I’ve posted sunset images before, most notably in February when the sky was alive with lipstick smears of pinks and purples. Tonight as I sat in my room, poring over some impending work for tomorrow, I noticed the usually coolly lit room was bright with colour. I left my laptop and my north facing room to head south and peer out of the kitchen window. All the sandstone buildings high enough to be touched by fading, evening sun were basking in a hot, reddish light. I shoved my camera in my pocket and immediately raced outside before I missed all the action.

The windows all along my street were reflecting the sun, each one blindingly golden; the stone surrounding them was bathed in a light I’ve rarely seen here. It was magic. It’s on nights like this that I remember I’m so lucky to live atop a hill – it has many disadvantages; a propensity for attracting rowdy seagulls, causing breathlessness on a bicycle with no gears, and making returning home after a long day difficult. However, the nearby westerly panoramic views more than make up for the inconvenience of cycling uphill all the time.

– Today Rosie has been mainly being silly, but doing some work and making sweet sushi with various items from the kitchen in Glasgow, Scotland –

What a weekend that was. After the costume party, I woke the next day with my real eyelashes gummed together; the enormous fake ones had left residual glue that make-up remover could not dissolve. I bet the real Queen of Egypt never had that problem. It was a day with a very slow start – a select few revelers had been up until 4am so there was very little movement from us before late morning. I insisted on making sushi for breakfast (at a normal person’s lunchtime) and this activity was also protracted beyond usual boundaries.

Luckily, the only solid appointment I had on Saturday was to see a play at The Arches; the spaces underneath the railway station that play host to exhibitions, club nights, gigs and theatre. I was embarrassed to admit in my years of living in Glasgow, I’d been to a single gig there. Last year. Over this weekend I blasted that record out of the water by seeing three plays – two of them back to back. My friend, Anna had bought me a pair of tickets to see White Rabbit Red Rabbit (which you may recall from last year’s Edinburgh Fringe). Yes, yes, so I’ve seen it three times now, but that only serves to make the experience richer, not diminish it. Since a fresh actor is required for each performance, Joe and I pondered who might be performing it that night. My expectations were high, but well met with Gary Lewis*. I recall seeing him in a local café in my second year of university. I immediately called my sister to tell her I’d seen Billy Elliot’s dad and I’d been really close to him. On Saturday night, Joe and I both ended up on stage with him cajoling us to climb up a ladder. I received the highest honour of being loudly called “a piece of sh*t” and then “f*ck you!” by Gary. He was very very close and delivered the lines with an intensity I wasn’t anticipating. I should probably have called my sister to tell her.

After the near fame of one play, we made the impromptu decision to see another highly recommended play, Beats. As we waited for that to start, we were offered free seats to a matinee performance of yet another play, Thatcher’s Children, the following lunchtime. Never being ones to pass up an opportunity, both myself and Joe accepted and found ourselves in the midst of a cultural hat trick of performance. Each one had it’s own merits. Beats was an exploration of several characters surrounding a 1990s rave. Though I was never a ‘90s raver (being far too young) and am not into rave, it still brought elements of my adolescence back to me in a way I had entirely forgotten. At one point, the actor’s character of a fifteen year old boy was listening to a cassette of a rave track with the sounds of a live crowd left in. He described his elation at hearing the crowd; it made him feel small and lost. I recall vividly being in my bedroom in Carlisle and being a similar age, holding a live BBC CD of The Jam playing live at the Rainbow in London in 1979. I wasn’t even born back then – my parents were not even married at that stage so I was hardly even a twinkle in anyone’s eye. I slotted the CD into the lid of my tiny beat box and pressed ‘play’. The breathlessness and immediacy of the performance was crushing, even on that tiny CD player. The roaring, whistling, clapping excitement of the cheering crowd was palpable, even in my bedroom twenty years too late. I was young. I was so enamoured of that band at that stage of my life that I couldn’t help but be affected by it. The only part that stole the exhilaration from me was the callous BBC bleeping out a couple of sung expletives on the CD. Consequentially, despite its initial impact, I have never listened to that CD again. Regardless of Auntie Beeb’s unsympathetic censoring, there’s still a little piece of my musical heart that will forever belong to the raw, charged angst of The Jam.

