In the Bleak, Mild, Wild, Wet, and often Windy Midwinter.

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We haven't had much snow this year in the current winter of 2024/2025. Just a couple of days of brief snow flurries, interspersed with a week of minus 7c to 12c overnighters, mainly ice and frost everywhere, then back to milder conditions for the rest of it.

This was a walk around Clydebank. Incidentally, this bandstand was used for a children's TV programme back in the day featuring Siouxsie and the Banshees, a Punk/Goth/ experimental outfit. ( This short video can be viewed on dailymotion for anyone interested as I 'd just watched it prior to my visit after wondering beforehand.... has anyone famous ever played on/in it? Still a totally unique group, (at their best, with good acoustics online, no one else quite like them.... musically or visually, before or since.)  Musical pioneers in that particular genre. Yet rarely mentioned nowadays.

Far less snow, so far, than past Scottish winters. Milder, thankfully, for those of us being very careful with energy bills, given the huge potential cost of electricity and gas use this year. Yet almost £300 million paid each year to turn off Scottish wind turbines during periods of steady wind but low demand that is added to the bill of every UK household in Britain. And during storms. Unless you have a turbine yourself of course. Then we pay you for having it.... and switching it off. I'm still warm though in my thermal vest, padded jacket, balaclava and 3 season sleeping bag.... used indoors. My heating is only on if it's below freezing outside, mainly to keep my pipes from icing up, and running them for 10 seconds( hot tap)... 20 seconds (cold tap) every few hours also keeps them safe if it's below minus 3 to minus 10. Especially in the morning and last thing at night. 5 or 10 quick seconds on full (hot tap) means the central heating boiler does not come on but the water runs briefly. I mention all this because I think I've nailed winter now, for myself, by these methods and clothing and have stayed comfortable, despite not having the heating on much indoors. Obviously, during a really cold snap you need a warm house for pipe and house/health safety but when it's 3c to 10c above it's no problem to go without heating ... for me anyway. My chest/breathing also tells me when it's time to put the heating on but so far it's been fine and clear this year.

A lot of different winter conditions to experience and photograph this year. A misty evening back in late December 2024.

Perfect for a walk along the canal from Anniesland to Clydebank. Getting an 11 bus back.

Fairly eerie and gothic wandering through a deserted Knightwood Park at dusk, but a stillness I like. (At the moment, Friday 24th of Jan, outside my house, and across Scotland and Ireland in general, 80mph to 114mph winds are blasting through garden fences, destroying outdoor conservatories and ornamental furniture... toppling both young and mature trees and power lines across roads and onto parked cars in the sort of casual destruction that's fairly common for winter storms these days now. 

It's the wildlife and anything left outside that suffer the most of course. Knightwood Pond from 2016. Loads of birds. I noticed this time around though this pond has sprung a leak and is a shadow of it's former glory. Only a few dozen forlorn gulls remain here today, battered by howling 80mph winds as the pond is 3/4 empty and easy for foxes or other predators to snatch unwary birds in only ankle deep water. With the current state of the UK's permanently potholed roads, overcrowded hospitals, full up prisons, and everything else in 3rd world level broken Britain I don't think repairing a leaking park pond in an outlying suburb will be high up the list of anyone's important things to do..... 

So views like this one ( it could be an unofficial wildlife reserve here, given the bird numbers each winter) is sadly an archive event now.... until it is eventually repaired/ fixed.

All the fun of the fair... as a passing spectator to this annual occurrence.

In many ways 2016 seems like a very different world to 2025. Only nine years ago though.

Mist and silence is good for creating atmospheric photography on long walks.

I was particularly pleased with this effort. Reminds me of old black and white British films of the notorious London fogs of yesteryear. Or Hammer horrors.

A frozen solid canal in December 2024.

Great Western Road at Knightswood Park.

Yearly winter struggle in a rapidly freezing pond. Roughly half of all wildlife dies in severe or very unpredictable spring/summer/ winters. Mass flooding events, wildfires etc...

