A long wander in the sun

Have been enjoying the sunshine for the past few days with plenty of walking and burning. On Saturday I took a wander into town and began the wander with a quick browse through the CCA's Book Fair which turned out to be fairly unimpressive, and probably quite rightly so as the sun beamed in through the shop's large front windows burning the front room up. Most of the books and magazines littering the display tables bending and curving into weird and wonderful shapes in the freak Scottish heat. Following this I took a wander up the hill to the Glasgow School of Art and found myself walking down Renfrew Street, in front of the Mackintosh building for possibly the first time in a long time. The eastern end of the Mackintosh building has recently undergone some refurbishment. there is now a spacious shop and Mackintosh furniture museum where there used to be student classrooms and an art store. These changes have been carried out to bring it more in line with the original designs for that end of the building presumably this is not only to celebrate the building's centenary but also to cash in a little more on the Mackintosh name, giving the tourists more of a reason to visit the school building. Perhaps all part of a masterplan to earn the School more dough, something which was very much lacking when I studied there at the end of the nineties. Standing in one section of the new shop is a brilliant 1.60 scale model of the Mackintosh building designed and built by Brian Gallagher of B.G. Models. It even had a miniature version of the Mackintosh weather vane - brilliant.
After my visit to my old haunting grounds I took a long walk down past the GFT and through the shops and before I knew it, it was 5.30pm. The streets were warm and busy with summer shoppers. The small, fenced off courtyards, restaurant and pub exteriors packed with afternoon diners and drinkers enjoying the Scottish summer weather. After waiting on a bus for thirty minutes, and successfully burning my forehead in the rays, the number 20 eventually sauntered up Stockwell Street, as if it too was feeling oppressed by the heat. As the bus chugged its way across the Gorbals Street bridge the Rangers fans started piling in, towards the city centre, scarves aloft and singing. A victorious crowd I assumed as they sang at the bus as it passed.
Sunday was spent painting Mum and Dad's new extension walls with more of the blazing sunshine pouring in through the large front window. We did take advantage of the sun later though with a few beers and a barbeque out in the back garden once the girls had returned from their hen trip to Newcastle. I picked up Mum, Ka and Lynsey Ann from Hamilton as Dad fired up the barbie, piling on the sausages and chicken for another invisible army that was apparently coming to dinner. The trip down to Geordie land all seemed to have been pretty successful. Apparently Ka even met a local squad of Stormtroopers?!

Who is Susan Boyle?!

The rain clouds are back over Scotland after a week of pretty impressive weather. Still suffering the remnants of a terrible cold, I am now back at work. As I look out the small office window at my side I wonder if the rain clouds are a sign of things to come? It would seem they may be as in the office this week there is a little man with sideburns wishing to time us all at our work. He is to sit and watch us work tomorrow. Sent in by the higher authorities for highly suspicious reasons, no doubt.
Ka and myself, along with Dougie and Grace, my in-laws to be, visited house for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park yesterday. This brilliant location is to be the setting of our Big Day in July so we had to give it a visit, meeting Fiona the Wedding planner again. Designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the very early 1900s, House for an Art Lover was not built and opened until the early nineties but has since became a big attraction for all Mackintosh, and architecture, admirers worldwide. A collaboration between Glasgow City Council and the city's Art School the project used all of Mackintosh's original designs that he had created alongside his artist wife Margaret MacDonald all those years ago for a German Design magazine. At the time of the competition Mackintosh's designs were too late to qualify but did not fail to impress the judges as the architect's reputation grew. It would seem even the great Charles Rennie Mackintosh missed the odd deadline.
There were no missed deadlines yesterday though as the meeting with the Wedding Planner turned out to be fairly relaxed, largely made easy by the fact we had decided upon all menus and options over a year ago. the four of us then headed over to the Merchant City and had a fantastic lunch at the Sizzlers Steakhouse. A great two course Sunday lunch for an rather impressive £6.95. Certainly nothing to sniff about. The food was great. A rather lovely medium to well done steak in peppercorn sauce. Just thinking back about it is making me hungry again. It's sitting there sizzling over my head on a that long black plate smothered in pepper sauce in a cloudy vision to romantic piano music as I write.
Good to be back at work though. Creamy Chicken John is safely back from Rome having had a wonderful time and is now advising me of the best places to eat and dine whilst over there. DVD Andy, Gareth and Stuart are winding me up as always as, in mid conversation, I confessed to not knowing who Susan Boyle is? Apparently I've spent the past week under my bed. Susan Boyle, it turns out, is the name of the wee woman who has been discovered to have an amazing singing voice. The latest example of what makes Simon Cowell so gifted - at nodding his head. I excused my ignorance, got my coat and left before realising I did not actually care I did not know the name of this funny little lady from West Lothian. Well done to her though. At the moment you've either got that Talent Show on a Saturday night or, on the opposite channel, the crazed grin of John Barrowman warbling away again so I suppose it gives the British viewing public a varied choice of singers to sit and watch before the guessing game of Casualty. If your ever in on a Saturday night, Casualty is always great for the 'how are they going to die game?'. Oops, she's left that pot of boiling water on the edge of the washing machine as she pulls the wet laundry from it's innards! What's going to happen? No! He's climbed up that ladder balanced precariously on a wet pavement to rescue his long lost son from an exploding house! Ahhh, he can't remember what that disease is called?! And so forth. This was my Saturday night in the past weekend anyway after ferrying Ka back and forth to her hairdressers and helping my Dad with some loft work. Loft work that involved finally putting the Christmas decorations away. It's almost May now and I think my mother was being driven slightly frustrated by the fact that the fibre optic Christmas tree was still propped up against a wall in the front computer room. I nearly lost a finger in the death trap of a ladder my Dad uses to get up there. I kept having visions of descending through the roof of one of the house's bedrooms in a sheet of plaster powder, insulation felt, Star Wars toys and old tv aerials. In fact, there were a few moments up in that loft that were not far beyond a possible Casualty episode themself.

