Thursday, July 29

Tenement House Museum, the tenement model, the bedroom of the tenement flat that I wasn't supposed to take--someone was standing in front of the sign

The MacIntosh School of Art, A crazy drum and bagpipe group from the Highlands who regularly get arrested because they won't buy the permit, a police station

Thursday, July 29, 2010

The days are getting noticeably shorter. It is dark by 10:15 or so and the sky doesn’t get light until 4:00. I have heard people say that Glasgows two weeks of summer are up. This must mean that it is about time for us to return to the States.

Up, breakfast, showered, dressed and ready to work. Trying to catch up on the blog, because when we hit the Queen Mary there will be an enforced silence while we are at sea and dependent on very expensive direct satellite transmission. We did laundry and then set out for today’s adventure.

A trip to the Post Office to send some envelopes of brochures, post cards, etc. home. Actually Ian and Sara, we sent them to you. There are three envelopes. They should arrive in a week. We paid for the more expensive air mail route—otherwise we might not see our package for up to 12 weeks. The Royal Mail people are extremely helpful. They have a number of automated machines for mailing things and a machine that will give you a queue number for personal help. They also always have one or two people in the lobby to help people and direct them to the most efficient way to meet their needs.

Then we walked down to St. Enoch’s subway station, bought our tickets and went down to the Inner Circle track. We waited for our train and took it to Cowcaddens Station. We climbed to the surface, got out our (Pete’s) trusty map and figured out the way to the Tenement House Museum. Remember this is Glasgow, Scotland so it is uphill. We went uphill for a block, turned left and continued to go uphill for several more blocks. We finally reached the top and went down hill for a block and a half and arrived at the museum to find that it didn’t open for another 50 minutes…not until 1 PM or 13:00…take your pick.

Ok, we figured we would just go get some lunch on Sauchiehall (pronounced Sauk e haul). We happened to look up at the signs and there was a sign that said this way to Sauchiehall avoiding steep grade. We had seen the steep grade called Garnethill, like climbing a ladder with no steps. Off we went on the Avoiding steep grade path. We found Sauchiehall, figured out we were going to go by the Fusiliers Museum that we had been to already. We found a number of places to eat. However,because I was not feeling adventuresome enough to eat food I couldn’t pronounce, we went back to Starbucks and had a panni which they warmed up, chips, a cookie and Neil’s new favorite—a mocha with whipped cream. We .bought a newspaper so we could do the puzzles.

There are an amazing number of newspapers in this country. People can be seen reading them all over. A woman gave me one on the train on the way back from Thurso. On the third page there was a picture of a woman undressed to the waist. Pete and Jess explained that if the papers had a red banner on the front page they were like tabloids in the states. They cover the stories like the more traditional papers, but boy do they have wild headlines. The paper we got to at Starbucks had a great editorial about Sarah Ferguson….they called her a spoiled brat. They said that her divorce settlement was enough to buy a nice house and to raise her daughters in a most comfortable and fashionable way. They lambasted her for her extravagance and outlandish spending. They were really displeased about the talk of Oprah giving her a show representing single mums. It was pretty entertaining. There certainly appear to be more people reading books here than in the States.

Finally it was one o’clock so we made our way back to the Tenement House Museum. The museum is the flat of a woman, a stenographer, who lived in the flat from the late 1930’s until she was hospitalized in 1966. On her death her money was used to buy the building and eventually it was sold/given to the Scottish Historical Trust. They restored the flat, one of several apartments in the building, to its look in the 1930’s. The 1^st floor has a model of a tenement and a reconstructed “modern tenement” for the 80’s or 1990’s. It seems that these buildings which are relatively small with some ten apartments on five floors are not a bad organization for living in a city—so more and more of them are being rehabilitated rather than torn down and replaced. In addition there were small exhibits on coal heating, fashions, food preparation, washing clothes and more information about the woman’s life. The actual flat is on the 1^st floor (US 2^nd floor) and is one of two on that floor, the second one is currently occupied by a renter. The flat has four rooms, bedroom, living/dining room, bathroom, and kitchen. The flat has been restored to its semi-original state, including the gas lighting with mantles. The flat was electrified in 1956 originally, but they wanted an earlier look. The bedroom is a normal old-fashioned bedroom, bed, armoire, dressing table. The Living/dining space was set-up for tea. They even had pancakes on a platter along side the scones. But in the corner, was a closet—not for clothes but for sleeping with a built in bed. The bathroom was almost modern; one of the caretakers explained this was a high end bathroom for the time with hot and cold running water, a large deep bathtub and flush toilet. The kitchen centered around a coal stove (all the rooms bathroom excepted had fireplaces for using coal for heat). There was a sink and a table but no icebox or refrigerator. It seems this was common in the thirties making daily shopping a necessity. Even today Glaswegians shop more often than we do in the states. It seems if you are carrying groceries by hand rather than loading them in the car you buy less. Anyway, we saw the four rooms and made a retreat.

Back on the street we oriented ourselves toward on next target: the Glasgow School of Art, and a building designed by that MacIntosh fellow. It was not along the easy, flatter part, but to the corner and up Garnet Hill Street. This street is up up hill even more so that the hill near the flat to take Chase to the park. The street has that right name. Anyway up the hill and over a block or so is the Mackintosh building. The building is very nice. We went in and looked around, no inside pictures but didn’t stay long as it is a functioning college building. We checked in the Gift Shop to look at the model of the building and some exhibits about the school, and then came slowly down hill to a fabric store—not just drapery fabrics, but quilt stuff also—for Nancy it was a little bit of a let down because many of the fabrics in addition to being expensive were also American. Still it was fun to look. Next it was across a block to Sauchiehall Street. We walked up this main shopping avenue to the book store where we spent Nancy’s birthday gift and bought books for the trip home. The final destination on this beautiful warm sunny day was the Hamley’s Toy store at Sr. Enoch’s Shopping Mall all the way down the hill to the other end of Sauchiehall Street. We made the walk easily because it was all downhill. At the toy store we were looking for an HO/OO gauge version of the Scots Rail two or three car train like the ones we had ridden North, but they did not have one. I moved that from the will buy to the would someday like list in my head. At the mall we stopped at the very American style food court to have a coke and rest a bit before continuing home. Finally we walked back to the flat to relax and wait for Jess to get off work—the menu tonight was real Scottish food.

We went looking for a pub called the Living Room, supposedly the home of very good steak and ale pie, for which Pete had a wish. We walked into the sun all the way and could not see much as we were blinded, in fact we almost walked by it. The Living Room was a very nice restaurant which served very good food which we all enjoyed. Back to the flat for a coke, and some TV and bed without an air mattress.

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