An amazing summer, trips through Scotland, Edinburgh, London – our first house guests and an introduction to our political activity here in Scotland….

I thought I would just send a note to tell you what we’ve been up to in Glasgow since the summer. I know “newsletters” are gross, but there is only so many ways you can describe what we’ve been doing…. I will try and write more often, I promise… We’ve been quite busy.

In August, we went up the north east coast of Scotland to Aberdeen for one weekend – the purpose was really to go to a village called Stonehaven where there is a seaside swimming pool. We got there, had a swim, and then headed into Aberdeen which was beautiful. We had glorious weather, and the city itself is all made out of grey granite. I can imagine in the winter it could be pretty dismal, but with sunshine it was beautiful. We drove home through central Scotland, beautiful hills, rivers – and past the ski resorts. It was gorgeous.

Then for our birthday, we went to Edinburgh for one weekend of the fringe festival which was a lot of fun. The city itself is beautiful, but imagine the city filled with 300,000 extra tourists – all slightly “alternative”. It was very cool. We saw some comedy shows, some good, some really bad, a piece of theatre, improv and specially picked for Michelle, a techno, visual thing – which was terrible! There was so much to see and do, you get bombarded with flyers for shows on, next year we will definitely go back over several weekends.

We were graced with a visit from some old friends of mine up from Yorkshire in England and another from Gatehouse of Fleet, which is in southern Scotland. All whom I haven’t seen for about 10 years. They came to stay for the weekend, we ate and drank very well! Sunday Michelle and I devised a walking tour of Glasgow and it’s pubs. It was a great day. We would walk for about 20 minutes, then stop for a drink in a different pub each time. Luckily the weather was beautiful so we got to sit outside in the beer gardens or by the river. The walk took us through Kelvinside Park, the West End, Botanical Gardens, along the riverside and into the city… it really was a lovely day, albeit very long, after about 7 hours…. it’s quite tiring… not to mention all of us were “slightly” tipsy by then. (we have since improved on the route, and added a few star bars into the walk – although it’s probably long enough to do now over 2 days!).

We also went to the theatre a couple of times in August, to see Bouncers and also Blues Brothers. Both of which were very good productions. We get touring West End London productions to our beautiful old theatre not far from home.

September has come and sped by. Michelle and I became politically active this month. I re-met someone I knew in Australia 15 years ago, who was the lead singer of a local band with a socialist outlook (Alistair) – and he has been keeping us up to date on events both political and musical that we might enjoy.

We went to a public meeting, followed by a demonstration calling for the closure of the Dungavel detention centre. It’s a former prison, now being used to house asylum seekers who have been refused refugee status and will be processed and returned home. It is supposed to be a place where the asylum seekers are housed for a couple of days only, waiting for their transport out of the UK, however, unfortunately, it is being used to lock up innocent families, women and children, sometimes for periods of 6 or more months. It’s a shocking situation. And one that needs to be addressed by the Scottish parliament. The problem here is that immigration is not under the control of the Scottish Parliament, but the Home Office in London. And the SMP’s here in Edinburgh are wiping their hands of the issue…. anyway…. we did our part, we drove down to Dungavel on the Saturday morning to protest (south west of Scotland – about 2 hours) and then headed out to the west coast for the rest of the afternoon in Ayr.

We also got the opportunity to get to London for a long weekend and stayed with Milene and Gabriel. London is always a blast. We stay in Hampstead with Milene, and go shopping on Oxford Street, and this time, we actually spent a whole day on the top of a double decker tour bus throughout London. I had never done the tourist thing in London before, we also stopped and visited where I used to work and hang out when I lived there in 1989…

Michelle has been playing golf regularly, I’ve even walked the course with her a couple of times… but I feel so bad just wandering about, that I offer to carry her clubs for her on and off. She hates it, she feels under pressure to play like a professional, because it’s like having her own caddy… and everyone is looking at her! I just can’t win! We also joined the “hillwalking club”. The club picks a hill, buses the group there (about 40 people), we walk the hill, break up into a couple of groups about halfway (I choose the easy group, of course Michelle picked the mountain climbing group!) then continue…. the easy group usually gets back to the pub about 2 hours before the mountain climbing group, so I was happily making new friends of Michelle’s colleagues in the pub by the time she finished – we were onto about our 4th round. It was lucky really, because my feet was so torn apart by blisters from my new hillwalking boots(!) still today – 5 days later, I can’t get my feet into any pair of shoes!

This week I spent the week at the Sheriff’s court in Glasgow, in support of a friend who was being charged on two counts of assault of a police officer and breach of the peace. Actually, she is the wife of Alistair, an Australian woman. The charges came from 2 years ago at a demonstration to save the local swimming pool, of which she was a lead campaign organiser. I went along because they wanted to fill the court to make it harder for the police to actually lie under oath. The theory being that the more the witness’s the less likely the police would lie…. anyway, it didn’t work, they stuck to their story, despite our large numbers, however yesterday the judge made her decision, NOT GUILTY on all three counts. It was brilliant, she didn’t even want the lawyers to sum up, it appears she saw through the lies quite early….

and tomorrow… we’re off to France to visit my dad and little brother for 4 days…. hopefully we will get to catch up with Roger too, you never know!

so… a busy couple of months with the above, and on top of that Michelle spent quite some time away in Paris, Oslo, London and Manchester this month (I went to the cinema while she was away… ) and she is off to the USA next month for work, I’ll try and keep more up to date with our news…..

I have sent pictures of all our trips and Glasgow itself, but if you haven’t seen them, let me know and I will forward the links to you if you’re interested.

And for those of you who have bets on when I will start getting bored and want to find a job… it hasn’t happened yet. I go to the cinema about 3 times a week at the moment, the summer movies were pretty crappy, but they are starting to get good now. This week I saw The Hard Word – and Australian gangster film, Calendar Girls – a British feel good film and Young Adam – a Scottish dark tale. Young Adam was actually very good. It has Ewan McGregor playing the lead, set in Glasgow. Very good. And I’m still keeping busy at home, trying out new recipes – and even baking!@#$!@! can you believe it! I was the official supplier of cookies this week at the Glasgow court house!!!

Anyway keep in contact, let me know your news – it’s nice to have email!