Being home is odd

I went over to see my niece Ann Margaret and her kids. I had just missed Shawn and Abi, as they were at school but got to spend time with wee Julia. We took her out
to the local cafe and we sat outside in the early morning sunshine.

Julia tottered about; she is so cute and is two and half years old. She spotted
a wee fat woodlouse on the concrete tiles. “Look a wee bug” she pointed. “Go say hello to it Julia” I said.

She bent down, her wee bum in the air; she put her face near the louse and said loudly “Are you out here for a wee smoke?”

All the adults who were puffing on a ciggie and quaffing coffee stared at each other and stubbed out their fags. I laughed loudly; I could just imagine a wood louse having a wee fag. Julia decided to ‘touch’ it to see how it felt and I think the wood louse became a squashed dot on the tiles, but we ignored that bit.

I headed home and tried not to think about sleeping as my jet lag is a killer.

So now today I up at 6am.

After spending a whole month in freezing cold New Zealand, I am now bathed in glorious hot Glasgow sunshine, and I still complain. I have realised that the weather and I are never going to be best friends. Though I must admit Glasgow
looks great in the bright hot sun, we do wear a yellow day well.

My jet lag still persists in dragging me down, I am falling asleep at 8pm and waking at 5am, this will continue for another week then will probably be my sleep pattern for life when I hit 50 years old (which is soon), so am just practising for getting old and going to bed early.

But yesterday I got up, and did some paperwork, house cleaning and got some early shouting at family done, it’s always good to get the shouting done before midday,
I feel. Husband and Ashley are avid bathroom cleaning avoiders; they both don’t
see the need to scrub toilets or tiles. Which means it’s MY job to get that done.

After moaning at people, I packed a bag and went out to the park. The Glasgow Botanic gardens were mobbed out! There were people sprawled out on almost every single patch of grass as far as the eye could see! The ice cream van was doing
a roaring trade and old people leaned against fences and mopped their faces with cotton hankies. I found a wee shady spot, camped out and read a book in the warm
sun for about ten minutes and then got bored. I don’t do outdoor sitting very well.
I get uncomfortable; I get jittery and then start wandering about. I may have developed some mental illness that prevents me from sitting still for ages, or
maybe I was always this way? I don’t know.

A wedding party were being photographed, some poor bride picked today to get wed and her photos will be full of semi-naked fat Glaswegians in her backgrounds. I watched a drunken man throw an empty beer can at the bride and then watched as the garden ‘police’ threw him out. This is the West End of Glasgow, people don’t throw cans at brides!

I continued watching Glaswegians in the hot sun and it was fun. The park was dominated with students as the park is close to Glasgow University. Big over grown yet tenderly young gangly boys with under developed white concave chests crouched beside studious looking girls whose startlingly white legs look strangely lumpy in childlike shorts. Just heaps of very young kids who looked like they had grown up too quickly were wearing badly fitting clothes and trying hard to pass off as cool sun drenched adults.

Books were strewn around them and all I could hear were boy/man voices trying hard to impress the scantily clad girls. I watched the group and then saw all the boys watch one girl approach them; I followed their gaze and spotted a tall lithe girl who wore a bikini top and a short tie dye skirt. She had the kind of body that got Norma Jean to change her name. Her curves and easy sway of her hips had now mesmerised the clutch of boy/men who gathered round the awkward girls. The pale girls watched the tall girl swing her bag over her shoulder, one boob almost came out but just jiggled a bit and stayed encapsulated in her pink bra top.

The girl dropped to her knees and joined the group. The boys stared, the girls looked away and the bra top girl threw herself onto her back, threw her legs
up in the air and shouted “I fucking love the sun”.

The girls all started to cover up their lumpen white bodies and the boys all managed to move their skinny chests in the sexy girl’s direction. It was fun to watch their gauche teenage ritual dance.

The park soon got boring, the sun got hotter and I gave up and headed home. Ashley and her mates had been out in town annoying the geeky men who work in an obscure comic book shop. She must drive those blokes insane with her mad carefully rehearsed questions about comics she has researched on the web, but has no intention of buying.

So another hot day passed me by, I scrubbed bathroom tiles, I watched people in the park and I got some sunburn on my foot.

(Three hours later)

So this morning after I wrote this blog, I believed I had finished it but NO...
I went up to see my dad as it was 8am and I was awake and he is alone and I miss him. He ate toast with crystallised ginger (Yuk) I ate normal toast with butter.

Dad is recently widowed and I miss my wee step-mum and so I go up and keep him company sometimes when I can. I never realised what a cantankerous old grump he can be, he does the death stare and completely ignores me when I suggest stuff to him and that makes me giggle.

I spotted a coffee stain on the kitchen floor and I took a hot cloth to wipe it, the old man deftly ripped it out of my hands, threw the cloth on the floor, stamped his foot on it and used his feet to rub the cloth and then flicked the cloth with his toe upwards and caught it. I was fucking amazed at this, my dad can do keepy up with a hot cloth. “I can wash the floor and I can manage without bending” he muttered. I laughed loudly at his independence and his footwork!

Anyway we both headed out to the bus stop as he was meeting some pals and I was heading back home. Glasgow is really hot today and even though it is early, you can feel the sun really burning already. Glasgow has a history of violence when it gets too hot, this is a fact! To confirm my theory, I spotted two women and a fat man punching each other’s heads outside the old butcher shop at 10am on Maryhill Rd.

Not only were they fighting, swearing and sweating, they had dressed for the weather. Big fat sausage arms, wobbly pot bellies and chunky blue veined legs in strappy vests and too tight shorts were on show...nice! I stood and watched as the fat woman punched the big tattooed fat man round red bulgy face.

Then something struck me (no, not a fist) but I just realised that all big fat drunk women in Glasgow have the identical same haircut – The short shaved grey hair at the sides with curly short waves on top, it looks like a man’s hair style from the 50s. They ALL have that style believe me, none of them had long wavy clipped up hair with maybe a red flower at their ear or blonde wavy tresses pinned up in a bun...no they all had Brenda The Spot- Welders hair, I was momentarily distracted from the early morning fight by this hair phenomenon. Then I got back to watching them punch each other and swear loudly. I so miss The East End of Glasgow and am somehow pleased that Maryhill has retained the tradition of street fighting in summer mornings for me to reminisce.

I left the fight and walked down twenty yards onto The Great Western Rd where posh Aga shops and Clive Christian kitchen designs all sit cheek by jowl; we have loads of Asian jewellers, Asian dress maker’s shops and fancy upmarket cafés, great bars and designer clothes shops- no street fighting there.

It always amazes me how the two roads (Great Western Rd and Maryhill rd) are parallel and just yards apart but are so very different.

One has upmarket shops that sell fridges that Elton John would buy and the other has a second hand shop where drunken people lie on the sofa in the street.

I once got my hair trimmed in a hair dressers on Maryhill rd and the woman who owned it told me she hated the Great Western Rd as it just catered for ‘Paki’s’

I left with my hair wet and walked home in disgust, no wonder people punch people on Maryhill Rd.