This is something that I feel like I’ve been talking about a lot recently. For ages now I’ve been telling Charlotte that I’ll make her a map of places to go in Glasgow and I’ve been recommending places to go and things to see to the newly arrived PhD students.Then Jaye and her friends did an exhibition at South Block and her friend Lisa had made a ‘local’s map of Glasgow’ that was the outline of the city with the names of places, bands, events and dishes that represent her best of Glasgow. It was interesting and I was kind of dismayed to see that there were places on there that I had never heard of (I wish I had taken photos – the whole exhibition was great!), but then, these things are totally personal. The places we enjoy going back to again and again are special to us for more reasons than just that they make nice coffee, serve reasonably priced drinks or have friendly staff. We associate all sorts of memories with these places too.

Anyway, my friend Martina is visiting from Rome for a couple of weeks and so I’ve had my “local guide” hat on. We went for a drink in The Old Hairdresser’s and got chatting to a guy who is actually making a ‘Locals’ Guide to Glasgow’! He’s already made the Locals’ Guide to Edinburgh and when we saw him he was making a video to attach to his Crowdfunding campaign to raise money to publish the Glasgow one. He showed us the proofs on his iPad and it looks great. I was pleased to see lots of our favourite places in there and I hope he manages to make it happen.

So, I’ve been showing Martina some of my favourite places in Glasgow. I took her to the Botanic Gardens one dreich afternoon (she’s been learning Scottish words from everyone she meets!). We hid in the glasshouses and only ventured out once it had stopped raining and everything was green.

Then, of course, I had to take her to the Grand Ole Opry! She was pretty baffled by it (understandably), but we had a good time, as always.

One of Martina’s friends (who is also called Martina) has recently moved to London and she came up on the bus this morning to spend the weekend here with us.

We went for a full Scottish breakfast in Cookie which was fantastic! I can’t believe we never went there in the Nursery Outreach days! Then we took in all the charity shops on Victoria Road. Charity shops don’t exist in Italy and I was really pleased that we all came away with some great purchases.

On the way home we stopped in Tramway. There was an exhibition on that lent itself well to fake album covers (don’t you think ‘Malcolm and the Martinas’ is a good name for a band?!) and hide and seek.

We wrote wishes and tied them on the wishing tree. I never know whether it’s acceptable to read other people’s wishes, but this sweet one caught my eye.

I wonder if it came true.

Have a lovely weekend! x