Categories: random, places, church
Tags: procrastination, walk, culture, friend, homesick, relationships, New Lanark, church
Date: 16 October 2005 16:11:58
Yesterday I did more culture - I can't wait to get my computer back so I can actually link to some of these fantastic places. This time I went to the World Heritage Site of New Lanark, which was a village built by a mill owner in the 19th century who was way ahead of his time in terms of abolishing child labour, encouraging education and community involvement etc. The village, as well as being a tourist site, is still lived in (though I must admit I wouldn't fancy living there during summer when all the tourists are around gawping into your living room window!), and is beautifully kept. It's situated in a valley, and the main thing that we did was walk along the Clyde Falls path - the walk takes in 4 waterfalls, which often are little more than a trickle as they get rerouted to provide power for the nearby hydroelectric plant, but yesterday for some reason were well and truly performing for us! No doubt they were swelled by the heavy rain we had earlier in the week. A beautiful place, a fair bit of uphill but not Serious Heavy Duty Walking (I don't do that if I can help it!), and somewhere I may well return with my sketchbook some time. I'm not very good at drawing water, but there were plenty of viewpoints and seats along the way so lots of places where I could get some practice. There was also a long winding decked walkway along part of the river which for some reason reminded me of the Yellow Brick Road, I kept wanting to start singing "We're off to see the wizard", but spared my companions the embarrassment!
A friend from London (who's now in Bath - see my visit to her in June's blog) is in Glasgow for a couple of days this week working at a conference, but despite lots of emails we've sadly come to the conclusion that our diaries just will not co-operate and co-ordinate. So that's a bit frustrating, I would have loved to see her, but her only free evening is when my Romanian class is, and seeing as I am the class I suspect my absence would be noted! Oh well, I've just insisted that when I move into the flat she will have to come and see me, so we can catch up properly and so she can explore a bit of the city, rather than just explore the inside of her hotel, which looks like Stalag 17 from its picture on the website.
This morning I branched out and went to the local Episcopal church. I needed a liturgy fix! It was lovely to be somewhere which felt familiar (a lot of the liturgy we used was very similar to the CofE one I'm used to) even though I'd never been there before. I haven't a clue what the sermon was about though - I was glad I wasn't Mystery Worshipping the service, as I'd never have been able to summarise the "In a nutshell, what was the sermon about?" question.
I've been feeling a bit rootless again, though I'm sure that will be better when I get into the flat and have my own stuff round me again. Also, a few people I know have either been getting together with people or splitting up from them, and although I'm appropriately either happy or sad for them, both of these things are pushing a few buttons which are still more painful than I like to admit. I really want to go on retreat, so I have some time to explore these issues - relationships, home, roots and uprootedness, all that sort of thing, and where God might be in the midst of it all - but much as I'd like to get away as soon as I can, and before I actually move, I'm teaching every day till mid-December so I think I'll have to leave it till the Christmas holidays so that I can actually get a good few days away. A rushed weekend would be a wasted opportunity I think.
And now I'm procrastinating. I really need to go through my tutorial material (even though this week it's just the introductory one with all the various housekeeping requirements) as well as reading for both Russian and Romanian. I'm putting it off as long as I can, but I'm running out of things to do. There's nothing for it - I may have to tackle the ironing.