Tufted Ducks. Mild again in park pond a few days later.

The shining path.

So all you can really predict, with any certainty, for the weather forecast worldwide, in 2025....

 

is expect more.................. of the unexpected...

Different Aspects of Glasgow. Last Part. Merry Christmas. Mural Wall.

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For the last part of my Glasgow tour it's City Centre time. The first time I've arrived by train in Argyle Street. Normally I come in by bus or get off at Anderston Train Station or Central Station but I wanted to see the new hotel just off Argyle Street and this station is nearest.

I thought this was some sort of open to the general public student hub at first but it's a hotel... and a student/ business/ co working hub. A European chain but the first of its kind in Scotland and the UK apparently. Owned by a Scottish entrepreneur who grew up in Edinburgh before making his name abroad. Gets good reviews. Faces onto the Merchant City district very close to Citation. 18 social hub hotels spread across European cities so far with its HQ in Amsterdam.

On one side it looks out onto Argyle Street....

This is another part of the new build here...

And this side faces Citation, the old Glasgow courthouse and the Merchant City District with its period architecture, bars and clubs. 

Like here on Buchanan Street.

and a mix of styles from Victorian sandstone to modern glass and steel.

The old buildings being full of ornate carvings so it always pays to look up. 

The mural wall on Clyde Street beside the River Clyde.

I still think the overall impression of this prime city centre location is very messy with all the graffiti everywhere but the murals are good and ever changing so I'll concentrate on them instead.

Clown mural.

Female in profile.

Shades of True Detective. Season One... perhaps perhaps?

Legal Wall.... ?

Femme.

Older. "Golden Oldie...?" Fair play.  Everyone 50 or over still remembers their wild youth.... now trapped within the failing body of a grumpy old git ... but still there... totally intact :)  And jealous of 18 to 20 somethings  whizzing quickly past without a care... so make the most of it...with sex, drugs, good music, and rock and roll... as you too will be a useless, slow, old git soon enough yourself :)

Old favourite.

Dog. Glasgow lane art.

Girl. Same Renfield Lane location as dog.

Dress Shop Mural at Charing Cross.

Same shop.

Haircut mural.

Charing Cross view.

Park Circus Towers.

Beresford Hotel in 2024.

Glasgow City Chambers side view. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Different Aspects of Glasgow . Part Three. Eastwood to Giffnock. 1960s to 2024. Memories.

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I've been putting Part Three of this Glasgow tour off somewhat as I knew it would be daunting and complex to write about and I also had to dredge up a lot of memories from my long forgotten childhood but it's something I wanted to write immediately after the walk so here goes. After looking at a street map of Glasgow and online satellite 3D images of the area involved I thought I could make out a pleasant green route weaving between Eastwood, where I would get off the 38 bus and Eastwood Toll. Two very different locations but the same name. Eastwood Cemetery statue above.

