is always useful to improve my general idea of where everything is in case I ever need to know where anything is over there. Visiting-parents had taken it into their heads to pop over to it to visit it and a few of its attractions, claiming to have never really been there at all (mother) or to not to have been there for about forty-five years (father) with the exception of their little excursion half-way to Dumbarton last year when they slightly overshot the city centre on their way to the hotel they stayed in before continuing Ayrwards for the wedding last year.

Conveniently Nicky was also popping through for a conference though scheduling errors meant we were on two different trains on the way through, though this seemed to mean that the earlier parent-train was stuffed full of nerks on mobiles being all commutery whilst ours was relatively quietly and less densely-populated by a few late-starting commuters and shopgoers. Their earlier arrival meant that they were installed in a set of tea-rooms by the time we arrived and Nicky pottered off to her thing so I ate cheaply on a bench outside though sadly lost a bagel to droppage, not trusting it to be safe to eat after half a second rolling along a pigeon-shit-splattered bit of pavement. Having recently visited a replica Mackintosh-styled house (containing real furniture) in Northampton parents wanted to go to the original of the room (containing replica furniture) which meant a fun trip on the smelly tube, father clunking his head on the relatively low-ceilinged carriage and mother seeming most impressed by the portable technology used to find the nearest station. She demonstrated her ability to correctly determine the points of the compass by means of the sun but then screwed up when we got out at the other end by assuming that the grid of streets was still aligned with the points of the compass.

There weren't many people in the art bit of the Hunterian to which we went first though there was the one obligatory loud-voiced poncing cock wandering about and barking at people. I employed my headphones to block him out though he was apparently telling at least five different people that he'd bought a Whistler recently for some sort of bargain price etc but his attire (mustard jacket, green trousers, ultra-shiny shoes, expensive jumper, hat and moustache) told you everything you needed to know about the gentleman without having to bear the sound of his speech. I thought Nicky would like to go to the fancy-décorhouse at some point so went to the sciencey museumy bit whilst parents went to look at the furniture. Glasgow University's main building is rather nice if a little hodgepodged, sort of like a university made out of spare bits of the Natural History Museum and the cloistery bits from Durham cathedral and the bad signposting meant a large amount of it was seen en route to the museum entrance.

That done, after shepherding parents back to the town centre and getting some coffee I had a few spare hours to wander randomly about. If Star Trek had been showing during the afternoon I'd have wandered purposefully IMAX-wards but was thwarted in this plan by it not being on before 18:30 today for some strange reason. We'll be through again at the weekend so I shall see if Nicky can be persuaded that she really does want to go and see the film and see it in giant-O-vision.

Insofar as there was any original plan it was probably to get back to Edinburgh before getting anything to eat but (despite everyone's distioct lack of stating their preference one way or the other) the new general if rather fuzzy consensus was that avoiding the busier trains and eating before travelling was the thing to do so people were herded towards Café Andaluz on the grounds that we remembered it as being nice one evening several years ago though at the time I had no idea where we were and certainly didn't think it was anywhere near as central.

As I was taking so much care to make sure I didn't leave any bits of camera on the train I entirely failed to notice that I'd left my favourite grey hoodie (not even slightly required at any poing during the day) down the side of my seat whem getting off at Haymarket. The FirstScotrail lost property number (based, from the number, in Glasgow) had been shut for a couple of hours already but a helpful wee bloke let me back through the barrier and spoke at his colleagues at Waverley, eventually determining that it was safe in the office at platform 14 for collection later. Slightly stained by various unwholesome train-substances it was rescued a short while later.