By the early afternoon on Friday it's 23 degrees in Glasgow. By Scottish standards that's tropical. We look longingly at a real old fashioned greengrocer. That's the one thing St. Andrews doesn't have and could do with.
The journey back ( when all goes to plan ) can be done door to door in exactly two hours . Today, the journey does go to plan. As we get off the first train the connecting train glides into the adjacent platform. Even better, out of Glasgow the train company has put on the comfortable old Intercity rolling stock . We travel back in uncrowded luxury. From the carriage windows we see that the fields around Stirling are home to thousands and thousands of young lambs while on the river by Perth six swans take off and follow each other majestically into the sky.
A hint of sea fog on the beach. This weekend is a big European and British holiday so the place is on the jam packed side of busy. The last of the exams were held yesterday afternoon so the crowds of tourists are augmented by large cars driven by parents collecting their offspring. I'm guessing tonight will be a big party night for those still left in town.
We pass a group of seven American gentlemen - or to be more precise we pass six American gentlemen led by another American gentleman . This seventh gentleman is walking ahead while providing a running commentary that none of the others is listening to. All of them are wearing Harris tweed caps. They are adherents to the ' If you want to fit in dress like a local ' school of tourism. The fact that the locals don't wear flat caps is neither here nor there. Collectively they have the air of a group that have taken a day trip from Edinburgh and discovered they've seen everything and there's now five hours to wait before their bus takes them back. Methinks a lengthy detour to the bar by the first tee lies in their collective future.
6 comments:
No traditional greengrocers in Aberdeen either. Lucky Glasgow.
Hari OM
We had a trad-gr/groc in Dunoon until COVID - the old gal succumbed and nobody to take over the business. The supermarkets now reign. YAM xx
The greengrocer display would make a marvelous painting.
I think it is a distinctly American characteristic that we want to avoid at all costs "looking like a tourist". I was like that when I married my Japanese husband and it used to drive me crazy when he walked looking like a quintessential Japanese tourist, with a camera hung around his neck. It took me quite a while to realize that, whatever you do, you're actually not fooling anyone.
When we first moved here we had several traditional greengrocers, a daily indoor food market and a weekly outdoor food market - now all gone in the pursuit of "modernisation". As YAM so rightly says - supermarkets now reign. There is nothing more pleasing to the eye than seeing fruit and veg piled high in all their natural glory and not wrapped in plastic.
Doesn't your garden shop offer local produce? I know it's not a green grocery, but the produce you feature is always beautiful. Those train seats look so comfy - and the plaid carpet! Is that standard?
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