Back to the weekend; tempering these theatrical forays, we were alerted to the appearance of something epic and pagan occurring on Glasgow Green. After the matinee, we met Sacrilege; an enormous life size inflatable model of Stonehenge. That’s right. A bouncy castle for all ages that resembles a grassy, monolith filled pagan site in Somerset, England. I was so excited to get on it that I fell over whilst trying to pull my shoe off. You can see from this image how much bounce there is in it. I was physically destroyed by the time our ten minutes was up – we bounced, sat, rolled, lay down, did handstands, leapt like spacemen, ran, slammed into the huge bouncy stones and then I had to take a break. I miss bouncy castles; the whiff of damp socks, the squeak of denim on the waterproof fabric, the ever present risk of injury. I hope to go back next week for another round of bouncing, this time with water and sweets to keep my liquids and energy up. Luckily the West Brewery is within jumping distance.

* You might know him better as the dad in Billy Elliot or from Orphans, Gangs of New York or any number of Ken Loach films. He’s been in many different Scottish television shows as well; Rebus, Taggart, Rab C and so on.

– Today Rosie is working, having her teeth checked, playing badminton and watching a film in Glasgow, Scotland –

Having squeezed almost the same number of people as you can see here into my kitchen for my birthday party last year, I decided this time that enough was enough. In my flat there is no living room, therefore no dance space. It being a flat (and not a detached house) there is no capacity to play pounding music. The further fact that I reside on the top floor of a tenement block of mainly elderly Chinese people inhibits me from leaping about and causing a ruckus on my own, let alone accompanied by twenty or so other merrymakers. My flat is no party flat. Hence, now that I am a grown up and I can make big decisions like whether I will eat cake for breakfast (like I did today) or whether I should pay my broadband bill by cheque or direct debit (who uses cheques anymore?), I can also host a party somewhere that is bigger, noisier and more fun than my home.

It took more forethought that I imagined; I’ve never planned a party outside the flat. It took over a month of venue switching, teeth gritting and phone calls. Finally I secured a familiar venue within my means and I was ready to get costume planning. The chosen theme was Kings and Queens. I always host a costume party. I can’t really help it. I think it stems from having a dressing up box as a major player in the toy cupboard when I was growing up. My parents used to host costume parties for friends and family at Hallowe’en; as pirates, cowboys and Indians, film stars and of course, the classic festive spooky theme. I was in fact given an antique metal trunk for my birthday this year and it has become my current dressing up box. Dressing up irks some people, but generally not enough to make them tear up their invite. Reluctance to dress up merely results in me providing spare accessories to dress them in upon their arrival. After a beer or two, moustaches are applied, hats are donned, and the party is in full swing. I chose Kings and Queens perhaps partly because I’ve been brainwashed by all the Royal Jubilee preparations occurring this year, but it was also to create a more open, interpretative approach to costume making. I had a tiny hope that there might be a Freddie Mercury (from the band, Queen) or perhaps a King penguin. My expectations were entirely wrong; however the effort expended by guests was colossal.

I myself  spent around eight hours in total sewing a dress from an old double bed sheet, gold spraying, beading and glue gunning my neckpiece and then chopping up a baseball cap and a sheet of gold card for my headdress. Hopefully I can wear the dress again – a likely outcome since I deliberately made it as easy to lunge in as possible. I’ve stretched the seams of a favourite dress recently from some over zealous dance moves. Never again. Along with me as Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, you might be able to see the Queen as a stamp, a Queen of Spades as a card and two chess pieces in the foreground. There’s a Kingfisher to the left with a Maharajah, some Queens of Hearts, a Queen of Sheba on the right, some Royal bees at the back, Marie Antoinette, a King of Hearts, a school nativity play King, Queen’s Park, Prince Charles and various others. I’m so glad this photo was taken by the bar staff – it’s a lovely memento of a classic evening. I finally crawled into bed at 4am, grinning happily to myself that nothing had gone wrong – quite the contrary. Everything had gone right royally.

