Floating heads.

I've no idea what the title of this installation is or who is responsible for it, but I liked its odd juxtaposition with the museum exhibits below it. The position was probably chosen for purely practical reasons but seeing these suspended heads turning above me made me think of Pawleys' Peepholes again, disembodied people looking down on us from some 24th century museum as we looked at the exhibits from even earlier ages.

Druids.

Not sure what I think of it as a work but they look like powerful people.

Here's looking at you.

Glasgow.

Well, I've managed to present my day in Glasgow backwards. It's shaming. G had the foresight to give her account of her experiences in the Souks in the right order, why can't I think like that?

Never mind. Done now.

I think I did well to cover as much ground as I did after waking at 4am (on the day the clocks had changed so it was 3am..) driving 3 1/2 hours and once off the motorway having a row with Jane the satnav lady because she kept driving us up dead ends from which we could see the hotel but not reach it.

I went almost three times round the bus route because it only goes one way and I hadn't worked my stops out in advance. There are enough places I would still like to see to make another visit worth while. I didn't see the 'Barras,' an indoor and outdoor market where the vendors put their goods on barrows(or used to.) I was twice warned to hang onto my purse if I went there and not to enquire too closely into the provenance of items for sale. Somehow, despite the temptation of dangerous living it didn't appeal yesterday. I've spent too much time over the last years rummaging around grubby auction rooms and junk shops after books.

I would have liked to visit the People's Palace, an exhibition of life in Glasgow through the ages that, in what I have come to see as characteristic Glaswegian fashion, 'doesn't take itself too seriously.'

Everyone I spoke to was warm, outgoing, kind and funny. Maybe it was the sunshine. I've revised my sardonic view of Glasgow. Until now when I've heard it referred to as 'the dear green place' (the meaning of the name 'Glasgu' is 'green place' if its roots were, as is thought, Cumbric or Middle Gaelic) I've been accustomed to snort derisively. Not any more I promise. I wouldn't go so far as to join those who claim 'the only good thing that comes out of Edinburgh is the train to Glasgow' but I have found a new fondness for Scotland's other great city.

Eastre

Doggie

The sainted Elvis.

The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum was also heaving with children, unsurprisingly as the Dr.Who exhibition opened that day and all tickets were sold out. It made the place feel very lively.

I got the impression that it would always feel quite lively. Part of the Glaswegian character, they don't take anything too seriously and are rarely caught being pompous.

I chose to get off the tour bus at the Science Exhibition Centre which sounded promising. Once inside I realised that it must have been created for children (I kept falling over them and they were hogging all the best interactive stuff. Humpff!) I felt a bit cheated, even with my concessionary ticket. The Science Museum in London has lots of interesting stuff for adults but not this place, and the sandwiches are awful, take my word for it. The other food looked sad too. Still, I found this homunculus was worth a snap. He is demonstrating the areas of the body with the most nerve endings and sensory input to the brain. The feet surprised me a bit, although as mine were beginning to hurt already (they aren't used to hard city paving slabs) maybe it wasn't such a surprise. Can you just see his underpants? There is a discreet suggestion there of sensory input!!

This is a portion of the Imax cinema. It was a sparkly morning and wonderful for twinkly reflections but I'm not from Hogwarts so can't make the sparkles twinkle here sadly.

Big Bertha

For Chillsider who loves big ladies I give you Big Bertha, the enormous Finnieston crane erected in 1931. She used to lift locomotives, manufactured here for export, onto ships. The new bridge beside her has an offical name but I can only remember its local name - The Squinty Bridge. It makes an elegant wiggle, not visble from this angle, as it crosses the Clyde, but perhaps some folk like their bridges a bit more straight-forward.

The Armadillo

As the nice lady on the tour bus said, the Glaswegians give everything nicknames. This one can't have taken long. Sir Norman Foster's Clyde Auditorium, or 'The Armadillo.'

Yesterday I went along as co-pilot with Chloë to Glasgow where the General Osteopathic Council had a conference. I'm not a lover of cities but I do admit they each have their own special character. The above quotation was a great reminder to use my eyes more than usual and be prepared for the unexpected.

(Nice oxymoronish thought that Carol.)

The result was that I had a very enjoyable day.

Money in hand.

There was a phone call this afternoon from a chap who wanted a book he had seen in the shop two years ago. Luckily I let him in to look for it. In 20 minutes he had found the remembered book and four others besides. Oh the heady excitement of a soft fluttering of paper notes landing in my open palm! Quite delicious.

Power points

There hasn't been much chance to chase dragon lines in the last week or two but the urge hasn't gone away and I took a trip up to a local hill claimed by some to be a 'power point.' It's a small conical hill with a spiral path that has been deliberately worn by people treading their way to the top. 35 years ago at the height of the UFO-spotting, Space-Brother-channelings era folk would watch through the nights up there for visitations. I have to confess I didn't feel anything much - and I boldly make a claim to being reasonably sensitive to earth energies. Maybe it's just over-used and a bit drained. I know how it feels if so! This whole area is anyway a bowl of earth energy IMO and therefore the residents get accustomed to its vibratory level. (Oh heck, is this me saying these things..? I generally avoid such talk having been on the receiving end of it far too often and irritably dismissed it all as 'precious.')

