Old haunts

Lovely trip to Glasgow today with no purpose other than to eat and talk - in a new-to-us restaurant where the cooking is rather splendid - and to use the rest of the afternoon to pay a quick visit to Kelvingrove Art Galleries. I feel as if I grew up there - we spent many wet Saturday afternoons looking at the suits of armour and the summer/winter changing display of animals which changed colour with the season. When I think how that fascinated me as a small child, and how very hands-off that was as an exhibit compared to what they have now, I'm amazed, as I am by the realisation that this vast hall in the photo was where that exhibit was, along with other huge glass cases. Now it's so different that I might have well have been in a totally strange gallery, but we found our way to the Scottish Colourists and the Dali Christ of St John in its little corner gallery. (I still think it was far more powerful at the end of a much larger space, but ...). Mr PB observed that the Art Galleries, as we always called them, were in fact a modern palace for the people. (It's not old. The foundation stone was laid at the end of the nineteenth century.) Once we sang from the gallery in this photo, with our octet, when all the world was young. It was fantastic - the acoustics are amazing.  I love the place.

And outside, of course, was another huge component of my youth in all its neo-Gothic splendour. George Gilbert Scott's building towers over the west end of Glasgow, and once I climbed that tower to the crown halfway up its narrowing height. It was very airy and a little scary, but I was 15 and nothing would have stopped me. Later I studied there, went to most of my classes in that building. So it's my extra photo for today.