The Round Toll at Pollokshaws West in Glasgow. Turning right at this roundabout takes you down a leafy broad road to Pollok and the Silverburn Shopping Centre... going straight ahead through this roundabout takes you past Eastwood and Mansewood. Two well looked after housing estates, both about 80 years old at a guess. Built early 1950s? I was on a number 38 bus to Woodfarm in mid October 2024. In the 1960s and 1970s this was a bus route number 48 and 49 (Glasgow corporation transport green, white and gold colours double deckers)  or the Red Western SMT no 8 and no 10 which ran from Paisley/ Barrhead/ Neilston to the Anderston Centre at Argyle Street not far from the present Anderston Train Station. Back in the 1960s it was Clyde Street you got dropped of at but I also remember being at the Waterloo Street bus terminus a few times. A Central SMT hub. Vague memories of those trips, getting dropped off on Clyde Street with a long row of low storage sheds along the riverfront right beside the River Clyde, but no longer there, where the murals and graffiti wall is now and a semi underground bus depot, ( Waterloo Street?) tucked right underneath a building, and fairly dark inside, (electric lighting) replaced by the newly built Anderston Centre, early 1970s, which is still there in 2024 but no longer a bus hub. Glasgow was a very dark, heavy industry city back then, before stone cleaning in the 1980s washed off 100 years of industrial soot, coal dust, and chimney grime to reveal bright colours underneath. To avoid competition for passengers the number 48 and 49/ 49A ran from South Nitshill/ Priesthill into Glasgow city centre via the numerous council housing estates within Glasgow so turned right here through Pollok or straight on, still within the Glasgow boundary. The red SMT buses, also double deckers, tried to avoid Glasgow passengers by skirting the East Renfrewshire boundary so one went through Thornliebank/ past Woodfarm then up Orchard Park Avenue to Giffnock and past Merrylee down Kilmarnock Road. This fact will be relevant later on. One thing missing in modern times is childhood memories of thousands of starlings in the 1950s and 1960s every winter in Glasgow City Centre. Attracted by the warmth of the street lights and Christmas lights they roosted along the shopping streets, the massed noise of them whistling and calling to each other overhead still a powerful childhood remembrance and fascination to this day. And being told off by my parents not to look up for fear of bird droppings landing in your eyes. They were eventually chased out with loud noise, plastic spike strips on building ledges and strobe lights. Starlings are now in decline across the UK. 

For the first 27 years of my life, growing up in Nitshill, all the buildings and urban districts /estates along all four bus routes were like old friends, passed and spotted out the bus windows hundreds of times. During the 1960s and 1970s I must have travelled these roads and routes on hundreds of occasions.  For school every week day, going in to get a haircut in Shawlands at Only Steven, travelling for driving lessons, to the cinema either in Shawlands or the city centre, for work, for college at Langside, to buy records, books etc. Back then the main irritations/ dangers of city living/ bus travel were occasional gang trouble/ fights and or/ a heavy drink culture. No drugs to speak of yet.. or none I noticed anyway. Back in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s around one million people, (but declining as heavy industry jobs gradually disappeared,) lived within the Glasgow boundary making it one of the most tightly packed cities in Western Europe. Glasgow had more street gangs than London back then, a city eight times its size. Pollok alone had over ten gangs within the local district.

 Casual heavy drinking and gang fighting with various weapons was just part of the culture, much more than it is today in Glasgow so teenagers throwing up inside buses or staggering around in the street, even during the daylight hours, was more common back then. I can remember six or seven separate times it happened on buses I was on before I turned 18 and on two occasions it was teenage neighbours I knew having had too much to drink. It was practically expected if you started a new job as an apprentice to get you drunk at some point in the first year, or if you stopped work for Christmas/ New Year; got married/ stag do's etc. I found it very unpleasant... just something to put up with, like a crowded bus routinely thick with cigarette or pipe smoke on the upper deck, when it occurred too close to me but thankfully I've not seen anyone being sick on a bus for decades but then again maybe I don't get out as much these days. When you became a teenager, even though I never smoked, it was a matter of pride to sit upstairs, eyes sometimes watering, breathing in second hand smoke, to prove you were a grown up. You also had a much better elevated view of your surroundings from the upper windows, which was the main reason for enduring it. And an important rite of passage into adulthood. Same with drinking too much, though I soon gave that up as I hated being sick or hung over in the morning. 4 or 5 pints of Tennents lager being a wise, non sick upper limit, in my 20s through to my 50s, usually only one night a week, and the fully dressed girls on the side of each can the closest some men/boys got to porn images in those days. It was a very different time. London in 2024 has now got loads of street gangs. Far more than present day Glasgow.