When I first visited these parts I felt it all very strongly, had dreams and nightmares, was even slightly unhinged by it for a while (no comments from the back there please) and like many people I haven't been able to pull away from it, even though I sometimes think I would like to. On the other hand I don't actively feel it all as I used to. It's like getting used to a localised discomfort - or pleasure. The nerve-endings continue to transmit but the brain stops being interested enough to give it much attention.

What I'm looking for again, like an addict trying to recapture the first hit, is the sort of buzz N & I both got from touching the stones at Carnac.

91304 plus

It's just over a year since I started this journal. In a bored moment I did a word check (I keep a copy elsewhere) and it has reached 91304 words. If nothing else it proves to me that I have a certain sort of persistence. Recently I have been fiddling with plots, writing opening sentences, building characters, starting and stopping with opening chapters, middle chapters, end chapters. There is a seed germinating, a central theme which has some energy of its own but, as yet, not quite enough. I can't decide if it is a good idea to jot them all into this 'notebook' and invite comments or keep them all hidden, probably for ever!

Opinions on the best ways toward manifestation of any project vary; members of the New Age community nearbye generally seem to favour public declaration of what they are wishing to manifest, whereas a Sufi leader, Hazrat Inayat Khan advised keeping it all secret, close to the heart, until it is already achieving form, for fear of dissipating the first tender shoots of energy as they begin to gather.

Mostly I would favour the Sufi way but in this case, as writing stuff down on paper results in a waste of trees and keeping files on the iMac of all the faltering first steps keeps the desk top tidy but allows me effortlessly to forget them, I might try broadcasting and see how that goes.

I'm going to use the Lily Pad for that purpose, mainly because the theme has evolved from what the events written there.

A quotation from Eugene Ionescu that came to my attention last night on BBCTV (as I channel-hopped through adverts interrupting CSI Miami, oh the shame of it...)

'Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.'

It hasn't been a very creative time but it's been a time for some pleasant gran-grandson bonding which is really very rewarding. The seemingly endless harsh cough petered out but caused a complication which has amazed us - transient synovitis! The presentation was 'classic' said the consultant in the local hospital where S spent a couple of days playing game-boys and watching films on a very small DVD player (it was quite hard to get him to come home!) Also known as 'irritable hip ' it is the result of an upper respiratory virus in 4-11 years olds, generally of the male sex. Good grief! What strange ills the body is prey to. Not so funny for Sandy as it is very painful and he was refused crutches ('needs to walk on it' they said cruelly) so he is developing one extremely strong leg hopping about. This too will pass. Let's hope there isn't another interesting complication lying in wait.

On the book front things have been very slow and I'm very broke, but any thoughts of re-opening the store were a) depressing me, and b) completely eradicted by the news that the Red Cross is thinking of opening a shop dedicated to secondhand books in the town. This store could probably have competed eventually on the 'rare and antiquarian' front but would need energy of several kinds to rise to the challenge so - I shall bump along on Amazon and hope for the best. As the weather improves and the outdoors becomes more appealing it would be frustrating to have to go back to sitting inside for eight hours a day. As far as I can see the only way to make a living in the 2ndhand booktrade these days is to have an enormous stock in low rent storage, preferably that can be opened as a shop, put thousands on the internet and take the best to bookfairs where folk are still interested in collecting. Belt, braces, brawn and bravado. Exhausting and definitely not a one-woman operation especially when that woman has chronic asthma.

Well, that's my excuse.

Dragon lines.

It's 1.40am and I feel less tired than I do during the daytime. This is very odd as I used to go to bed at 9.30 or even earlier, at the same time as the children in my younger day. I believe it's something to do with age. I'm learning to enjoy the night-time as a part of the 24hrs when no-one is going to want anything of me and I needn't feel obliged to look as if I'm filling time sensibly. In these hours I am often more optimistic too.

Something came up about ley lines in the last day or two and has created a stirring to get out and find some, or at least go to a few standing stones, circles or cairns. A line from Chillsider's blog about reaching the 'smooth zone' on a project where she knows what she has to do, reminded me of finding that zone in the past occasionally and how very pleasant it is. Maybe the dragon lines will lead me there.

Am I the only person in the world...

... who was bored by 'The Time Traveler's Wife.' (Where does one put the interrogation mark at the end of that sentence? It surely can't be included with the title and would look all wrong stuck on the end. I should have listened harder in grammar lessons.)

It's never comfortable finding oneself out of step with the rest of the world and that's how I feel today, not only because of the book, which is the first novel I can remember abandoning after a few chapters, but because I didn't want to get out of bed this morning and I still feel resentful that habit and a spurious rectitude dragged me out! I'm grumpy!

Iain's operation is over and to everyone's intense relief he is neither paralysed nor incontinent, which are both possible outcomes of spinal bulge surgery. The hospital is threatening to kick him out already.

Green shoots?

Well last week passed, as all things do, and I have repaired teeth, shorter (but not blonde, I chickened out of that) hair, and Sandy's cough has reduced to one bark per minue instead of three. The only person who hasn't improved is poor Iain and I'm about to take him into Aberdeen for surgery so - here's hoping.