– Today Rosie is at her desk, working away and awaiting a huge package of a bike in the post in Glasgow, Scotland –

(View of people on a staircase in the British Museum: London, England)

I’m on the road again – or rather on the rails. That doesn’t mean I was ‘off the rails’ at any point, simply that I am a passenger again, this time from London to Glasgow. This brief London trip has felt quite long, despite the fact I was only there for five days. During those days I stayed in three different places; two nights in Farnborough with my cousin (way out in Surrey), a night with friends in Greenwich and the final two nights with another long time chum at London Bridge. Three of the days were spent working – two of them from 8:30am, after an hour and a half commute. I actually became a London commuter for two days; I had my thermos cup of tea in hand with my ‘pain au chocolat’ in a bag. My cousin, a seasoned commuter, wisely prepared the picnic breakfast for us to enjoy together on the train.

With the tiring but useful meetings out of the way by Thursday evening, I met with several familiar faces for a catch up in Borough. It was at this point I decided to ask a friend if I could cheekily sleep at her place instead of trekking further across London and my original arrangement with Mark. I occasionally marvel at my own audacity, but I also tend to choose my favours wisely, analysing the chance of success before asking. It offered the opportunity to spend further quality time with more friends; a fantastic result. It also allowed me to stay in my own room in a sumptuous three bedroom apartment on the banks of the Thames in Greenwich – something I shall doubtless not experience again. The views over to Canary Wharf were smashing and I enjoyed chatting and lounging on the sofa, as well as making use of the scanner for my daily drawings.

So after my short but intense working week, I had Friday and Saturday to do as I pleased. The time was easily filled with a Tate exhibition and various hijinks. It began with some drawing and then a wander to Greenwich market for food. Anna, Robbie and I had beef suet dumplings, nestling in a pool of home made gravy, dashed with peas and topped with horseradish and a gherkin. We scoffed these on a sunny bench inside the naval college grounds where for the second time in my memory, I have stumbled across a film being shot there. The last one was National Treasure and this one will be Les Miserables. I took a very short video of some actors rehearsing a march. Robbie and I soldiered on to the Royal College of Surgeons to marvel at the old bones, surgical equipment and nasties in jars. As it is a working college, we were handed visitor badges at the door and directed to the free public Huntarian museum – a room stacked to the ceiling with bottles of preserved innards, animal skulls and various human remains of varying interest. The bones of the Irish Giant standing over seven and a half feet tall were an obvious highlight, despite the underhand way they were collected for the college*.

Once we’d had our fill of dead things, I bought my third serving of strawberries from a street stall – although very ripe, I couldn’t say no to a large punnet for 80p, even if I had eaten them for the previous two days. We tempered the grisly morbidity of the morning with a trot to the nearby British museum for a look at the Japanese exhibits and revisited the world of the dead via the Egyptian mummies. That evening, my exhaustion was so great that once I reached Mark’s place, we ate dinner and nodded off on the sofa. He also had a hectic week so we were in bed by 11pm on Friday night and even had to nap the following afternoon before experiencing our first ever karaoke session that night.

Returning to London felt less like a trip and more like coming home, in a way. That city is no longer simply a city, it’s a place I have lived – albeit for a short time a year and a half ago. In those few weeks, I felt like a part of it and less like an interloper. I have too many friends there to feel the disconnection of a new or unfamiliar place. Even though they move around London, they are always there and there is always a sofa space or a mattress for me. Saying that, I feel my Scottishness acutely. I noticed it especially when I was incredulous of finding no black pudding anywhere. Mark and I searched for an hour. It’s probably best for the real citizens of London to be denied this northern delicacy. It’s also best we didn’t find any – I was full to the brim with brunch as I headed for my train home.

* As part of my (very) part time job with Glasgow University, I sat in on a lecture about body snatching in which I learned that this man paid sums of money to secure a burial at sea to avoid being hacked apart and displayed after death. Unfortunately the interest in his body was too powerful and bribes and a web of illegality landed his remains in the hands of professors in London.

– Today Rosie is visiting her Gran and is relieved to be back in Glasgow, Scotland –

(First BBQ of the season: Glasgow, Scotland)

In the flurry of all the recent work and news, I haven’t really had time to properly update you on general current affairs. Time for some context and to return to some previously mentioned and subsequently under reported issues.

