Bonnie Wee Scotland! Och Aye!

Hello kindly readers! I have arrived in Scotty-land.

But first you must hear the tales of what happened BEFORE I arrived. I had my directing class and that was okay. We had to do our seminars and that all went fine finity fine. Despite the fact that I'm still suffering from a cold so my speaking voice was somewhat husky and my speech was interrupted by fits of coughing - it went well. I did too much work, as always, for a piece of assessment that wasn't worth anything. Ho hum.

I was very distracted through class because I was too busy thinking about flying to Scotland that night. Yay! Packed my bag, walked to bus stop and caught the bus to Heathrow - Terminal 5. I couldn't believe how easy it all was. Made it to the airport early and read my book (very appropriate reading for a paranoid airport - American Psycho). Checked in and then had to face the hideous amounts of security checks. I had to queue, put liquids in a plastic bag, have my photo taken, passport checked (I'm going domestic how weird is that?), shoes off, bagged scanned, jacket scanned, x-rayed and luckily not patted down by a guard. Still early so I wandered around the airport sauntering in front, but never going in, of Gucci, Prada, Mulberry and Dior. Then I thought I would have a sandwich for dinner and not break the bank - how naive I am. 6 pounds later and I boarded the flight and was sitting next to a very Scottish woman who I could barely understand and she kept leaning over to point out interesting things in her newspaper like "a wee piggy. It ownlee weeighs a powwnd!". Sound it out. I know I had to. After staring dubiously at the pork pie I was served we landed. Very quick flight.

And now - I am in Scotland! I excitedly rushed into Julia's arms after having not seen her for many years. Sounds romantic but it wasn't - so relax. Everything went according to plan and Christine (Julia's mum) and Julia took me on a tour of all the old places I use to know when I lived here. My old house, the school, the shop (yes the shop) and so on. I soon re-acquainted myself with the joys of Scotland - Minstrels and Irn-Bru!

And, yes, I seem to be getting paler.

Had a relaxing evening watching "Sex and the City" then we hit the hay.

The following day - much to Julia's excitement - we took the Glasgow City Tour Bus. She said she had always wanted to go on it but was too afraid the tour guide would ask where she was from and she would have to answer "here" and hide her embarrassed face. So I was a good excuse. It was hilarious! It was a hop-on, hop-off bus so we hopped on and then hopped off at the "armadillo" which is a building that copies the Sydney Opera House and is next to the SECC centre where all the bands play. We got a stranger to take our photo next to the river in front of the bridge that Julia says keeps breaking. The strings holding it up keep snapping so people living around the area are used to the sound of sudden snapping. The bus eventually came back to retrieve us from windy turmoil. Back on the bus and back to the sights of the town. The guide said that there are only 600 000 people living in Glasgow and later that evening this would be discussed/argued with many Glaswegian youths.

It was so funny because on the list of sights to see there was a bridge, a motorway and a car park. HILARIOUS. Needless to say we didn't hop-off to get a better look at these "sights". It was so cold on the top of this open bus. Julia insisted we stay there (and it was awesome fun) except that I felt like the skin on face would tear off because of the cold air smashing against it. Here is a photo when we weren't going at top speed - somewhat more attractive I think. We sped onwards and hopped-off to go and have some lunch at a place which I absolutely loved when I was here many years ago - Di Maggio's. To keep the nostalgia flowing we asked to have the kiddies colouring page and set to work solving the join-the-dots and find-a-words. We ended up drawing pictures on the back which you can enter into their competition leaving your name and age. So Julia and I gave ourselves new normal names with really weird spellings like - Owen - Eoghan and Kirsty - Ciorstaidh ages 9 and 7. Here is the picture Julia drew featuring the tour bus, the characters from Sex and the City and the two of us running behind the bus. Very true because we missed the bus a couple of times.

Got back on and then went to the Kelvingrove Museum which Julia said took ages to build and that once it was built the architect killed himself because they built it the wrong way round. For some reason near the entrance was a dead pigeon in a glass box sitting on a table. It weirded us out so we needed to take a photo.

Inside we had a lot of fun seeing the various exhibits which included famous paintings and stuffed animals. Of course I paused at the stuffed kangaroo. There were loads of children on field trips looking excitedly around and making comments in their Scottish accents. We then found a big painted version of Scotland on the floor and Julia scurried about on the floor trying to find her house. In the end she gave up and collapsed on the map. It looked like a crime scene so we moved to the next exhibit.

The museum had a lot of interactive exhibits. There was one where you could type in what the people in the painting were thinking. So we made the butler think "Man I want some waffles. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm waffles". Then we found a great part of the museum where you could imitate Briar Rose - Sleeping Beauty. And there were costumes. Costumes made for children of about 7. That didn't stop us. We struggled into the tiny dresses, ignoring the slight tearing sounds. It was so funny. Some people walked by and had a giggle at our expense. We then found out it was harder to get the clothes off than on and had to take it in turn to help one another and wriggle out of the clothes.

Back on the bus, once more, and we decided to do a loop and then head back to Julia's house to change and go bowling. We were getting pretty tired by this time as you can see.

So then Julia, Vinny (Julia's boyfriend) and I went bowling. Vinny, typically being a boy, was really good at bowling and Julia and I could only beat him (JUST) by combining our scores. As you can see bowling shoes didn't really go with my outfit. We had dinner and were then picked up by one of Julia's friend and went to a birthday party of her friend. I ended up playing Mario Kart on the Wii with various Scots. We then switched to bowling and I got 4 strikes in a row! Of course I'm better at digital bowling than real bowling. Real bowling I only got one strike. Was a very lovely evening which ended with more watching of Sex and the City and sleepy time. More soon!