My wife, Tamiko, and I spent a week in Glasgow to celebrate our friend’s appointment as minister of Glasgow Cathedral. Naturally, I came equipped with my camera. The following is drawn from notes I scrawled along the way:
May 02 – Thursday
Depart YYZ 21:10
Check-in was uncommonly stress free, and since there was nothing different about the check-in process this time around, I can only surmise that we have become inured to the various indignities of air travel. Two different people swabbed the contents of my camera bag and, where once I might have grown anxious, on this occasion, I felt indifferent.
As we waited to board, we each had a tea (both fearing the onset of yet another cold; there is something about the dry air of airports and airplanes that induces the feeling of an oncoming cold, even if it isn’t true). Tamiko took an iPhone shot of me holding my tea and posted it to Instagram. When I looked at it, the face staring back at me was unfamiliar. It’s the first time I’ve felt that a photo of me unequivocally contradicted my concept of myself as someone only recently done with his twenties. It represented my true age—moustache more grey than brown, bags under the eyes, heavier set than when we were first married, on the other side of middle age and starting to slip down that long slope that ends in the Glasgow Necropolis. I almost fell into an existential/ontological crisis before boarding the plane.
The plane was uncomfortable. I read a couple essays from Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind, but had trouble staying awake and put away the book, thinking I’d be able to sleep for most of the flight. Didn’t happen. The flight wouldn’t allow it. Instead, I watched Clint Eastwood in The Mule. I don’t know why. They served me a meal I couldn’t eat, so I relied on M & M’s instead. Three people required oxygen during the flight and one of them had to be removed by EMS personnel when we landed, though thankfully not in a bag. The woman across the aisle from Tamiko insisted on standing in the aisle for most of the flight and frequently got her ample buttocks stuck in Tamiko’s face. I was the recipient of much complaining.
May 03 – Friday
Arrive GLA 08:30
On landing, we caught a cab to our hotel on West Nile Street, a centrally located member of the Holiday Inn chain and therefore comfortably generic. We could open our mini fridge, crack open the usual brands of bottled water and soft drinks, lie back on our bed and watch episodes of American sit-coms and police procedurals. We upgraded our room from a double bed to a king—or what the concierge called a Scottish king (i.e. a queen). I’m inclined to call our bed Bruce (a Scottish king). I wonder if Robert the Bruce was unnaturally small.
After settling in, we agreed we were more hungry than tired, so we set out in search of food, no small task given my celiac tendencies and Tamiko’s growing list of dietary restrictions. The weather was cool with occasional sun peeking through the clouds. We settled on breakfast at the Caledonian Club as we arrived there at 11:30 and they don’t bring out the lunch menu before noon. Afterwards, we went back o our room and slept for three hours on Robert the Bruce.
Tamiko’s hip is bothering her and she is in some pain. I blame the big-assed woman on the plane. To avoid getting lost in her crack, Tamiko spent most of the flight leaning in towards me. The skewed seating arrangement must have done something to her hip. We went in and out of drug stores looking for some kind of pain relief. The curious thing about these drug stores is that none has a druggist on duty or even a dispensary for “real” pharmaceuticals. The most knowledgeable person on duty is an aesthetician, which is fine if you have an eyebrow emergency, not so fine if your hip hurts.
May 04 – Saturday
Surprisingly, we woke up at 8 am without an alarm. We ate breakfast at the hotel restaurant, La Bonne Auberge, but won’t be going back as the food is crap. (Note that this statement is not literally true. The food wasn’t made from actual crap. I simply wished to indicate that the food was shit. [Note that this statement is not literally true. The food wasn’t made from actual shit. I simply wished to indicate that the food was garbage. (Note that this statement is not literally true. The food wasn’t made from actual garbage. I simply wished to indicate that the food tasted like poo.)])
