Have finally settled down after a busy wee week. As much as I enjoyed the Franz Ferdinand concert, it resulted in me not getting to bed until 1am, and I had to get up for a 4am flight to London. While that was among the worst wake-up calls I’ve ever had to go through, the 3 days in London (well, Surrey to be specific) was a good mix of work training and time spent in the pubs with a couple of friends whom I had been recently working with back in Fife.
Visited the town of New Lanark last weekend, a World Heritage Site that was once the home of Britain’s largest cotton-spinning complex. Robert Owen, the manger of the mill in the 1800’s, was a bit of a utopian and as such provided his workers with housing, nurseries, adult education, sick pay and my personal favourite – the social centre named the “New Institute for the Formation of Character”. This type of care for the workers during this time was quite unprecedented, and New Lanark was considered a model social experiment throughout Europe. After the mill closed, the place had fallen into disrepair but has recently been restored as a series of museums which captures the old way of life, combined with modern housing built into the old buildings. Definitely a place worth seeing and spending a lazy Sunday in. The village is also in close proximity to the Falls of Clyde and an adjoining nature reserve. The reserve contains a pair of peregrine falcons, and we were quite lucky to spot them both through the help of a ranger and his trusty telescope. Very impressive, and I definitely got the impression they were not birds to be messed with.
How you know you’ve become more British: Indian curries and sausage suppers are the takeaway of choice. Forget pizza or street meat. Oh, and you use the term “takeaway”.
