It's staying abroad, it's staying abroad, it's staying, football's staying abroad.

[davywavy]

It’s a moot point now, but there’s been a lot in the press over the last few days about how the Scots aren’t supporting the England team in the World Cup, and whether or not they should. Well, finding myself in Glasgow on Saturday, I can confidently tell you that an awful lot of Scots seemed to be supporting England as they played Portugal – especially the cheery Scots in bowler hats wearing orange sashes.

So it was I found myself in Glasgow on the first day of the marching season, that time of year when two groups of people who are utterly indistinguishable from each other to the external observer spend a month or so playing pipes, banging drums and stabbing one another. As I sat in the restaurant where I lunched, the waiter and I watched one or another of those groups striding past and I asked him; “What’s the marching today in aid of?”
He thought for a moment before answering. “Bigotry”, he said, nodding sagely.
Still, England, as I predicted, are out of the World Cup on penalties, which I suppose will give people one less thing to fight over. My idea for future World Cups is this: If England make it through to the third round, then the team should line up in front of goal and spend five minutes kicking footballs over the crossbar before bursting into tears and retiring from the tournament. It’d save a lot of time and emotion, and the net result would be the same as if they’d played on.

As for the rest of my Scotland trip, I stayed at a rather nice hotel, climbed Arthur’s Seat, and wandered around Glasgow School of Art, a building which I would have hated to be a student in but which gave me several interesting ideas about combining the geometries of Modernist architecture and Lovecraftian horror which I might work up into something at some point.
All round, a super time was had in the land of haggis and porridge. Och Aye.

Oh, and a quick competition: Spot the Difference

The Glasgow Underground:


Squirrel Nutty's Ride at Alton Towers:

Comments

[gwaunquest.livejournal.com]

So you admit it. It's your fault England lost. The voodoo song worked.Join the list of scapegoats and stand in line to be tarred and feathered. We'll ignorn the fact that they hadn't really got much of a chance due to the poor management, lack of strikers, bringing along unfit accident prone players, the heat, the flies, those dammed infernal drums...

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Did you realise that there would be marching?

The sight of an Orange parade always strikes me as being very anachronistic: all those people putting all that energy into celebrating something that happened more than three hundred years ago.

If only they could put that energy to more productive use.

Still, I almost admire the strength and fervour they bring to their marching. One imagines that with that belief they could achieve anything. (Instead of marching through Glasgow...)

[tooth-fairy.livejournal.com]

Did you have any haggis?

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

In local parlance, the Glasgow underground is referred to as the Clockwork Orange.

[queenortart.livejournal.com]

Did you get the big chunky email I sent you?

[hardwired.livejournal.com]

Nice to see the family still keeping the Left Footers down!

;)

Jason

Orangemen

[(Anonymous)]

I hope you didn't deign to cross the road and try to quick step between the marchers or you would have probably have seen Glasgow's knife culture close up.

Your comment betrays more than a little lack of insight given that you 'drum' out the 'one side as bad as the other line'on this serious sectarian problem in Scotland. I like the irony of your haggis and och aye comments in the circumstances. Perhaps you could do a little Morris Dance and post a link.