Thank god for similes. I thought I was never going to crawl out of that rabbit hole. (Note that this statement is not literally true. I was never literally in a rabbit hole. I simply wished to indicate that I had fallen into a bit of a semantic morass. [Note that this statement is not literally true. I was never literally in a morass. I simply wished to indicate that I had mired myself in a linguistic swamp. (Note that this statement is not literally true. I was never literally mired in a linguistic swamp. I simply wished to indicate that when I used a metaphor to characterize our gustatory experience, it felt like I was sinking in verbal quicksand.)]) Thank god for similes. I thought I was never going to escape from that trap…
Tamiko’s hip was hurting. We went to various physiotherapists—or at least to their premises—but with no luck. The first, at 162 Buchanan Street, was helpful but fully booked. You couldn’t simply walk in. You had to buzz and wait for someone to unlock the door. The clinic was up a steep flight of stairs, which raised an obvious question about accessibility for people in too much pain to climb stairs. The fellow at the Buchanan Street clinic directed us to a colleague in Merchant City in a building on the northwest corner of George Square, but we couldn’t gain access. The buzzer didn’t work. We tried to phone, but couldn’t figure out how phone numbers work in the UK (that’s always been a mystery to me; I wake up in a cold sweat from nightmares about phoning for help in the UK).
From there, we limped over to Hope Street where Google Maps showed a couple physios located on the west side of Central Station. Again, no luck. For one, we couldn’t even find a point of entry to the address. For the other, we could gain entry, but the physio wasn’t on site. The whole time, Tamiko was limping and could barely make it through an intersection before the light changed. She was in a foul mood, catastrophizing a gloomy future for herself. Naturally, I began to catastrophize too, and imagined a future in which I carried Tamiko on my back everywhere we went.
Tamiko then remembered a health store on the south side of GOMA that offers massages so we went there and booked an appointment for 3 pm. We returned to the hotel for a pee break then out for lunch. I had seen a vegan restaurant called The Flying Duck (ironic, no?), but after limping there, we found stairs to a basement and Tamiko refused to enter. I’m not sure if she refused because there were stairs or because it looked really dodgy. Instead, we ate lunch around the corner at the Atholl Arms—Indian pub fare that we could just as easily have gotten across the street from our home in Toronto.
A Scottish independence march (AUOB – All Under One Banner) was beginning at 1:30 from Kelvingrove, across Sauchiehall, through Nelson Mandela Place, through George Square and on down to Glasgow Green. I walked with Tamiko down to her physiotherapist appointment, then left her there while I played the flaneur amongst the marchers. It seems like only yesterday I was visiting on the eve of their first independence referendum where I had conversations with Nae voters in the Ranger’s Clubhouse and Aye voters in the Miner’s Club in Kirkintilloch. Today, the mood was celebratory and not confrontational even as the marchers passed Nae supporters who stood in a group on the south side of George Street.
May 05 – Sunday
Breakfast at Brown’s then up to the Cathedral for the 11 o’clock service. It’s been 3 or 4 years since I last set foot in a church (Orpheus choir rehearsals & concerts excepted). Mark preached on John 21:1-19 where the risen Jesus appears on the shore as Simon Peter and the rest of the disciples are fishing. Mark’s sermon turned the usual trope on its head. Ordinarily, good Christians like to think of Jesus as someone they invite into their lives, to support and sustain them on their journey. Mark suggested that the usual trope is all well and good, but the truth of the matter is, we’re more comfortable holding Jesus at a distance; when he gets too close, it’s inconvenient because he starts to demand thing of us, as he did of Simon Peter once he put on his clothes and swam ashore.
Two things occurred to me:
1) Mark is addressing a middle-class congregation for whom Jesus really is inconvenient. Would any of this be an issue for the working poor?
2) Mark is going to start nudging the congregation to take a more active role in the local scene, with the Lodging House Mission to the south, serving some of the poorest of the poor in Glasgow, and housing developments to the north where many refugees and immigrants first settle.
Mark said afterwards that when he was preaching, he couldn’t find us in the congregation; Tamiko has lightened her hair and he was expecting dark hair. After the service, a woman named Aileen Hunter gave us a tour of the Cathedral and crypt and I earned bonus points because I know about the melodramatic bit in Sir Walter Scott’s Rob Roy. (While listening to a sermon in the crypt of Glasgow Cathedral, the protagonist hears a whisper from behind: “You are in danger in this city.” He turns but the speaker has vanished. See Rob Roy, Vol. 2, Chapter 3.)
