Tuesday 28 February 2012

Wow!

This is near the town of Wollongong, just south of Sydney. I want to ride on that road!

I woke up this morning and checked emails on my netbook before surfacing, as I usually do. I went from bleary-eyed to wide-eyed in 0.24 seconds when noticing the date on the screen as 29/2/12. I leave on the 1st and still have loads to do. The date was wrong of course - but isn't it odd how we rely so implicitly on computers.

What a funny old place Glasgow is. I'm looking about me much more than usual, as I'm about to leave this world behind for two whole months and enter another world. All day it was that peculiar weather between drizzle and mist, or smir as they call it here, which is so common. I remember, when first landing in this northern outpost, in December 1990, that it rained for part of every single day and the city felt dark, mean and melancholy. I quite liked it though because it matched my mood. There was a French film director on TV last night and he was raving about the quality of light in Scotland. He said it wasn't like anywhere else and even looked beautiful in the rain. I kind of see where he's coming from, although he's probably just trying to say all the right things to get funding for some project from the Scottish Arts Council. Today I walked around my local suburb of Dennistoun and thought how the people are like rodents, the way they scuttle about silently and look scared, as though you're about to do them harm as you pass them by. I arrived back at my flat just behind a dustman, who didn't hear me as he was hauling a wheelie bin. When he saw me his startled eyes seemed to say "Please don't eat me!" Maybe I look like a cat, or maybe I look just they same as they do. It's incredible how quiet it is round here though and it can't just be to do with the sturdy Victorian tenements we all live in.

Watch out Australia, I'll soon be making nasty comments about you too!

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