Probably the most notable event in the course of days was the purchase of two NEW paperbacks. My goodness, aren't they expensive these days? Who in their right mind would buy new when there are peple like me to provide at a third of the price? The answer is of course people like me who have thousands of books but not one they want to read. I was looking for a Clive Cussler for Iain for after the operation when Sandy pointed at a cover nearbye and said 'One of our teachers told us that's the best book she's read for ages and she'd read it again.' It was Robert Harris: 'The Ghost.' I was so startled that he had actually listened to a teacher blethering about her recent reading matter and not only remembered what she said but recognised the book when he saw it, that I bought it. I've never been a fan of Harris, not because of his style but the subject matter. 'Archangel' left me cold because I couldn't relate to the events or the setting or the characters. It was a pleasant surprise to find myself engaged by and appreciative of this one about a ghost writer. I was sorry when it came to an end. I know someone who is ghosting for the first time and is finding it an interesting process (or a weird experience, depending on the day.) It's all very relevant too as prisoners come out of Guantanamo Bay to accuse the Uk of sanctioning torture. Relevance and topicality would normally put me off by the way. I don't much like the current event novel, so it had a lot of minuses against it but managed to pull me in nevertheless.

Maybe spring is stirring in my psyche after all, although the weather is grey, windy and dismal again today. I allowed myself to be dragged into a Vodaphone shop to update my ancient mobile phone and now have one I'm rather scared of but Sandy doesn't die of shame when I take it out to use. It's just like his so he can show me how to use it - but does so much too fast so I can't follow and have to secretly read the handbook. Youth!

I've also agreed to go with my writer/editor friend to a Arvon writing course in the autumn. There's one tailor made for the two of us; she writes poetry these days and although she has had books published she mourns that they are 'C*@p' and longs to be taken seriously for her poems. I just want to write fiction and would be really happy if someone would publish my c*@p, so to find a course called: 'Poetry and fiction' seemed too good to miss. It's in the Highlands so not far to go either.

Finally I have made a resolution to spend a long weekend in Samye Ling, the Tibetan Buddhist centre in the Borders, doing a short Vipassana meditation. I sat through a ten day course about 25 years ago and nearly disappeared up my own navel. I had three children under eight cavorting around me at that time and it had sounded like such bliss to be able to sit in silence for ten days. What I hadn't bargained for was the inside of my head which when explored was like a painting by Bosch. We weren't supposed to be exploring our minds of course, we were supposed to be emptying them, but you try not thinking of a giraffe once you've been told you mustn't!

The other disaster...

... is that my rechargeble digi-camera battery won't charge any more and I haven't yet found a replacement (in modern terms it is archaic being at least three years old) so I can't even begin to try to compete with the opulence of Chillsider's colourful blog even if there were anything to take pics of. No, I have to admit, life is grey here at the moment.

Random thoughts from the attic.

There has been nothing to write here for a while - that is unless I list all the ailments and woes besetting the family just now, which I might as well do now I’ve brought it up. The most worrying is that my daughter’s partner has to have an operation next week for a disc bulge - very dicey surgery I’m told, so we are sending up invocations. He’s glad that something is happening at last since he has been in terrible pain for over three months and what with the morphine and etc. looks like a ghost. The rest of us are silently terrified for him.

The grandson has had an appalling cough for ten days since he came home from a weekend with his father. The cough was called ‘croupy’ by the doctor - what IS croup? He always comes back from the visits with a cough so I suppose the house is damp and it tickles up his asthma. He spent a couple of days lying on my couch sounding like a manic seal, exhausting himself and driving all those around him (me in this case) mad. Poor kid. He has been shunted off to school this week as the cough isn’t improving and we thought it would take his mind off it, but his confreres are complaining bitterly about him, and no doubt his teacher is loosing hair.

Me - well, I have had more asthma than I like, and this week is full of maintenance appointments. Yesterday the optician ( my eyes are fine, just a bit long-sighted, so he couldn’t sell me any glasses poor chap) and then the hairdressers who is sweet but has cut my fringe too short so that when I wash it myself I shall look like an intense 1920’s blue stocking. To round off the week, Friday I have to go to the dentist. I was long overdue a check-up and almost as I raised the phone to book it two fillings fell out. I blame the healthy corn crisp things I’ve been spreading marmite on recently.
Highlights: A bottle of very good Gerwutztraminer whilst watching ‘Brief Encounter’ which is one of those films I have seen so many extracts from I think I’ve seen it but haven’t. It really is amazingly gripping and moving and good. Pinewood did do some good stuff. We had a discussion afterwards about the impossibility of a film like that these days now that ‘honour and decency and the sanctity of marriage’ have been lost. The modern audience would expect a different ending unless they were separated by war or disaster. Just loyalty and - dare I say - duty wouldn’t cut it nowadays. Or would it?

Apart from all this wild living I have been sorting stock and listing books which isn’t an altogether unpleasant way of spending the time. It becomes a point of honour to list as many as possible in a day and has certainly got the juices flowing again through my Amazon listings so that I am actually getting orders again. Magic.