Although a couple of weeks ago, we were basking in Glasgow sunshine and being reddened by its rays, this early boon of seasonal warmth has quickly subsided, making way for a decidedly chillier time. However, the warm weather did much to enhance my outlook, it coaxed buds onto branches and allowed me to trial my new lawn with a test barbeque. I planted the lawn last November and now it is ripe for the mowing. As you can see, it’s green, which is an improvement from this time last year when it looked like this. The barbeque was perhaps a little previous. As soon as the sun faded behind the neighbouring buildings, the temperature dropped from the high teens to low single figures. You can see we’re swaddled in scarves and jackets. I can also be seen positively wolfing a burger. Not my finest hour, but as we must have gathered by now, I have been hungry since the mid 1980s. In demolition news, the two Glasgow School of Art buildings that were condemned have entirely gone now. They have razed the entire area and they are now excavating in order to lay foundations and begin work on the subterranean lecture theatre I have heard about.

We’re now going back a wee while to my birthday – which was lovely. So it was over a month ago now, but to give you a very quick round up; I made a cake, posted some things, ate a Piece sandwich with Simon and Joe, then we walked in two parks, went on some swings, went to a reptile house and saw fish, turtles, birds and lizards, I went on a train, ate three different kinds of home made pie with my flatmates (real and honorary), made sushi (and ate that too), had cocktails, ate cake, played games and laughed so hard that I had to leave the room and recover my composure as well as my breath. It was so great, but the party is still to come next week. I’ll be sure to do an extensive update on that. I must also cover the Carlisle Castle exhibition at some point – hopefully when I get hold of some decent images. I haven’t glossed over it so don’t you worry.

And back to the present again. At this very moment, I am on a grossly overcrowded main line train to London. Although I was catching the usually quiet 09:49 from Carlisle, a problem with Glasgow’s overhead lines has resulted in all the earlier trains being cancelled. What I am in fact travelling on is a train replacing all four trains scheduled before that time – all trains have had their passengers amalgamated into one sorry looking crowd on this one. I spent the first hour of this journey making conversation in a vestibule area, but a harried looking staff member informed London bound passengers that they could travel in first class! I’m using the free wifi right now. This week’s London foray is officially a business trip (it’s exciting for me to be an international woman of not very much mystery). I assure you I shall be using any time I can to explore, discover and catch up with friends.

– Rosie is currently in transit from Carlisle to London, England –

(Left – Gratuitous dad poses; I am in the fourth image – in the hideous orange t-shirt. Right – Me on the summit of Arthur’s Seat: Edinburgh, Scotland)

I’m a firm believer that British people are, on the whole rather prudish about death. I was a child of a silly persuasion, yet of a slightly nervous and shy character, predisposed to fear fire (especially the house burning down), I had a strong belief in ghosts, and a dislike of bones and skeletons. I have since grown up and out of these naïve anxieties, more through the natural unfolding of events than an active determination. I discovered there are moments in life much more real and terrifying than ectoplasm or flame; my January haircut being one of them. Having my sister call me from hospital to hysterically deliver the line, “I might have broken my back” was certainly one of these. It turned out – mercifully – that she hadn’t. Finding my Grandmother in full cardiac arrest was another, and more horrifying still was having to send the wholly inadequate and ever inappropriate, “I won’t be back in Glasgow today because last night, my dad died” text message to some university friends. I can’t remember the exact wording, but I recall trying to make the blow as soft but direct as I could.

Easter brings with it the dichotomy of enjoying festival fun and marking a family member’s absence. It has now been five years since my Dad died – it is perhaps most pertinent this year since he died on Easter Monday which has (unexpectedly soon) fallen on the exact same date this year. It’s difficult sometimes to keep family holidays and festivals free of memorial lethargy – how inconvenient that Dad’s birthday falls on Christmas Eve and then he ruined all subsequent Easters by not waking up on that Monday morning. The death of a parent is an event I don’t think a person is ever fully prepared for, even though it is almost certain to happen to most of us at some time. I’m still not sure a person can ever even completely recover from the loss; it just wanes and then reappears in little pockets of surprising intensity as life continues. I can only speak for myself. My dad not being there anymore is something I am certainly aware of every day, perhaps just for a moment.

