March 31, 2015

8.30 pm. As soon as we left the hotel, it began to rain. Having picked up an on-the-run breakfast for my son, we headed for the Subway station. After four stops, we alighted at Glasgow University. There, an Ambassador, decked in purple (who could not hold a candle to our yellow terrors at the School of Art), directed us to the Natural Science buildings on the campus:

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We attended three talks that introduced the faculty, the degree schemes, and animal sciences, respectively. Helpful, but academics are now too desperate to get applicants to sign on the dotted line. ‘Your all extraordinary people!’. No. A few may be, some will be … one day, but most are, presently, hard working but entirely ordinary students who are trying to make a very difficult choice. 11.30 am. A coach trip to the Student Village. ‘Look!’:

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It’s a replica of a police box that was once on this site. There are a number of other replicas and one original situated around Glasgow.

2.00 pm. Back at the hotel, we marvelled at the sudden snow blizzard:

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2.30 pm. Once the sun came out again (briefly), we headed west to see the School of Art, which was badly damaged by fire last year, and is now undergoing restoration:

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The School of Art hosted me in 1983, when I studying Welsh chapel architecture as an MA student. (Professor Anthony Jones — a valley boy (like me) and the authority on the subject — was then the Director.) I slept in a Mackintosh room and bed. To be within that building was to be inside the architect’s brain. 4.10 pm. We returned eastward, to the city’s Gallery of Modern Art:

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Two galleries were closed and the others showed a rather uninspired exhibition of works chosen by artists, drawn from Scottish collections. After warming at a coffee shop, we shopped before taking dinner back at last night’s watering hole. Tonight, I ate haggis, neeps, and tatties:

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6.15 pm. Back at the hotel — an evening spent catching up on work.

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