Glasgow

I feel I should blog about Glasgow before I forget all about it.  We had so many plans, many of which had to be abandoned because of needing to come back to Orkney early. 

However we did manage a trip to IKEA and M and S out at Braehead. We played a one all draw with the universe here as, after almost an hour in a stifling IKEA we manage to choose some new sofas only to discover that they were out of stock at the store and nly available mail order. By the time we got back to Orkney they were also unavailable by mail order as well, so we couldn't even order them and get them delivered to the flat for us to bring back another time. On the upside we did manage to get me a new floor lamp for use here so that I can see what I'm doing when I knit, the previous one was clinging to life by a thread, and the ew one looks nicer and it works well. I also got a new pair of jeans in M and S and I got 15% off because by a total coincidence the day before we left for Glasgow I got an M and S Sparks offers e-mail, and one of the offers  was for jeans. This had the side effect of making me work out how to use my Sparks card and associated offers, so that can only be a good thing.

I have no photos of the lamp or the outside of IKEA. Sorry.   On the other hand I do have a picture of the harbour at The Hope which I took to celebrate being able to leave it for the first tie in months. 

Friday we met up with our friend K, who we know through her work with Scottish Opera. She brought coffee and we brought cake and we had a lovey long if occasionally chilly chat in the garden. You can;t see the cake but there was tea loaf made by me, lime and coconut cake made by son no 2 and some M and S tubs of small chocolatey bits. 

After we left K we walked through some very nice bits of Glasgow ....

firstly to Waterstones and then to the Yarn Cake. Due to having taken part in a video focus group some while ago for research into public library provision in Scotland I had a Waterstones voucher to spend and I finally got Mantel's The Mirror and the LIght with it.  (Also a jigsaw puzzle but the Mantel took most of the voucher, it was a small one! The puzzle was just a bonus). 

Purchases at The Yarn Cake will doubtless feature in another post in due course. Along with some yarn related Happy Mail. 

On Saturday I had arranged to meet one of my Central Belt friends (the other one was recovering from  a cataract operation and preparing for the second one) in Stirling. We had lunch in The Smith Gallery, service was  bit slow as they were understaffed but I had a delicious ploughman's lunch (pic below. NO I didn't finish it all)  Afterwards we had a stroll around Stirling, window shopping in the jeweller's, dipping into a couple of charity shops and ending up in a book shop and cafe combined called The Book Nook. Recommended if you're ever in Stirling. It was a lovely day.

And then on Sunday of course we had to come back to Orkney. We took the scenic route through Perthshire as is now our habit and I persuaded the OH to stop so that I could take a picture of this lovely little loch. 

We also stopped as usual at the Highland Chocolatier shop in Grandtully, but we didn't buy anything, partly because I was feeling bad about the amount of cake, cheese, and other normally forbidden goodies I had eaten over the previous few days, and partly because his prices have shot up, and £10 suddenly seemed a lot of money for a packet of Turkish Delight where it would work out at about a pound a piece. Perhaps I'm just mean.