The immediate effect of his death on me at twenty-two was negative; it brought with it more crying than I could have imagined doing in a lifetime, an inability to concentrate on the final stretch of the degree I was attempting to complete, a detachment from emotions and generally feeling pretty miserable and inert. However, though this initial phase of grief was intense, it was relatively short-lived, lasting a matter of months; the strength of dark feeling diminished, making way for the everyday emotions I could better identify with and recognise. Possibly because of the good relationship I had with my father and the simplicity of my direct loss, the fog of mourning faded slowly rather than evolving into the constant, crippling issue as it can so easily become. By simplicity, I mean that I never wished I’d said anything to him, I didn’t wish I had treated him differently. He loved me, I adored him and the loss was massive. The entire affair made me acutely aware of the role a parent plays in the development of a young person and how much I still rely on my family. It made me want to be better, happier, stronger. It made me want to eat fruit and go swimming, to look after myself, it crystalised a long held belief that happiness is of the utmost importance and it pushed me to be closer to friends and family – to cultivate rich relationships.

The upshot of all this preamble is that five years on, I’m taking stock of myself. It turns out that I’m a happy person. Really happy. Whilst I obviously would love my dad to still be around, his absence has forced me to become more resilient, more sensitive and just better. I take less for granted – alright, so I still take things for granted, but I don’t react so negatively when things don’t go to plan. After all, what’s a bad haircut or having no bathroom compared to something much worse?

People used to comment that my dad and I were alike, both in character and in looks. That was presumably before he grew a beard. Essentially he is never really gone. I experienced a moment of clarity as I glanced up at the bathroom mirror once day, washing my hands. There he was – for a split second, he caught my eye in my own reflection and it took me completely by surprise. Like it or not, I am my father’s daughter.

– Today Rosie is with family and friends in the Lake District, Cumbria –

On Monday, despite having a moderate workload and experiencing the continued ruination of my feet, I kept a sightseeing appointment with friends. One of the wondrous and ever pleasing aspects of freelancing is the false sense of freedom it generates. I spent the entire Monday evening until well after 9pm working, simply because I had jettisoned official working hours to take a day off. This visit has been in the planning for weeks; Tom and I went on our last jaunt some months ago to visit the Riverside Museum on its inaugural day. After the success of that outing, we promised we would reconvene for other days out in and around Glasgow. It has taken nine months, but we got there eventually.

Bothwell castle lies to the South East of Glasgow, right between two railway stations; Uddingston and Blantyre. We walked the mile or so from one to reach the castle, then a couple of miles on to the other for the return journey. The route is all riverside woodland, dappled shade and wild garlic, so it worked out very well and I was hindered less than anticipated by my shredded feet. I only had to stop once in the entire day to tend to a messy blister related incident involving my flip flops and a stick.

By the time we had shuffled through the woodland from Uddingston, the castle’s defenses had been breached by a group of feral schoolchildren who were brandishing plastic swords in a tentatively menacing way. Some were wearing Viking helmets (also plastic) that they had procured from a historically enthused staff member in the shop. He gave us a thorough history of the castle before allowing us to explore. Highlights of the day included trying on a set of chain mail and helmet – helped in and out by Tom – and an al fresco lunch under the handsomely machicolated* tower. You can see Andrew and Tom polishing off the remains of their pork pies in the image above.

The castle itself is a partial ruin, damaged and rebuilt almost constantly over centuries. Centuries. I have to remind myself that over hundreds of years these buildings have evolved, dissolved and been altered to become the empty husks we visit for fun. Once they must have been ringing with chatter, music and the sounds of industry – castles like this one were so important that they were fought over, besieged and ultimately irrevocably damaged. It’s difficult to evoke that understanding on a sunny day, wearing sandals and sunglasses, swinging a bottle of lemonade in one hand. Bothwell castle was in fact larger, more complete and much more beautiful than I expected. Perhaps my view was enhanced by the intense sunlight of another spectacular day. Glasgow – and much of the UK – has been showered in sunshine since late last week and we have been collectively reveling in it. The amount of good weather feels almost obscene and I have been overdosing; smothering myself in the outdoors, and latterly in suncream. There is a primal Glaswegian** desperation during such spells of magical weather and we rush out to it like an oasis, ever waiting to discover it is a mirage. We intoxicate ourselves with the sun where we can, staggering, ruddy faced, lethargic and drunk with it until it disappears – as indeed it always does. In fact, I heard there is talk of snow this weekend.

