Last time

In my last week in Glasgow, I’ve been doing a lot of things for the last time. Like the Basement Bar pub quiz last night (we got sadly gubbed), and going to St Silas on Sunday.

As is customary for folk leaving the church, I was dragged up to the front to be humiliated - I mean prayed for - at the evening service.  As you can see from the picture, I wasn’t allowed to leave without my name going up on the screen, a reminder of “Welcomegate”, the rumpus I caused when I first visited the church.

It’s been a great place to be a part of - I have grown a lot, learned a lot, and made so many wonderful friends. So a big thank you to everyone who has made St Silas such an important part of my year and a half in Glasgow.

I go back to work tomorrow, and move to Inverness on Friday. That means I only really have today to get my packing done. So I’d best get on with it…

Montreal

I got yesterday morning from the second largest landmass, the first nation of hockey and the best part of North America.

After bagging Mullet Creek, Mississauga, I went to Montreal to visit the suburb of Longueuil, from where the Quebecois name for a mullet, un coupe Longueuil, comes.

I was well impressed with Montreal - dating back to the 1600s and with a strong French influence, the city had a historic, continental feel that reminded me of a French or Belgian city, and which was lacking in the few other parts of Canada I’d seen.

It helped that I stayed in a very cool and sociable hostel for a couple of nights, where it was easy to meet fellow travellers and go sight-seeing together. Indeed, so intrigued were two other guys with my mission that they joined me on my trek to Longueuil.

Also, Montreal presented me with a chance to dust off my patchy French. Other than staff in shops, pubs or restaurants, however, I didn’t actually speak to all that many Quebecquers.

The best use my French got was with a Catalan guy who spoke no English, with whom I chatted quite a bit, even stretching to a lengthy discussion about the comparative politics of identity in Catalonia and Scotland.

I was quite proud that my hesitant, faltering French managed this, although I gained substantial reinforcement of my theory that if you don’t know the French word for something, simply say the English word in a French accent and with a French ending, and you’ll not be far away.

There’s photos of my Montreal adventures, and more from the week’s adventures, in the Canada set in my Flickr.

Canada, eh!

I’ve been here just over twenty-four hours, and have already been up the CN Tower, seen the delights of Mississauga, and of course been to Mullet Creek.

Canada’s quite nice. But this corner of Ontario is very flat, with vast swathes of identikit countryside and farmland, and urban areas that have samey architecture and faceless, unimaginative industrial sprawls.

It’s not helped by the grey concrete motorways and gigantic power lines scattered thoughtlessly around the place like meandering spiders’ webs. One of the few splashes of colour on the landscape are the quite unnecessarily large Canadian flags that any building here worth its salt seems to sport, in the numbers that only nations with identity issues resort to.

I had a good time at Mullet Creek, Mississauga, though, and have learnt an awful lot about the place thanks to the support of John Stewart at the Mississauga News and a slightly bemused but incredibly informative Councillor George Carlson. I’d blog the full story of the morning’s mullet-hunting but as you can imagine John, being a journalist, tells it much better than I.

I’ll no doubt blog more later this week, but in the meantime here’s some photos.

Oot and aboot

Right, I’m off oot and aboot aroond Canada for a week.

I might be able to blog as I go, but if not, then take care of yourselves.

And each other.

And finally…

I’ve heard back properly from FORK about the mystery of the Kelvin tollbridge.

A member of the group got in touch to say that she’d happily tell me the end of the story, but I had to turn up for their next clean-up event at the river.  Cunning.

Much as I’d love to find out how the story ended, I can’t make the clean-up as it is on 1st September, the day after I return to Inverness.

Ah well, I guess I’ll never know… unless someone fancies going along for me, to find out?

OK Commuter

My experience of working in Edinburgh and getting up at 6.40am this week hasn’t been too bad so far, apart from being very tired at the end of the day.

But after three days, it’s amazing how much I have easily slotted into the routine of the subway into the city centre and the train to Edinburgh. The time passes quickly thanks to my iPod and my latest book (which Jenny gave me after visiting Scotland and which I have only found the time to start thanks to my commute). I’ve even started to see the same people on my journeys.

Besides my book, I’ve also started to read the Metro on the train - though I can assure you it’s really only interesting if you read it over someone else’s shoulder.

Mississauga awaits

Did you read the Mississauga News today?

No? Ah well, ask your local newsagent.

My thanks to John for an excellent article, and here’s to a doubtless fascinating meeting with Councillor Carlson. Six days to go…

Between jobs

For the entire weekend, I am jobless.

Friday was my last day here, and Monday is my first day here. So it’s very much a time of transition. In fact, it’s a whole month of transition because it won’t be until the start of September that I’ll be back in Inverness with my trip to Canada behind me.

The plans for Canada are now more or less fully shaped-up, and last night I did a telephone interview with John Stewart, a very nice journalist at the Mississauga News, who has helped me track down some very useful information on Mullet Creek.

John warned me that it’s very hot in that corner of Ontario at the moment, which is not good news. However, as long as it’s not a humid, muggy heat like Glasgow has been suffering for the last few days, I’ll just about cope.

Ah well, not long until the fresh, crisp air of the Moray Firth…

Two questions and lots of animals

Is it just me, or…

1. …am I the only person in the world not to be on Facebook?

2. …is Firefox being a bit rubbish at coping with multiple tabs lately?

And in other news: I hardly ever visit YouTube, but this BBC News article points towards an amazing video of a battle between a pride of lions and a herd of buffalo, with a couple of crocodiles thrown into the mix. It’s a truly stunning illustration of nature. David Attenborough eat your heart out. Or possibly Richard.

Apologies for the random Justinesque blog. Normal service will return shortly.

Another photo published

Hot on the heels of my appointment as photographer to the American construction industry, I received a message the other day to say that another of my photos has been selected for publication, this time on an online tourist guide.

Schmap, who I’d never heard of before, have asked to use this photo of one of the lions in George Square in their new Glasgow Guide. Which was nice.

It’s a clever concept, using (with permission) people’s photos in Flickr; and visitors to the guide can click through from images in the guide to the photographer’s own Flickr page.

Because users of Schmap will be tourists, I thought I’d edit my photo’s description in Flickr to give passing surfers some helpful background information about the statue.