The organist, Malcolm, took us to the organ loft for a look around. Apparently, he’s an anesthesiologist who does this on a volunteer basis. Maybe that explains why so many people fell asleep during the service. 🙂
After our tours, we celebrated communion in the chapel behind the chancel. Mark had to be quick about it. Once the clock strikes one, the space opens to tourists again. Tourism waits for neither gods nor men. One of the challenges Mark has discovered is that, as minister of a church which happens also to be a major tourist attraction, he can’t leave anything in the vestry otherwise the tourists steal it. Remarkably, the vestry comes with a washroom. I say remarkably because the cathedral is 900 years old and was never built with a thought for indoor plumbing, so whatever pipes run in and out have been bored through solid masonry.
After the service, Mark drove us up to the new manse in Bishopbriggs where we had a visit over soup, then it was back to the Cathedral for the 4 pm Choral Evensong service. A fellow named Glen, who used to work for the CBC in Winnipeg, is responsible for live-streaming the service. We gathered in front of the nave, closer to the front doors, while tourists walked to either side. It was an odd experience to participate in a worship service while tourists gawked at us like we were freaks. I wanted to jump up and say: But I’m only a tourist, too. The only thing that kept me in my seat was the knowledge that the service was being live-streamed. Decorum on video is important.
May 06 – Monday
For breakfast, we picked up a coffee from Starbucks and hard-boiled egg and banana from Prêt à Manger. We asked if there were more items for the Allergy/Gluten-free section (the shelves were bare), but the person on cash refused to answer what struck us as a straight-forward question, insisting that we wait for the manager. When the manager arrived, she said “No” and that was that. When we told Mark about our odd encounter, he said that Prêt à Manger had been embroiled in law suits and controversy because a patron had died of an allergic reaction to mislabeled food. Even so, I can’t see how a simple “No” from a cashier could have attracted liability.
After snacking in our room, Mark pulled up and off we went to their new cottage in Portpatrick. Along the way, we stopped at the Hansel Alliance, an intentional community for people with developmental challenges. They have a little café there where we each ordered a bowl of split pea soup and I had a diet Irn Bru! A girl with Down Syndrome stopped by our table and gave Mark a big kiss. I wonder what it is about Mark that drew the girl to him. Could it be his hipster beard? Surely not. (The next afternoon, on our way back into Glasgow, we learned on the radio that Jean Vanier had died. It seemed an odd coincidence that we should hear this just as we were passing the Hansel Alliance which, presumably, has drawn from the experience of l’Arche communities.)
In the afternoon, Tamiko and I took a long walk down to a secluded cove. The sun shone on large swaths of bluebells. We walked along narrow country lanes, lined on either side with beech trees whose branches met overhead and enclosed us in a tunnel. Though greening, the trees were not fully in leaf yet. Along the way, we passed fields of cows and sheep while pheasants passed freely from one field to the next, darting through hedges or taking flight over low stone walls. There was also a proliferation of ferns still unfurling. Had we been in northern Ontario, we might have harvested them and fried them up as fiddleheads. The trees were full of birds (in fact, a murder of crows roosted in front of Mark and Audrey’s cottage, and everyone talked about Alfred Hitchcock).
Later on, the three of us walked with Alfie through the golf course and down into the town. The sun was setting and beautifully illuminated a little lighthouse in the harbour. As I knelt to take a shot, an older couple approached. They were birders with field glasses slung around their necks, enthusing about some breed or other that was nesting in the harbour and is peculiar to that locale. The woman was no taller than me kneeling, so I stayed on my knees through the whole conversation. They asked where I was from and, when I told them, said they had been to Toronto once, briefly. Went up the CN Tower and discovered the subway. I said there was no better way to meet the people of Toronto than to ride the subway. “Oh no, dear, we’re talking about the sandwich chain. Back when we visited Toronto, we didn’t have them in the UK, and we just love them.”
