Finally - Glasgow

I've had a lot of subtley disguised complaints about the lateness of this update. In my excuse, I've been doing a bit since last time I updated. For example, right now I'm in Muscat. Last weekend I was in Manchester. At some point (I can't remember when) I was in Glasgow, which is when I actually prepared something to write, so here it is.

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Today I went to Glasgow, and as I was about to get on the train to go home to Newcastle, I realised that I’ve got to the point where I don’t take photos of every new place I go to. It’s a shame, Glasgow seems like a lovely city (I’m told that I’m lucky it didn’t rain – this side of the country noticeably gets more rain than the east coast). They’ve done a lovely job of retaining a lot of the old sandstone buildings and integrating new glass and marble buildings.

So I took some photos of the train station at least! It’s apparently the last station built with rivets, ie before welding.

I also went to Manchester on the weekend to hunt for places to stay there. Unsuccessfully for now, better luck next time. But it snowed!!! Big fat snowflakes, masses of them. I went into one house, came out and there was 2” on top of the cars. It melted pretty quickly, but was magical for a short while. I got back to Newcastle, and my courtyard was white.



Here's what my office view in Manchester will be.



I learnt something that amazed me today. Nobody in England builds their own house!!! I asked why do people build houses all the same, and was told that the developers only get one or two designs approved and go there from there. It took me a while to understand, but eventually I realised that the developers don’t develop the land – they build *all* of the houses!!! Because of planning approvals and so on, people really don’t have a choice except to buy a house off a developer, who’s built three streets of absolutely identical houses. He’ll get planning approval from the council which means he’s only allowed to use one colour brick even. It would be virtually impossible for someone to get a builder to build a house to their own design.
I passed an area in Glasgow with about 6 high rise apartment blocks sticking up, Gold Coast style, and even they were all absolutely identical.

I’d spent the day in a workshop looking at how the Scottish Executive was going to achieve its renewable energy targets, which are as high as 40% of electricity from renewables by 2020 (vs Australia’s pathetic 2%). I was taken by the way that a bunch of developers and government people were sitting around seriously discussing not whether, but how to achieve this, and how different the attitudes are here to those in Australia. And it makes me wonder if the lack of ability to design their own houses, and being forced into a much less individualistic housing, causes people here to be less defensive of their own patch and more community minded. I don’t know, just a thought. At the same time, I suggested there’d be less youth hooliganism if people could paint their houses different colours.

I finally got my boxes from Australia the other day. Lucky – just in time for Australia Day, because how could I go to the aus day party without my green and gold cricket shirt. Not to mention my stubby holders.

I realised that I hadn’t got round to putting my photos up from Hadrian’s Wall. Hadrian was roman, and his wall is an amazing structure that went the width of Great Britain in the roman days to keep out the marauding Scots. I went to one small part of it, walked along past the remains of one of the forts (located every mile along the track) and then out from the wall on the Scottish side looking back. It was another foggy day, and I was lucky to get back just before the fog completely obscured everything.

Here’s a link on the wall. Fraid that's all you're getting for now, as it's very late and the photos take quite a while to set up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian's_Wall