We’ve all got things. You’ve probably got a thing. I know I’ve got several things. One is that I can move the little toe of my left foot so that it’s…well, just watch the footage below.

Can anyone else do this? I would be (mildly) interested to know.

2. Whelk

Whelks! What a great idea. Wow, we’re so adventurous. Aren’t we just the coolest goddam cool urbanite gourmet jelly beans in town? Well…

After a bit of sunbathing in the garden we hopped on a bus up to Stockbridge to mooch, josh, eat, drink, make hay, chat, and drink. First stop fishmonger and it’s always the same: what to get? Do I gotta know before I get in the shop? Apparently so, so:

Er, let’s try some whelks

Ten whelks in a bag. Stuck them in the cellar at St Bernards bar, time to look around some shops, but suddenly I’m on fire with the desire: I gotta have pizza, so Pizza Express, sitting outside, by the Water of Leith, bottle of wine, amazing pizzas (artichoke is my current favourite vegetable (vegetable?)), first-class chat. Ann hit with the inspiration let’s call Annie, see if she wants to come for a drink.

Avoca was the venue, the personnel: Ann and Annie and me, the refreshment: three bottles of shiraz, and subjects under discussion included underwear, nostalgic stockbridge reminiscences and heaps of gossip. I was happy enough to sit back and listen.

Whelk-related excitement and trepidation was building, and one more bottle would’ve been a step too far, so it was back to the pub to pick up said molluscs, and back home to cook said shell-bound blighters.

Ann handled the cooking. Spaghetti with a light olive-oil and chilli sauce. Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, so see below for the whelk-verdict:

We’ve come to vainly pride ourselves on our willingness to try anything and on our love of all kinds of food, so it was fun, liberating and extremely funny to find something so utterly fucking disgusting.

3. Porridge

The title of this post is a phrase uttered by the inimitable Andrew Murdoch in a normal-enough conversation (the explanation is too mundane to include in this blog, but suffice to say he was not being deliberately surreal), and I thought – and said at the time – that he must be the first person in history to say it. I was wrong, as a google will prove.

It’s easy to produce a phrase that is novel, never been said before, though it’s not always the ones you assume. Anyway, it’s all down to the combinatorial nature of language. Stephen Pinker says:

The infinite use of finite media distinguishes the human brain from virtually all the artificial language devices…

And also from animal communication, which has a finite repertoire, or “an analog signal that registers the magnitude of some state”, or “random variations on a theme”.

I thought that Jo, an e-commerce and marketing guru of my acquaintance, had been similarly original in the Hallion courtyard a couple of weeks ago. Derek and I were trying to describe the Ready Brek adverts from – when was it, the 80s? In these adverts, after eating said oaty breakfast food, children are protected from the cold on their way to school by an orange aura. Jo is Australian and so has little knowledge of such matters. Incidentally, Derek had explained earlier that he uses such an aura to protect him from the rain and as an aid to levitation – uses never originally claimed by the manufacturers but clearly very real to him.

Jo: So it’s like a porridge-induced force-field?

I said, as I had to Andy, that it was the first time in history that anybody had said that. But again I was wrong, because it appears in this Scotsman article. Remarkable partly because it was written probably just a few hundred metres away only a few months ago. In fact, it calls for some kind of joint celebration. It was Adrian Mather who wrote the article. Adrian: if you read this, get in touch.

Messed around with a photo I took of some trees, so now it almost looks like some of the rock formations in Bryce Canyon, Utah, silhouetted against a sky set ablaze by the setting sun.

Not Paris or Venice – I took Ann to Glasgow to celebrate her birthday. It was a weekend of appetite and passion and curiosity, for which Glasgow is – despite the Edinburger prejudices – the perfect environment.

I chose a hotel called the Kirklee (here’s a nice satellite image)

It’s one house in a very odd red sandstone serpentine terrace in one of the loveliest parts of the West End. It was designed by David Barclay in 1902, so it’s contemporary with Mackintosh, whose art nouveau influence can be seen in the stained glass. Otherwise it’s more traditionally Edwardian, something the proprietors of the hotel make a big thing of, though I can’t say they’ve succeeded very convincingly: there are too many tacky 70s/80s features for it to be a complete immersion in a different era.

The welcome wasn’t what you expect in Glasgow, the breakfast was very disappointing (Walls’ sausages – you get the idea) and there was no hot water for the shower. Still, none of that could spoil the atmosphere of the place.

This a view from the window at around 5AM.

It’s such a lush, cosy and quiet place, and yet only five minutes’ walk from Byres Road, the buzzing heart of the West End.

We went for a walk on the Saturday, from the hotel to Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, via the Botanic Gardens, the River Kelvin and Kelvingrove Park. It’s an immense pleasure to enjoy this kind of walk, surrounded by the life of Scotland’s most exciting city.

Here’s the Kelvin, lazy and full of life.

Certainly didn’t expect to see a bullfinch so close. An excellent wee bird. This one’s got a beak full of nesting material.

The remains of Glasgow’s industrial infrastructure are everywhere, giving the place a haunted feel, as if the energy of past generations suffuses the place and people of today. This must be part of Glasgow’s appeal. It has such a strong identity and never tries to be anything else.

So after a while you get to Kelvin Bridge, which carries Great Western Road over the river, and things become less gentrified and more exciting.

This tunnel leads out to the outside seating area of Big Blue, a great bar with an enviable and odd position by the river. We had a drink there and continued on downsteam towards the park.

The Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum was our ultimate destination, recently opened again after many years of renovation. The most striking thing about the visit was the sense of ownership the people had, the feeling that it was everybody’s. The kids were loving it and all kinds of people were pointing out what had changed since they were last there. It was proof that traditional museums don’t need to go out of their way to impose some kind of official inclusivity from on-high.

That night we ate at 16 Byres Road, a lovely wee restaurant. It was friendly and everything had a nice touch. I had seared tuna loin – raw in the middle, just how it should be – coated in black pepper, with a salad and asian dressing followed by pork belly with green lentils. Superb. Ann had duck leg with orange and rocket salad in a beetroot emulsion, followed by monkfish and scallops with basil. All with a nice Rioja. Exquisite food and a great atmosphere.

We wandered up to Ashton Lane. There was no warning that once we’d turned that corner we’d be entering into the midst of a great big party. The place had a vibe like Hogmanay, the cobbled street was heaving with people moving between bars, and was fringed by outdoor drinkers. It’s always been a cosy wee street, but the sheets of lights hanging between the buildings above intensified that atmosphere. We stood outside Jinty McGinty’s and watched all the people go by. It was great just being there, but we only stayed for one, eager to get back to the hotel as we were.

Much later that night I happened to be at the window having a cigarette when a young guy in a fancy car pulled up, got out and loitered by his car. I was intrigued, told Ann, and then she joined me at the window to watch. We were hidden by the flowers in the window box, so I don’t think we could be seen.

Five minutes later a fat Porsche pulled up and two girls spilled out. The Porsche drove off and one of the girls retired into one of the houses in the terrace. The other girl joined the guy who’d been waiting, and they began to chat. She sat on his bonnet and proceeded to flirt with him in the most obviously horny manner you can imagine. She was wearing a miniskirt and she was displaying her lovely legs to him, and she was stroking and playing with her clothes with a coy but outrageous sexuality. And Ann suggested that she was getting excited at the idea that she was being watched, because she was glancing up in our direction occasionally.

But after 10 minutes of this he still wasn’t making a move. He was shuffling around awkwardly and behaving laddishly. Ann and I were both thinking just kiss her you fool! Was he mad? Gay? Shy? But when I think back to my own youth I realise that I too probably missed such opportunities through lack of experience of female body language and psychology – so I’ll let him off. Well in the end he drove off on his own with hardly a kiss, probably to the immense frustration of both of them.

We walked into the city centre along Sauchiehall Street.

We waited for the train in George Square. Above, a Glasgow ned sleeping off his hangover, and an old man who probably comes here every Sunday to read the paper, when the weather’s fine.

There’s something about the neglected corners, back entrances and hidden spaces of cities that attracts me, like this rusting spiral fire escape.

There is a taste which is common to asparagus, tomatoes, cheese and meat but which is not one of the four well-known tastes of sweet, sour, bitter and salty
http://www.glutamate.org/media/glutamate.htm

This all happened a hundred years ago, so why did nobody tell me before? At a young age we are taught about sweet, sour, bitter and salty, but I don’t recall being told about umami. Anyway, it must have been quite a Eureka moment for the Professor, and the ensuing invention made East Asian food tastier. I find this story quaint and wonderful, which makes it all the more odd to hear the suspicion and derision directed at MSG without a shred of evidence for any harmful effects arising from eating it.

On the other hand, I’m not a fan of Chinese food, partly because it’s usually gloopy, every dish tastes the same and most of the ingredients are preserved. But are the gloopiness and ubiquitous taste caused by over-use of MSG?

Stu and I climbed Cruach Ardrain and its partner peak Beinn Tuliachean yesterday (Cruach Ardran, Beinn Tulachan). We decided on this mountain (although it has two Munros it seems natural, given its shape and structure, to class it as a single mountain) in the car on the way North from Stirling, partly for its proximity to the A82: Stu was worried about little roads, after that hairy drive down from the pass in the Ben Lawers reserve.

I was sceptical about such a southerly mountain. I had wanted something truly wild. In the event it was a tremendous day spent on and amongst surprisingly wild and craggy snow-clad mountains. We could have done with crampons at certain points, because there was a lot of very difficult compacted snow and solid ice underneath the softer stuff, but we managed in the end (9 hours in all – crampons may have saved us an hour). Between the two peaks there is a wide uneven bumpy ridge which had numerous slopes which we used for some excellent sliding. You feel instantly better, physically and psychologically, when you do something like that. After one of the fastest slides the first thing I thought, and said to Stuart, was “life is good.” The mountaineer types (wearing these things) weren’t going in for anything so childish and fun – surely we won’t become like that? But I guess it’s a practical thing: you might have to detach your crampons to have a slide.

I wasn’t too happy about the initial ascent, because I found it very hard and I became quite negative, but the bum-sliding and the views made everything worthwhile. And I was very satisfied after we found our own way down from the mountain without paths, so we could avoid retracing our steps. And because below the snowline it was a gradual descent, I prevented the onset of my perennial knee pain. The route came down off the ridge between the two peaks (more bum-sliding), skirted round the lower crags of Stob Glas (where we saw a huge herd of deer, some of them posing dramatically against the sky), then slowly crossed the contours down to the top of Glen Falloch at around 300m. I guess you could call it a new route. Weariness set in on the 3-4km walk along the glen. Fish supper at Callander – good quality.