Tuesday in Glasgow

I met Jo at Stracathro - I was late but we had an easy drive down and made it to Glasgow in very good time. It was too early to eat and we couldn't go to Barry's as he and Helen were still at work and I don't have a key for Foxbar Drive any more, so we decided to pay Dad a visit. As usual he was seated in his favourite chair by the window, dozing away. We didn't disturb him to start with as we both wanted to use the loo in his room first of all!

Dawn had left a diary/notebook last week - she wanted to know what Dad got up to each day and what exercise/activity he did. It had only been going for a week, but each day different staff had written - "Rennie happy, dancing and singing along to Patsy Cline". Of course, when we woke Dad and asked him about this, he said who's he? (Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patsy_Cline to see why this is funny). Her CD was, indeed, on Dad's CD player.

Dawn had tried to get Dad to come to hers for dinner on Sunday but had failed - he's so reluctant to go anywhere or do anything - but at least he's happy. Jo and I walked him round the corridors then sat him down for his dinner:

Time for us to leave - we thought curry might be best, so we headed off to Mitchell St and had a quick beer in the Bon Accord:

Cafe India used to be adjacent but we discovered it had moved a couple of years ago, so we had to settle for PJ's, just around the corner. We both went veggy and the food was fine, but Jo didn't take to the decor - high polystyrene ceilings and bright lighting put her off a bit.

Glasgow Concert Hall is absolutely excellent - viewing is good from anywhere and the accoustics are superb. Tom Paxton is 71 now but he did 2 stints supported by just a lone guitarist/mandolin player. If you lived through the 60's, his music is very nostalgic - his tunes can veer towards almost nursery rhyme - in fact many of them were written for his kids when they were young - but there's often a harder underlying message - he was one of the 60's so called "protest" singers after all. He opened the concert by letting us all know in no uncertain terms what his political views were - he said "thank the Lord - we've got our country back again!". He talked about Dubya going back to Texas where he reckoned they would call him "all hat and no cattle"! Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_paxton

We stayed with Barry and Helen, who apologised for the fact that it's still a camp bed in their guest (front) room. It was tight for the two of us - and sore!

We headed north early this morning and I dropped Jo off at Stracathro where we swapped cars - Jo had offered to try to clean up the chewing gum on my car seat, but I guess it had been there too long - I've just had a "whoops" message from her!