This is the back end of Glasgow’s Queen Street train station shot from Cathedral Street. I love the way the struts fan out in a peacock display (assuming the peacock is colour blind). I imagine most of the Cop26 delegates and support staff will never see the inside of this or any other train station. They’ll fly into Paisley and take limos to their hotels. Trains are for ordinary folk.
One train ride I took from this station up to Lenzie was particularly memorable. We (by we I mean my wife and I and another couple) had been at a celebration in George Square to mark the homecoming of Olympic athletes who had performed well at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. By the time we were ready to go home, it was late and the trains were packed. Mark and I found seats at one end of a car and our wives found seats at the other end of the car. Seated across from us were two thirty-something women who were modestly drunk and very chatty. They thought it would be a great idea if we came home with them for some drinks. Mark and I looked at one another and laughed, but nicely. Meanwhile, our wives were looking on from the other end of the car, also laughing, maybe not so nicely.
I thanked them for the offer but, I said, we already agreed to go home for drinks with two other women.
“Ooooh,” says one of the women, “you have an accent. Are you American?”
“No, I’m Canadian.”
“Ach! Same difference.”
Mark laughed and, setting aside his native brogue, said in his best imitation of John Wayne: “Them’s fightin’ words, sister.”
You’d think people in the throes of independence marches and referendums would be more sensitive these differences.
