This month: Glasgow

This month I went to Glasgow for a weekend. I got up at a ridiculous hour one Saturday morning, closed my eyes briefly on a plane and woke up in Scotland. Admittedly there was a very accommodating husband and pre-booking forethought involved. There was food, and food for thought; there were friends; there was crochet in public on Knit in Public Day. It was wonderful. The photos might imply more sun than in fact there was, but it was Glasgow. Just as miserable a climate as here, presumably! All in all it was nice to know that such things can still be done.

Thanks to Catherine and Fred for letting me come, and thanks to the strawberries for letting me go x Summer school holidays start tomorrow- in hilariously seasonal pouring rain...

Life with boys

 This is the book I bought for Prince Charming for Father's Day on Sunday. I got it in Glasgow the week before, hoping to blog about that soon too! It obviously forms part of this wave of nostalgia we have for the pictures of our childhood, overlaid with the cynicism of our adulthood. Poor Bruno Vincent doesn't even get a mention on the front cover, though he seems to be embracing his role as "Enid Blyton's comedy representative" with great magnanimity.

 PC and I will laugh until we cry over anything that takes personal experience and turns it into communal shared fact. This used to be my favourite definition of poetry, paraphrased from T. S. Eliot, but now it just sums up how any book full of tales of exhaustion is going to work for us! I think this is why we crawl outside like good pagans every Summer Solstice night and sit up until the last trace of light is gone from the sky- just to prove to ourselves that we can. Not that we will necessarily function well the next day!

 When I started blogging it was all artful scenes of kitchen table and lots of small feet, and tales of wry domesticity. Yesterday I got a letter mug from the new M&S range, all fancy and gilt, to set me apart from the bold monochrome of men mugs. Now they drink tea from full-sized cups. Now they have broad shoulders that look sharp enough to slice the bread things they eat continually. Now I am often taken aback at how outrageously funny they are, or right, or wise.

 And then other times it still feels like this! Which is why I think the Enid Blyton spin-offs are so successful just now. Personal pain made public! The book about The Meeting makes you realise that you are not the only person dealing with inanity at work. The Mindfulness one makes you take yourself just a little bit less seriously, and allows you to chuckle at excess. And that's just three out of the four titles I've bought this year- you'll have to ask Niqi about The Dog one!

Depending on how the Queen's speech goes today, I might think about putting this one on my Amazon wishlist. Presumably it's our jolly, old DUP who are holding up the proceedings on Mrs May's new government. See apology below! With politics, much like parenting, do we need someone to help us laugh as well as cry?

Sorry

I would just like to apologise to all of you living on the Mainland (as we call it, as if living on the island of Ireland was like living on the lake Isle of Inishfree) for the exposure you will now be experiencing to the phenomenon of the Northern Irish Politician.

Well, to the phenomenon of a DUP politician. Obviously, to call them politicians ignores the fact that we currently have no government here in the frozen North and they are all canvassing around the place with no work to do and £70,000 a year to do it with.

I digress. Apologies for the incomprehensible accent, the esoterically Unionist rhetoric, and the fact that it has brought you a state of affairs that may be not at all to your liking.

This may help... (The comedian on the left is the one we "met" at the Museum in the post below!)