gloom

It's still dark. This is not right at all, I mean OK so by some measures I haven't really woken up yet, but I also haven't believed that the day and the night were determined by my own waking and sleeping since I was about two, and it's gone 10am local time! besides which I really don't live that far north these days...

At the weekend my parents came to visit, which was great fun (as it always is,) but it was also really very gloomy for almost their entire visit, which it also always is: we honestly do get nice weather here sometimes folks.

Saturday we started my long put-off xmas shopping by going to Glasgow, where the seemingly perpetual downfall central Scotland has been enjoying of late was approaching biblical proportions. Water welled up and sleuced about our feet from under paving slabs and out of manhole covers - the city's drainage system it seems had decided to try out life as a gigantic water feature... and this was Glasgow I mean it does occasionally rain there, west coast of Scotland and all that you'd expect the city to be designed with the rain in mind and I'm sure it is, it's just that there's so much of it at the moment.

The combination of the darkness (it ranged from being half-light, to being night time, in spite of our starting out before lunch and coming home mid-afternoon) the constant rain, and the seething hoardes of umbrella wielding pedestrians made me feel a little as if I were an extra on the set of Bladerunner at times.

Admittedly there is something quite atmospheric about all this "capital W" Weather we're having, and though it might not sound possible on the face of it (pre-xmas Saturday shopping in the rain) we had a thoroughly enjoyable (ableit soggy) afternoon, but just once when my parents are visiting, I'd like for them not to be reminded of one of the only two bits of the Doric I picked up in Aberdeen - it's always Driech.