Glasgow
I was in Glasgow for a week over the summer. It’s a very nice place; here’s what I wrote at the time:
Glasgow’s a curious city, which I can’t quite place. At first I thought it was just run down (which it is), but it’s a particular sort of run down. Perhaps its a feature of cities which owe their origin to industry (Glasgow rather reminds me of Leeds) rather than commerce (Glasgow doesn’t remind me of London, or Edinburgh, for that matter). London hides its ugliness in back streets and sprawling alleyways and passages. Glasgow doesn’t; its run-down streets are broad and atraight. I suppose it’s democractic.
We went to St Mungo’s Cathedral, which is mostly blah, but does have an interesting addition — a tiny, bright white chapel off the main Cathedral, like a little bit of Presbyterianism nestling close to the episcopy. St Mungo’s is also home to a museum of religion, a tremendously ecumenical (not to say childishly postmodern) exhibition of religious artefacts. In many ways it’s excellent, particularly the way it manages to appreciate religious art from a variety of sources without reducing it to just (secular, aesthetic) art. There is, however, an occassional sense of insincerity; I can’t believe any real person is this blandly tolerant, particularly when that tolerance extends to Orange Order parades, photographs of which rested next to pagan naming ceremonies and baptist baptisms.
It does feature an incredible zen garden, which has that tremendous zen quality of being metaphorical without being a metaphor for anything.
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