Glasgow Weekend - Friday April 28 - part 1

Friday, April 28. It’s Friday afternoon and I’ve had a lovely day in Glasgow after arriving yesterday afternoon. One of the loveliest parts has been writing my blog. The worst part is that the post, which was essentially finished, just disappeared. Gone. The app I use does this from time to time. Magically makes my posts disappear and I have to start all over again. It has definitely happened before but never when I’d written so much. So let’s see if I can write it again - my personal challenge is to enjoy writing it as much as I did the first time. 

So let’s start with Katie and Natalie, two young women Chris and I met in Venice for about 10 minutes last spring and with whom we’ve exchanged texts several times since (which hadn’t mentioned that they have two kids - so I have the unexpected joy of meeting Kallum 8 and Lydia 10). Katie’s their birth mom but Natalie’s been co-parenting for over 5 years. The kids were at their weekly overnight with Katie’s mum Thursday so I didn’t meet them til we picked them up from school this afternoon. I’m still feeling quite shy with them but I can tell they are wonderful kids. 

These two met me at the train station in Glasgow after I had traveled by bus from Buckie to Elgin, then walked to the train station and taken a train to Aberdeen and another to Glasgow. 

When we got to the car (and i as passenger sat down where the driver would sit in America which had me pretty confused) immediately two warm utterly relaxed bodies flopped into my lap and snuggled up close as if they were made entirely of warm blooded trust and didn’t know the first thing about fear and anger.  Here they are beside me as I am writing. 

Bubbles is the ginger-colored she-lapdog and Teddy the dark red-brown he-lapdog (I’m not sure of their pronoun preference). 

My transition from solitude on the trail to the crowding and stimulation of the city has been one of unprecedented (in my life, for this kind of transition) ease and enjoyment. It began during the bus and train trip when I began to play a pretend game with myself. I fantasized that I was a little girl making my first trip to the big city all by myself with my very own backpack and my very own suit case - finding the bus stops, making my way from bus station to train station, finding the right platform for the next train - all by myself!

I was going to visit relatives I had barely met (but I knew I was going to love them and they me - because we were family.  So we would be sure to have a lot of good fun and be delighted with each other). 

What a big girl I was to be going on this adventure all on my own!

It’s funny how being in a relationship with another woman can establish a sense of kinship that stretches across nationality and age. When we met the two Glasgow  girls they were looking at a menu near our outdoor table at a restaurant in Venice. They asked if the food was good, and Chris (almost that quickly) asked if they were a couple. It reminds me of early days in my 20s at lesbian bars dancing to the song “We are family, I got all my sisters with me.” These girls are young enough to be our granddaughters. 

We got to back their flat and I met the third furry member of the family, Freddie, who looks like a long-haired Siamese and who is best playmates  and snuggle buddies with the two dogs. I also had my first taste of IRN BRU (a soft drink that is a national Scottish drink, looks like orange soda but has a very distinctive taste, the ingredients are secret but ginger may be one of them.)

Yesterday Natalie took me for a walk with the dogs and I was enchanted with a new walking bridge and park near their flat. The beauty of it is 3-dimensional and I couldn’t even hint at it in 2-dimensional photos but of course I had to try. 

We saw two swans in a little pond in the walking park

To be continued in part 2.