Glasgow at the Games

I didn't buy any tickets for the Commonwealth Games. However, today we felt like going up to Glasgow (by train) just to get a feel of what my home city is like in this week when the whole world (well, not quite - but a lot of people) are focussing on it. We began quietly with a bit of shopping in a shop we use often, where there was one other customer. We ate in Martha's, which was given full marks by Joanna Blythman in Sunday's Herald - that was quite hectic. And then we set off to wander through George Square, down through the relative unfamiliarity to this West End kid of the Merchant City towards Glasgow Green.

This mural is on the end of a tenement overlooking a vacant site where right now there is an amazing market. It was bedlam, with amplified music, bagpipes that needed no amplification, people addressing the crowd from the top of the Irn Bru pavilion, and people, hundreds of them, buying food of every conceivable kind from stalls and vans. The smells of cooking and coffee drifted around in the occasionally gusty wind; Games volunteers in red and grey wandered or bustled about - depending, I imagine, on whether they were coming or going.

By the time we got back on the train home we were exhausted - and we'd not actually been to any of the sports venues, which were all further away from the station. I have a feeling going to see some sport might have finished us off ...