Well, we did actually make it along to the anti-war demonstration in Glasgow on Saturday. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite get all the way to the rally.
We left Edinburgh quite late (something to do with Alex scribbling on the furniture), and got caught in traffic heading into the Glasgow. In a fit of imagination, we decided to cut off the motorway early and come up on the South side of the Clyde. We figured that we’d get parked somewhere near the Science Centre, and then cross one of the bridges to get to the SECC, which is where the rally was taking place.
Plenty of parking at the SECC, but no luck crossing the bridges. The police had them blocked off at both ends. The two options we then had were a) to walk a couple of miles to the next bridge along, and then have another couple of miles to walk back to a point only a couple of hundred yards from where we’d set off, or b) take the car into the centre of Glasgow and try to find a parking space (along with the fifty thousand or so other folk…).
It was about 14:45 by that point, and the rally was in full swing. It was a lovely day for a walk, but we were both feeling a little intimidated by the crowd on the other bank, and the waves of cheering and megaphone rhetoric that drifted towards us. So we chose option (c), and drove to Stirling instead, where we wandered around a bit, and let Alex play on a spider-shaped slide in one of the shopping arcades.
Are we wimps of travelling all the way to Glasgow, and then not making the effort to go the last few miles? Maybe, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. Abi has been to political demonstrations before, but this was my first. I think we just need some more practice.