It was with these very thoughts in my head, probably due to not having travelled this route for ages, that I discovered a brand new irritation to put up with in 2024. Namely mobile phones. I'm quite happy if folk are just scrolling quietly but a guy got on at Union Street, Glasgow City Centre, and proceeded to talk loudly into his phone for the entire duration of the journey right next to me in a foreign language. Even though I didn't understand a word I could tell he was giving somebody a really hard time just by tone alone. A shouted sentence. The unheard reply. An incredulous rising burst of fury. A second unheard reply. More furious response. The reason he was shouting was due to a crowded bus and teenagers up the back making the usual teenage boisterous happy commotion in a group outing, excitedly talking over each other, so it was not a quiet journey.  And it seemed to take ages to get anywhere, crawling along with snails racing past it. I was so pissed off by it all I decided to get off here, photo above, one stop earlier than intended. But that was a lucky call as the bus turned left here to go up Auldhouse Road to  Giffnock bypassing Eastwood altogether due to a railway bridge reconstruction diversion. The road was closed to traffic straight ahead  but maybe the route was up through Giffnock anyway as it was not a bus I was familiar with.... the 48 and 49 just like the 8 and 10 being long gone decades ago.

Passing Eastwood, left and Mansewood. right, on foot. When I was younger, teens and twenties, I really enjoyed this bus trip as it passed through many green and leafy areas, like this one here, above. Even though I get buses for free now with my pass these days I prefer train travel as it's quieter, the seats are further apart, and a lot faster to get anywhere. On my last Edinburgh to Glasgow trip by bus another person talked non stop for almost an hour on his phone one seat behind me. I'd already changed seats at the start when it was half empty because a girl was on the phone beside me. She stopped talking after ten minutes but by that time I'd moved seats only to meet a worse fate when the bus filled up to capacity and I was trapped between two separate smart phone talkers back and front for the entire journey. There's bad stuff to put up with in every era apparently.

Anyway, the main reason I was curious about Eastwood, the small housing estate off Thornliebank Road, see tenement photo above, is that any time I passed it on the bus I never spotted any children playing outdoors or even many adults around. Compared to my own busily populated council scheme it seemed like a ghost address where no-one was visible at any time from the passing bus windows. This always intrigued me as my own tenement estate was bouncing with big families. Children and dogs were always very visible there... playing outside. Also, one of my same age friends parents got offered a move to Eastwood along with their two children but they decided not to go after they had looked into it. The boy, 12 years of age and in my class at school was very relieved as he maintained there was nothing do in it compared to Nitshill and Pollok with it's huge expanse of woods, streams, Barrhead Dams, farms, fields, and semi wild hinterland to have adventures in. 

And he was spot on.  This small oval patch of green land, photo above, held a circular trail through skimpy woods then came back out where it began. Total area.... About two football pitches worth. That's the full extent of wild land here. Around Nitshill five large Glasgow parks worth of open land, woods and meadows, freely available to wander through during the 1960s and 1970s, (imagine Pollok Park times 5) is now lost under housing estates yet there's still 40 parks worth of open land left to wander in nowadays around Nitshill, Barrhead and Darnley. Which is why I'm eternally grateful I grew up there. On the outer edge of a big city rather than right in the middle of it.

Even today in 2024, I had a wander round Eastwood and only spotted three individuals in it's streets and one of them was a grounds-man cutting the pitches on a large mower. A very quiet, well behaved tidy estate. Same with Mansewood across the other side of the road.

 For a tenement estate, of the type I'm used to wandering through, also incredibly quiet and orderly. But another tick off the bucket exploration list.

The two Eastwood cemeteries came next, one either side of Thornliebank Road. The large one, The New Eastwood Cemetery, was the key to my walk today as I noticed a faint path on the satellite map cutting through it's rear exit to Robslee Drive near the train line that only locals would know about.

This brought me out here, the industrial part of Robslee Drive. Never been here before so it was a novelty and a leap in the dark as to what lay ahead.

This in turn brought me out to the refined part of Robslee Road with Woodfarm Secondary school in the distance. At this point I thought of a strange 1969 film called The Swimmer with Burt Lancaster in the star role. A middle aged man wearing only swimming trunks sets out from his humble abode to negotiate a necklace of pools, swimming them one by one through increasingly upmarket areas. It was a concept that stuck in my mind, being so different from the usual film fare. And after a ten year gap it's been on TV again just before and after the USA election results.

