Jul 2
Well more heat than sunshine. Hot in Glasgow but no bad. Glasgow goes mental if the heat lasts too long. About 15 years ago we had a spate of 'incidents' on a Friday night after two weeks of relentless sunshine. Makes us go mental. While we're enjoying it though I'm oft reminded of one of my favourite poems that describes the duality of the Scots. That's right. A poem.
Sunshine
Scotland
It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planet,
when larks rose on long thin strings of singing
and the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels.
Greenness entered the body. The grasses
shivered with presences, and sunlight
stayed like a halo on hair and heather and hills.
Walking into town, I saw, in a radiant raincoat,
the woman from the fish-shop. 'What a day it is!'
cried I, like a sunstruck madman.
And what did she have to say for it?
Her brow grew bleak, her ancestors raged in their graves
as she spoke with their ancient misery:
'We'll pay for it, we'll pay for it, we'll pay for it.'
by Alastair Reid.
