SNP Women's Pledge

My usual photos on Blipfoto show empty landscapes - unless I'm somewhere amazing like Saigon it tends to be hills and sea and the countryside of Argyll. But today ... today was different. Today I went to Glasgow to take part in what I knew would be a much-photographed public event as Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, launched the SNP's Women's Pledge in the run-up to the Westminster Election.

I didn't realise quite how it would turn out.

Two of us had coffee, pottered along to the steps outside the Concert Hall at the head of Buchanan Street. There was a collection of women chatting, collecting placards, slowly mounting the steps and taking up positions. So we climbed to the top of the first set and stopped. We reckoned we'd have a good view of whatever was about to happen. And so we stood there, and the crowd thickened around us. A line of photographers appeared with seriously large equipment which - strangely - they seemed to be pointing at us. More women. A well-known face - Elaine C. Smith. She stood ... beside me. The lone man who'd been bumbling about just behind me began organising things. A tall woman was asked to stand back a bit. 

And then it dawned on me. Nicola Sturgeon would be just beside me. And so it was that a dire selfie of me with the First Minister laughing behind me went all over Twitter in no time - I take terrible photos of myself. And so it is that I'm posting instead a photo that makes me proud - a photo of Buchanan Street alive with saltires as far as you can see. Somewhere in the scrum just in front of me is Nicola Sturgeon; there are no obvious police people; everyone is laughing and cheering and it's quite the most joyous crowd I've ever been part of.

And as Elaine C. Smith said in her warm-up: This isn't an insurrection, whatever English politicians may say on late-night TV shows. This is democracy at work.