How Now Brown Cow

I touched down in Glasgow on my way back to London to visit fun-bomb Jane, my old flatmate from Wellington in ’03. She is hosting a very very large birthday party over the weekend. Arriving in Glasgow from Paris on Ryan Air was an assault on the senses. First I was confronted by a new coat of lilac paint on the wooden wall at Prestwick Airport’s tin-shack terminal, and the smell of old fish’n chips batter looming in the arrival lounge. As I boarded the train into town, the goosebumps on my skin tells me that summer in Scotland involves a warm jacket, woolly hat and a raincoat.

The Scottish country side is hilly, green, lush and dotted with wild flowers and familiar farm animals. It reminds me of how much of New Zealand’s wild had been converted by the British settlers to look like home. Hearing English (well, some sort of highland version of it) and walking on the left side of the road again tells me that I am back in a more familiar world, but I am still some how extremely excited about getting to know this bunch of distant mad cousins tucked away at the other end of the world.

Glasgow is brown. The streets are lined with old stone industrial era flats and old Medieval chateaus with bits of oxidized copper and sprawling moss reminiscing moldy gingerbread houses that’s been sitting at the back of nana’s cupboard since xmas 92. In the subway, dark brown sludge sits beneath the train tracks reminding commuters of the wet weather outside. The theme of brown continues onto the foundation on the faces of some of the lasses on Buchanan Street, this time with a shade of orange, not unlike members of the once popular Japanese Ganguro movement, only seven years too late. The town's favourite drink, buckfast, is a nasty caffeine infested goo that is also of a brown complexion - I was told that if you visit the Ned (ie. Chavs but they are a level worse and beat up people) area of Gorbals, you would often find smashed buckfast bottles and bloodstains on the ground. And I hear too, that a Scotsman named Brown recently became the new PM

oh,and this is the famous portion of brown haggis I ate on the afternoon I arrived - it was like a power ball - after I ate it I didn't feel hungry at all for 24 hours. Breakfast of a champion!!

The best thing about Glasgow is definitely the people. Maybe cold climates just breeds warm people. These folks are the friendliest I have ever met in Europe so far, its almost like back home where strangers would greet you with a smile on the street. I would simply be just looking on my map in the middle of the road and almost definitely some one would stop by and ask me if I needed help. The service in the pubs and shops are always fantastic and they would crack a joke on you the second you meet.