May 2nd, 2015
Author: donich_admin
Museum Day
Today R was at a meeting in Glasgow so I took the opportunity to hitch a lift with him and meet up with J. It actually feels very weird being in a big city now – I’m so unused to large groups of people, noise, traffic and pollution that it is all a bit disconcerting. Today J narrowly managed to stop me from walking into a lamp post when I wasn’t looking where I was going.
Anyway – today was nice but rather cold, so we took the opportunity to visit a couple of museums, one of which is an old favourite of mine, and the other which was new to me.
The new one for me first – we went to the Scotland Street School museum. This is right opposite Shields Road Subway station or about 15 minutes walk from Central Station. It is in a beautiful Rennie MacIntosh building and was a council school from early 1900s to 1970s. There are several classrooms done in styles from different periods (turn of century, second world war, 1960s/1970s) and some good exhibitions on the building itself and what it was like to go to school there. It was very enjoyable although I am surprised that any other schooling was going on in Glasgow this morning because the entire child population of the city seemed to be visiting this museum all at the same time.
Then we walked back up to the Clyde and along to the Riverside Museum. When I was a child in 1970s this was the ‘Glasgow Museum of Transport’ and we used to go there with my Uncle and cousins. They moved it a few years ago and put it into a swish new building (in the shape of a wave no less), but managed not to spoil it in the process. My favourite bit is the recreation of an old Glasgow street complete with buses, trams and shops you can walk right into. But there are also some great steam trains (I think I have mentioned before that I love steam trains) and other quirky exhibits. I haven’t been for a while but I must go back for a full visit soon because they seem to have a load of new stuff since the last time I was there. So today we just went to look at the “Tall Ship”. This was pretty good, and had the advantage of being free as against the Royal Yacht Britannia which was good but decidedly not free. I liked the first Officer’s log book and seeing the quarters the seamen had to live in – a bit cramped by anyone’s standards. We then discovered that not all the school children in Glasgow were at Scotland Street because another 50 or so of them were on this ship!
On the way out we got a bit of a surprise walking along beside a fence, as a huge swan suddenly reared up out of nowhere. He was obviously guarding his mate who was sitting next to him on a large nest. So obviously some cygnets due pretty soon and we backed off so as not to disturb the parents.
In the picutes, the person squashed into the very small desk is me (M I should say), and the tall handsome one on the ship is J.