To a Mac

This weekend celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mr Robert Burns, Scottish poet, bard and lyricist. Burns was the closest thing to a Scottish rock star of medieval times. Scotland's biggest celebrity, touring the isles with his songs. The 25th of January is traditionally Burns night were all Scottish folk, or folk that pretend to be Scottish, gather for dinner, raise a dram in honour to the famed poet and eat haggis for dinner after addressing it in an odd, sacrificial like custom. In an official Burns night the haggis is always brought in to the room in a large dish following a piper. Burns' 'Address To a Haggis' is read out by the feast's delegate and at some point in the poem the speaker plunges a big knife into the bag of sheeps' meat, hearts, liver,lungs and any other odd end that had been lying about the butchers. When we were at school the idea of the Haggis being a bag of sheeps' brains was always popular. As long as I don't think about it too much I love the stuff though, even though reading the dishes ingredients is probably enough to turn you into a vegetarian for life.
No doubt we'll have some haggis over the weekend at some point after the other half comes back from her planned trip to the capital. Ka is off to Edinburgh to see Cinderella on Ice with her Sister, Mum and neice allowing me some glorious peace and quiet. Perhaps I'll do some painting, listen to some music, watch a few movies, finish my book or maybe just go out for a few drinks with whoever else is about.
Talking of birthdays the Apple Macintosh computer also celebrates it's 25th birthday on Saturday. Another cultural icon if ever there was one. Maybe I should have a ceremonial dinner for my iMac. Recite the manual and plunge a knife into a particularly big twin burger meal to the tune of something off my ipod? It should have been Scottish though with a name like that though. Disappointingly the Macintosh name came from an apple and not a Scottish designer famous for his Art School or even a Scottish designed raincoat (not sure if iMacs are waterproof anyway...). In Secondary school we had a computer room with around ten of the Macintosh Classics lining the walls and they could not do anything. I certainly cannot remember doing anything useful on them anyway. The only thing we did learn in that class was how to perform a decent golf swing, thanks to the computer teacher, Mr Morris. My home computers back then had been the ZX Spectrum followed, in the early nineties, by the Atari ST. The ZX Spectrum 128K was a classic. After plugging your cassette into it's deck and pressing play, you'd go away and have your dinner, or go out for a game of footie, allowing the screeching, grinding, noise of the Spectrum to howl out from the tv, moving with psychotic, garish lines and pixels, as it loaded your game. After an hour or so, on your return, the game would be loaded, and ready for action. With it's primary coloured pixel graphics you'd happily play away for approximately fifteen minutes only for it to crash or stall. At this point you'd hit the restart button and start the process all over again. Kenny and myself used to play a game involving an egg with a face, feet and hands, running about a fantasy land, dodging dragons, drowning in rivers, travelling by cloud and collecting stars, all to a tune that sounded like it had been composed by Kraftwerk on Ecstasy. In fact, looking back, I think the makers of the game had probably been on ecstasy.