The reason it came to mind was due to my intention to travel through a necklace of schools not pools, hopping from one up to the other in a gradual chain and slow climb. On the satellite map it looked feasible but one locked gate or a closed entry would halt my progress as I'd never been here either.

But it turned out to be ok. Immediately opposite Woodfarm High School a path leads left of this fenced football pitch then runs gently uphill to another green area and another school.

Then once you reach here, above, a path runs through the trees on the right to another school.... ( luckily all the pupils were inside classrooms)

Then the final school which is situated within Eastwood Park, getting more upmarket with every step. In the film The Swimmer, the main character turns out to have experienced a psychotic break and ends up at the massive mansion at the top of the hill he used to own. As a youngster watching this film in the 1970s I just thought it was amazingly different but as an adult now revisiting it I realise, as the film unfolds to its conclusion, he's a classic narcissist. The very qualities that propelled him to the top in the first place... ruthless drive, overriding ambition, an impulsive risk taker, lack of empathy or morality, have eventually brought him down and he's lost everything. A film with echoes of Citizen Kane, only in colour. Well worth watching if it's on again. No idea why they showed it now, twice in a month, after so long a gap.

In my teens I used to really enjoy walking or cycling up the Ayr Road. It made a grand circular route from my own humble abode and introduced me to an entirely different lifestyle from my own housing estate environment. This area was and is still posh with a capital P. Large detached mansion land. I had relatives, aunts and cousins, who were well off and stayed in good areas so I was already properly house trained for any environment I found myself in. My Dad worked in factories usually but back in the 1960s my Mother worked up here in Whitecraigs, cleaning in a large domestic detached house then later once it was established she was a hard worker, a good timekeeper and trustworthy she also worked in a local shop in Giffnock. The number 8 Western SMT bus made that possible as it passed Giffnock and Merrylee. Even getting off at Giffnock it was a fair walk slightly uphill to the house she cleaned a few days a week and when I started work and my firm moved from the Gorbals to Cathcart a year later I too only reached it via the red SMT bus then a 30 minute hike up Merrylee Road.  So a handy route as without it neither of us would have considered a job here. I remember the Red 8 and 10 buses seemed in some ways to be a class above. The Glasgow corporation 48 and 49 could be really rough at times, going through Pollok and past all the local schools. Bellarmine and Craigbank back in the 1960s and 1970s. About 200 pupils trying to get on the 2 or 3 school buses at the same time and the conductor trying to push us off to form an orderly line like a lion tamer with a whip and a chair. Most conductors just left us to fight it out. Myself and a few of my classmates had the bright idea of walking a stop up Barrhead Road, in the direction of Shawlands and getting on there to avoid the crush and inevitable fights but once it was noticed we were getting on others followed so we went another two stops up, almost to Kennishead Road.  It was good fun beating the pack until all three school buses ran straight past us without stopping at our hard won remote bus stop and we had no choice but to walk it back home all the way via Kennishead Road as that was now the easiest way available. I lost all my followers after that mistake. And clarks school shoes back then were not great for long hikes in the countryside.

I still liked walking though and one of my favourite long walks around the age of 13 to 16 was to get the number 8 bus to either Giffnock or Rouken Glen Park, walk round that area then head up the Ayr Road on foot looking at all the grand houses. On a sunny summer day it was like Glasgow's answer to Beverly Hills- very different from my own council estate upbringing. However, even though I was doing nothing wrong, just looking and being well behaved I got stopped at least three times by a police car, asking what I was doing there. The first time it happened I was slightly amused afterwards. A novelty. The third time, still doing nothing wrong, just walking around, mainly on the Ayr Road, when even then, early 1970s, very few folk in this district walked as they all had cars, I was once again stopped by the police and questioned. ( the only time in almost 70 years this has happened to me despite wandering round Bearsden, Milngavie, Lenzie, Kilmacolm and every other posh place on planet Earth many times.) In 5 years I only walked this route about twice a year, always on a sunny day. Rouken Glen Park, Ayr Road, Mearns Cross or Crookfur Road, (before most of Newton Mearns was even built in the late 1960s early 1970s) ending up at the Barrhead Dams and my exit back to my house.

