One Man's Notes

I remember…

Coming back from a work lunch to see the whole office clustered around the TV watching footage of planes hitting the World Trade Centre. A major tragedy.

Talking to my Mum and then my Dad about it on the phone. He sounded vague, disconnected. Just over a week later, he’d be dead. Why is dealing with that getting harder? Sometimes the small tragedies are harder than the big ones.

Just over a week ago, I went home to visit my Mum. This was a good deed, given her current situation, and like all good deeds it did not go unpunished. As I set up my iBook to recharge over night, the power cable made a “bzzt” noise, there was a startling electric blue flash. Then the cable stopped working.

Oooops.

So, I’ve been without my iBook for the best part of a week. Lorna made some jokey comments about withdrawal symptoms. Need…e-mail…need…web access. Maybe she’s right.

The net result is that I’m typing this on my brand new iMac. Well, not strictly true, as I bought it in the used goods section of John Lewis, but you get the general idea. The iBook was never intended to be anything more than a temporary replacement for a desktop while my father was ill and I was traveling to Suffolk every week. Now Dad’s with the Lord, I really need a desktop. I do seem to write faster on one and I have a fair amount of freelance to do in the coming months.

In a fit of further Apple geekiness, I headed off to the Apple Expo in Islington this morning, and what a fine event it was. The atmosphere was really pleasant and friendly than any IT-related show I’ve been to in a little while. The age range was quite amazing. Everyone from small kids with their families to people that must have been older than my Mum. Oh, and far more women than you’d expect from a computer show.

I think the key note of the experience was fun: “look at all the cool stuff you can do with these machines”. Oh, and the women wandering about with iPods for people to try were temptation incarnate. I resisted though and satisfied myself with an iPod poster,

Most vivid memory - half a dozen glowing Apple logos from just above floor level in one of the empty areas on the balcony. They were from the Powerbook G4s of the various men and women up there easting their lunches and playing with new software.

This is amusing. I don’t normally post the results of Online Quizzes here, but seeing as this result seems to go against the general trends, I couldn’t resist:

I scored 2 on the pervertedlogic.com CyberWhore Poll!

Are you sure you have ever actually BEEN online? That’s not a TV you’re sitting in front of, you know. How you have managed to avoid sex on the internet for so long makes you one for the record books. You’re having your slutty sister fill this quiz in for you, aren’t you? No wonder you list Vatican City as your profile location.

Well, last night I took some time to visit my brother’s new house in Clapham. He and his wife have stretched themselves to buy an expensive house in a nice street. Well, I say expensive but by London standards it’s really something of a bargain. The reason for this is simple: it needs a lot of work. It looks as if very little has been done to it in the last 30 years - which, oddly enough, is exactly the length of time the previous owners were there.

Now, that’s not actually a bad thing as far as I can see. They’ll make one hell of a lot of money out of it in the end, as long as they’re prepared to sit tight and weather and recession that we see in the next five years. The problem is that they need to put up with a few months living in less than ideal conditions. I think it’ll be worth it. Let’s see if Mark feels the same.

In other news, London is dull, grey and overcast and I’m really not sure I want to be here today. Connex was its normal travel nightmare and crawled into work late. Still, they owe me seven days' holiday still, so I’m not gonna sweat it too much. I think I need to kick my assistant and get her to sort out her holiday days so I can arrange mine.

I can hardly believe that just under three days ago I was happily walking by the shores of Loch Lomond. A week may be a long time in politics but it’s an eternity in London. On my walk home this evening a saw, very briefly, someone being loaded into an ambulance. Looks like they were run over on Lee High Road. God be with them this evening.

At times all I can see is the dirt, fumes, anger and frustration of London. No-one has any time for you, or for themselves. I know the magic of the city will reassert itself at some point, but I can’t help but think back to walking the shores of the Loch. I could live there, in that clean air and surrounded by the awe-inspiring scenery. It’s only about 20 minutes from Glasgow, too, should I feel the need for the city life all of a sudden.

Today, Lorna and I explored Dollar, if one can truly explore a place where you spent the majority of your childhood. The last 12 years have done little to change Dollar. The school has developed a little and some of the shops have swapped around but that’s about it. It’s still a provincial town in the Scottish countryside, sheltering under some pretty serious hills.

We spent some time walking, climbing and running up and down Dollar Glen and explored Castle Campbell. We looked at old houses I once lived in and the schools that educated me. We visited rugby pitches where I had miserable times and sports halls where I had great successes.