Mark had wanted to eat at the Waterfront Hotel Restaurant because they allow dogs in the bar, but when I caught up with them and took my pint of cider, the hostess said they weren’t serving as it was getting late and there were no other customers. We went to the pub next door in the Crown Hotel and could order food from the bar while Alfie lay at our feet. We were occasionally pestered by a modestly drunk patron who reminded me of Spud from Trainspotting and, like Spud, was utterly incomprehensible. We walked back through the town in the dark. When we left the street to walk along the old farm lane that leads to the cottage, it was pitch black. We had to use the flashlight app on our phones to find our way back.
May 07 – Tuesday
While Mark stayed at the cottage to work, Tamiko and I took a walk back to the cove. It was overcast with intermittent rain, which I prefer for things like bluebells and wet surfaces. In these conditions, you can produce more intimate shots with more saturated colours. There were pheasants everywhere. Presumably they are breeding now. We walked into Portpatrick along a trail that hugs close to the shoreline. Although it is elevated ground that overlooks cliffs, the trail is defined enough that even Tamiko was able to walk it without fear. In Portpatrick, we ate lunch at the Waterfront Hotel Restaurant (the one that wouldn’t serve us the night before) then returned by the same path we had taken in the dark.
May 08 – Wednesday
We made a slow start of our day. Walked down West Nile Street for breakfast at Bill’s Café. Now, whenever I encounter the name, Bill, I hear it in the voice of an aging Latin American man who voices the final “l” to give the name two syllables — Beel-uh. Quentin Tarantino has forever ruined that name for me. We walked back in a light rain to the hotel room where Tamiko dozed while I caught up on my journaling.
Eventually, we got ourselves moving and walked along Sauchiehall Street to the Kelvingrove Museum.
Tamiko was feeling achy so we didn’t do much wandering in the museum. She sat on a bench while I followed my Kelvingrove ritual—photograph people passing the harpy, Celaeno, a marble sculpture by Mary Pownall, trying for a shot in which it appears the harpy is pouncing on an unsuspecting patron.
From there, we set out for Ashton Lane, but I led Tamiko astray, wandering back and forth through the campus, returning to our starting point before going out into Argyle Street and up Byers Road as we should have done in the first place. There is a huge construction project in the middle of the campus that blocks the most direct path to Ashton Lane (at least that’s my excuse). As it turns out, Ashton Lane isn’t terribly interesting anymore. The tapas bar is gone and so it’s mostly pub fare and tired shops. If, ordinarily, it’s frequented by interesting and fashionable people, the rain must have kept them away (excepting us, of course). We went to the Bothy instead and enjoyed an excellent meal along with cider, wine, and a whisky flight to finish (Bowmore, Lagavulin, and Talisker). It was about 4:45 when we finished our lunch. We caught a cab back to the hotel, then bought a few things at the local Sainsbury’s to eat in our room. While Tamiko lounged in the room, I went out with my camera for an early evening wander.
May 09 – Thursday
Once again, we had breakfast at Beel-uh’s Café. We wandered around Merchant City, then back to Buchanan Street where we had our morning coffee in the Café Nero on one of the upper floors of the Frasers Department Store. In January, Frasers was purchased by Sports Direct for £95 million from Glasgow City Council as administrators of the Strathclyde Pension Fund. They have pledged to spruce things up. They might begin by replacing the carpet on the stairs. It looks like it’s been there since the business was founded in 1849.
We ate lunch at the Ardnamurchan Restaurant to the north end of Hope Street. Reasonably decent. We explored the Necropolis for a little while, then went down to the Queen Street train station where we met Mark and went to The Counting House for a final drink together. This was in the same building as one of the physiotherapists we had tried (and failed) to see. Mark was attending the installation of a new head of one of the trade guilds. He was there in his official capacity as minister of Glasgow Cathedral to open the affair with a prayer, which he had composed in verse on his six minute train ride from Bishopbriggs. After we said good-bye to Mark, we walked down to The Corinthian for dinner.