Passing through Eastwood Park. Above.

The 3rd police conversation went like this. 

"You're up here again!"

"Hello. Good Morning. It's over a year since the last time." I replied, somewhat aggrieved to be stopped. Unfortunately one of the cops was the original guy from the first time. 

Where are you from? he asked.

"Nitshill." says I.

They both exchanged glances then suggested I turn around and go back the way I came.

"Aw C'mon." I protested. "It's quicker to go down through the dams now. I'm nearly there."

I was then requested to empty my pockets, which I did but the only thing I had on me was a book of my own poetry which they studied intently for a few moments. Unfortunately the first draft of my superb poem 'Born with the trust of humans.' about a wily Scottish teenage serial killer was on the first few pages. I had a vivid imagination back then. Most teenagers do.

The cops were not impressed.

"Well... someone matching your description was seen acting suspiciously in this area."

As it was the third time I was a bit disgruntled. 

"What? Walking? Not surprised. I've never seen anyone else doing it around here." Besides. No-one looks like me. I'm unique." I was probably wearing my black bomber jacket and black denim jeans. White trainers. A combination I was very proud of back then.

"Do you know McNamara from Nitshill? they quizzed trying to catch me out.

"No, but I've heard he's got a great band." I replied. ( this was the era of Val Doonican on TV and the name of one of his classic songs.) I refused to be tricked.

There followed a brief conversation similar to the one Billy Connolly told about the farmer and the kids. "This here is all my ground. The green ground. Everything in sight. See that brown dirty ground way over there? That's you're ground. Stay on the brown ground please .....where you belong. Never leave the brown ground! (He also grew up on a large council housing estate. Drumchapel.)

It didn't stop me from doing this walk as it was a good circular route but it did leave a sour taste afterwards when I thought about it. The only district that's ever happened in 60 years of wandering.

I've called this photo ' The joys of Giffnock.' My bus passed through here on the way to Glasgow city centre in October 2024. As it's very busy and congested ( this is where my Mum worked in a shop in the late 1960s thanks to the long gone number 8 bus) I've never been all that keen on the place. About ten years ago I was doing a project that involved going round all the Greater Glasgow libraries. I'd already been to Bearsden. Milngavie, Paisley, Bishopbriggs, Clarkston etc and this was a final stop. Being hard to park around here I put my car in the customer's car park of a whole food supermarket ( an American company I think. It's now a Lidl I believe) Anyway, as I'd not had lunch yet I intended on buying sandwiches here as I was starving but walked through the shop first to visit the local library across the street. Every other library visited when I explained could I leave a small flier on the notice board said "Fine. No problem." In and out in five minutes tops. This one was like the Spanish inquisition. "Was I a local? What was the project again? Who was behind it? Did it have anything to do with Giffnock?" In the end she declined to take it. Fair enough. But when I returned to the whole food store, having been gone under five minutes, no more, I was grabbed by staff and told I had to buy something before I could get to my car. I was intending to buy sandwiches anyway but it was all weird stuff they had.... Broccoli, spinach, and stilton. Fillings I didn't fancy much so I bought one red apple instead so I wouldn't get a fine. It cost me then, a decade ago, about £1 for one apple. In 2024 today, in Lidl, you can get 6 apples for £1.39. 

So it was with some irony and amazement, remembering this, that I noticed all the banners in Giffnock declaring 'Do your shopping in Giffnock in 2024. A warm welcome guaranteed.'  or words to that effect. 

Hell no!  If I still stayed on this side of the river it would be Shawlands every time. Shawlands shops above. I was always welcome here. And I never did learn to stay on the brown ground for very long.