* We learned this word from Tom’s guidebook. It means ‘slotted’ and refers to the very top section of this tower with the holes.

** I count myself in this generalisation since I’ve lived here long enough to call it home. I recently concluded at this particular juncture, I am more Scottish than English.

– Today Rosie is visiting her Gran and singing at an album launch with the Power Cut Choir in Glasgow, Scotland –

Yesterday marked our fifth set of training for this fifty miler we signed up for. Numbers were a little depleted today as Ellie (central figure in the group shot) had to leave for work before midday. The remaining four continued to complete what was to become arguably the most arduous walk we have yet undertaken. However, the day – as you can see – was glorious. The combination of cloudless skies and almost imperceptible breeze made it classic British t-shirt and shorts weather. I shall have to consider shorts more seriously in the weeks ahead.

The route we selected was from Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens in the West End, all the way along the canal route to the Bowling Basin and back again. You might recall I cycled the exact route last year, ending up looking at shipwrecks and posing atop a giant bicycle. It is a route that winds through Glasgow’s urban sprawl, taking in several smaller pockets of civilisation, and eventually opens out to snake under the Erskine Bridge (bottom right image) and on to Bowling. The whole way is either gravel, paved or tarmacked so we were very heavy footed – that likely led to our collective whining and then pained silence for the final stretch. No matter how chafing the boots, how many unseasonably populous bugs we swallowed, nothing could erode the general good feeling of a sunny day. As I looked out over the water at lunch, sunshades on, chomping on a pork pie, listening to the questionable conversation around me and airing my overused trotters, I noted that I was enjoying myself. Even with the knowledge that we would have to turn right back around and do what we had just done all over again, and that by the end we would be demoralised and weary, well – that was all yet to come and for a few minutes more I could savour the moment.

As I type, I am weighing up which is the toughest residual ailment; the sunburn across my shoulders and arms, the torn shreds of skin at my heels that were once blisters or the still intact (at time of writing) huge ‘daddy’ blister on my left toe. I jest not – this blister measures almost the entire length of the big toe and caused some commotion in the group at its grand unveiling in the park. I could go no further in my boots and we resorted to peeling away our socks and surveying the hitherto concealed damage. Kate (pictured showing off her plaster handiwork) had some smashing blisters on the soles of both feet – I certainly wouldn’t trade with her. But upon seeing my epic one, Kate’s facial expression made me feel it was more of a war wound than the result of an ill-fitting shoe. It almost made the injuries worthwhile. Almost. It was a blend of disgust, amazement and pity. I think she was even rather impressed by my ability to harbour such a vast pocket of plasma in my shoe. It has been described in its monstrous size ‘like a sixth toe’ by my flatmate. Anyway, such is the painful nature of my condition, I walked out of the botanic gardens with my boots swinging from my hands, collected my bicycle and then rode the twenty minutes home barefoot. Only after dinner and a shower did I even notice the sunburn. Even in Glasgow, even in March, even with a scarf on all afternoon, I burned. It is not severe, but it is very noticeable. If you see a very red girl in flip flops, showcasing a grotesquely oversized toe and staggering stiffly in the Glasgow area, it’s probably me.

– Today Rosie is wearing flip flops, running errands and potentially doing even more walking in and around Glasgow –

I returned from a meeting yesterday to discover this on my front doorstep. The poor beast had torn its wing slightly, probably enough to render it uncontrollable in the air. It was in a sorry position on the cold concrete, but rather than attempt a fumbled (and ultimately pointless) rescue, I decided to leave it quivering where it was. It sounds tragic, but the butterfly was so static that I was able to take several exploitative shots. It may even have warmed up and flitted away – just in case you were becoming depressed about the state of early Springtime arrivals here.

