Sunday morning....
somewhere in a small quadrant of the Universe... a peculiar consciousness stirs...
slips on some lycra
has a cup of tea, a slice of toast,
wets his face, brushes his teeth...
saddles up.
Ten minutes later, through the serene tree-lined streets of Pollokshields...
and we're here, a passenger pigeon amongst passenger pigeons, on the idyllic platform of Maxwell Park train station:
As always, when your spacing is perfected , your timing too falls in line...
On the empty train - the travelling lounge - I open my flask of steaming java, open my book (Taoist Yoga), have a brief chat with the conductor, and relish the fact that we are ascending albeit gently to the foothills around Newton and Cambuslang.
Fifteen minutes later, I'm here at Newton, staring at the great constellation that is Dechmont Hill.
Up and around, like cycling around Saturn, I hit the downslope and the narrow Turnlaw corridor (closed to all who do not use their own steam to move). It's here behind a fence, in a nook, that I stop and open the flask again, and marvel at the span of the valley before me...
Down some more, through Cambuslang, and down again to the river - the great Ganges and the strong brown God that is the Clyde...
From here, the serene cycle corridors continue all the way into (and beyond) the city.
But I pass through the city, and into Exchange Square where there are some art stalls set up. I see a few pieces I like but I am reluctant to pay for art on the spur.
I move to the stall next door, where a young girl is trying to raise awareness for Woodland Trust Scotland. I am appalled that I am not already a member. I tell her of my run-in earlier in the week with the Forestry Commission up in the Kilpatrick Braes (off the Loch Humphrey Path) who were destroying the whole area with their heavy-handedness. The Woodland Trust is the complete opposite. It is sensitive, child-oriented, and actively educative taking children into real woodland (no more bloody plantations) and letting them uncover their selves and find their way with the appropriate guidance. I sign up immediately, and ask her if she can backdate it 47 years.
I fly back along the riverside stopping to have a Gregg's sandwich with the gulls beneath the Kingston Bridge. They fly with me as I race them along Lancefield Quay. The gulls win every time, and rub it in by laughing at me in unison.
I shake it off and head over the arc bridge and along Brand Street.. It's barely 3 O' Clock. Which forces me to ponder the cosmic timelessness of my journey...
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