Wherever we went we seemed to run into people from the past. David Brown, helping run a fencing competition. The curator of the castle. The Toons and Janet Carolan in the Dollar Museum.

The things I miss about Dollar really aren’t about the place itself. No, it’s the community, the freedom and the sheer healthiness of the environment. The countryside, the trees, the rivers and the lack of pollution. The air smells and tastes good as it burns its way into your lungs - not something you could ever say about London. People are friendly and don’t judge you in the same way and for the same things that Londoners do. It’s been 12 years since Iived in Dollar and maybe 9 since I visited it for any length of time. Yet they welcomed me warmly with enthusiasm and genuine interest in me and my family.

I have some serious questions to ask myself when I get back to London. Most of them concern wether I really want to be there at all.

Our luck seems to be holding. After an interesting day doing some of the sights of Glasgow, including the Lighthouse (more of which later) and the St Mungo Museum up by the Cathedral, we headed back out to Prestwisk to pick up the car. We got upgraded for free. So, I’m trundling aboud the highways and byways of Scotland in a car that’s a whole lot bigger than Zoe and more comfortable to boot. Hurrah.

The Lighthouse was an interesting experience, mainly because I’d been round it while it was under construction when doing a feature on Glasgow architecture. The finished product was visually impressive if culturally unispiring. The exhibitions were lacking in the innovation and excitement promised by the intial idea, and I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed as I left. The single best part was a DVD exhibition of how avant garde architects in Japan are trying to find new and interesting soultions to the housing crisis over there. Some of the thought process that produced alternative ways of looking at urban development were fascinating and thought provoking, even if some of the results were rather sterile. It’s a concept that it might be worth examining in EG.

St Mungo was fascinating for reasons I’ll delve into another time.

Anyway, I’m now sat in the second hotel of the trip, converted from the old boys school up by Stirling Castle. I can hear a piper piping away in the distance while Lorna sleeps off breakfast. Grey clouds are scudding over the Ochils in the distance and I can just see, in the distance, the area where I spent most of my childhood. I’m looking forward to going back.

Glasgow clubbing, or at least the part of it that we saw last night, is something else. For a start, it’s just about the first time in my life that I’ve felt too old to be in a club - and that’s not just my recent birthday talking. As Lorna said, some of the men will be quite attractive when they hit puberty. As for the women, well, London has this bad habit of twisting your perceptions as to what normal women are. To quote Lorna again: “These women wouldn’t be out clubbing in London, they’d be at home crying until they were thinner.”

You know what? Although there was more flesh on show than I prefer (proto-Victorian that I am sometimes) and far too many flabby, bulging stomachs emerging from hipsters and cropped tops, the women seemed happy with themselves, and that has to be a good thing.

The other curious difference was the behavior of men and women on the dance floor. In London, women relax and have fun while the men preen, show off and try to get attention. Here, it’s exactly the other way round. I don’t know if that reflect the relevant power levels within the dating scene, but it was an unexpected switch around.

Well, we’re still in the suite at the hotel. It’s still a result!

Well, I’m in Glasgow and it’s damn good to be back in Scotland. There’s a crispness to the cold up here that just feels right to my system and I always feel a sense of returning home when I leave the airport because of that.

Yesterday was not a great day. London’s public transport system was conspiring to mak my life more difficult that it really ought to be. Three separate transport problems made my journeys into minor nightmares. I’m not gonna dwell on that, though. Instead, I’m going to talk about my holiday. Be glad I don’t have slides to show you.

The flight was a dream. Given that it cost us less than the price of the tickets to the airport (Stanstead, if you care) we did well there. Admittedly, Lorna did sulk a little when I was distracted by the sight of the stewardess tying the inflatable lifejacket straps across her bum right by face, but that’s nothing I won’t pay for weeks for. Never mind, it was worth it.

The train from the airport to Glasgow was dirt cheap - subsidised travel - and enjoyably shabby. The taxi driver to the hotel was chatty and cheerfully informed us that our hotel’s in the west end: the best place to go out at night. Bodes well for this evening.

And the hotel…

Initially they gave us the keys to Room 101. You’ll understand why this made me nervous. When we got there, it was a twin room. This is not what I booked. We marched back downstairs and demanded (OK, asked politely) if it could be changed. They only had one double left.

So, here I lie in a bed big enough for four (not that I’ll be testing that out), listening to Lorna washing two rooms away. Yes, we’re in the Kelvin Suite for the price of a budget room. Result!