What it alerted me to is Spring; I have seen only one other butterfly this year, but to me, it is a sure sign that Winter is finally releasing its choking grasp of everything. Yesterday started as one of those crisp sunny wintry mornings, evolving into a mild, breezeless Spring day with an air of optimism. As I cycled through the park, I noted with relief that the blossom is just out (a little earlier than last year), though not yet scattered everywhere like a fresh fall of floral snow.

So much has been going on these past couple of weeks – I must update you soon, but first – work! In a nutshell, I had a birthday – the most delightful birthday – I have been home to Carlisle twice for day trips (with another impending visit next week), I have been walking in the lake district, taken on another teaching position (very part time), I’m helping to organise a ceilidh for Oxfam, planning parties, writing copy for a new website and attending talks on parody in the creative sector. It has all been very busy here at world meets rosie HQ. If you’d like to know more about the busy world of Illustration, etc. my almost full time job – have a look here.

– Today Rosie is writing, drawing, meeting, teaching and yes, meeting again in Glasgow, Scotland –

Since taking on the (very part time) tutoring position with Glasgow University, I have visited places I never imagined in the name of work. One of these has been Shotts; former coal mining town in essentially the middle of nowhere. Genuinely each time we three tutors have been there – nine times – it has been squalling; blowing a gale, lashing with rain, snowing, hailing, overcast or grey. There was a surprise glimmer of sunshine this week, which probably spurred on our explorations of Shotts. Highlights include HMP Shotts (the prison), shops with questionably unsubtle names such as ‘Beer World’, ‘The Spice of life’ and then our own personal favourite, ‘The Stove Experience’ with the subtitle, ‘The Spirit of warmth’.

I had heard tell from our students of a sandwich (a ‘Hoagie’) that could be bought locally that appeared to be filled not only with chicken tikka, but also with kebab meat, chips and potentially cheese. They were never clear which it would contain, but it sounded like a collective filling of all the above. We made our way to the purveyor of the Hoagies, only to find (mercifully, perhaps) that it was closed. I was very much disheartened by luncheon progress and was determined that we should lunch in Shotts, whatever the cost to our pockets and potentially our health. So far, we had failed in our mission. But across the road there was a shop parading as a deli; the sign claimed the goods inside were ‘deli-licious’. Needing no more encouragement than that weak word play, we entered to discover a world of wonder; fresh homemade Aberdeen Angus burgers for a mere pound sterling, home made schnitzel, home made black pudding, pastries, rolls, breads galore and then to crown it, The Breakfast Pie.

Yes. An entire cooked breakfast in a pie. I could hardly believe our luck. My fellow tutor, Bill was the one who spotted them first. “I don’t know what they are but I’m having one of those – what’s in them? Are they a quiche?” – or words to that effect. She assured us they were in fact breakfast pies containing no less than four primary elements of a full Scottish breakfast; sausage with black pudding and beans, topped off with egg. “I’ll take one!” said Bill. “Make that two” I added, elated by Bill’s incredible discovery.

I must now report my findings about the actual taste of the pie in full truthfulness. I cannot bear the thought that I might misinform you as to the nature of this finding, biased though I am to praise the ingenuity of the maker. The pie was amazing. The beans really lent the pie a moistness and succulence rarely found in a breakfast, let alone an astoundingly reasonable meat based pie. I am converted, yet also saddened that next week will be my last trip to Shotts with work. When we tutors go next week (an hour early in order to have a swansong breakfast in this deli) I intend to nobly buy up what stocks they have and bring the Breakfast Pie to Glasgow to be enjoyed by all.

As a small aside, after regaling two friends about the wonders of the breakfast pie, we harnessed the knowledge and made our very own pie; it had all the same ingredients blended with a few sneaky extras like herbs and cherry tomatoes. It was amazingly close to the original – a dinner / breakfast to be proud of. That brings the the total number of pies I consumed in last week’s national pie week to five. Another thing to take pride in. 

–Today Rosie is fixing things and recovering from seeing family in Carlisle, England –