Lifestyle

Why Sundays are different in Glasgow...

By mrunalblogger 14 Jan 2017

Usually a Sunday would mean a day out in the city centre, scanning all possible malls and shops and then settling in a nice bar for a drink.

But then there are some Sundays that are just so lazy that I find myself struggling to even get out of the bed and make myself some coffee.

Getting dressed and going to the city centre is immediately a discarded idea. All such lazy Sundays see the same sequence of events, with me deciding to put the day to at least some use by cleaning my house and going for a good walk.

On one such Sunday...

I find my house is a mess, a complete havoc. I have a Cadbury chocolate lying on my bed for over two days and I have neither eaten it nor kept it away in fridge. Well, there is no threat of ants attacking it and eating something I paid for. Naturally, I do not have any impetus of protecting it. There is also a chicken curry lying on my kitchen table that has been there since yesterday morning. Again, since the room temperature is like 3^oC, the entire kitchen is a walk-in-refrigerator and so I need not worry about it going bad just yet.

Leaving my room just the way it is, I decide to go out for a walk. I do not know if it is a style statement or overrated attribute of color black, but it definitely is a favourite colour of the Glaswegians. So, most of the clothes in my wardrobe are now black, cutting off the time otherwise taken to select clothes. There have hardly been any days when it hasn’t rained since my arrival and so the choice of a coat is limited too. Having fully equipped myself with battling the cold, I set out praying for at least wee amount of ‘warm’ sun.

The city is so silent, that it feels like there just aren’t people around in spite of there being so many people around, especially on the university road. There is no honking on streets; no traffic jams; no angry drivers! The people talk to each other in hushed tones and I don’t think I have heard the dogs they take out on a walk barking yet. Being an Indian I am not used to so much of silence and organized driving. I usually prefer listening to music when I am walking. It serves two purposes- gives me a homely feeling with ‘sounds’ and pumps me a bit to walk the weirdly steep streets.

On my walk, I get a ‘sorry’ or ‘cheers’ from almost every third person that happens to cross my way. The Glaswegians are so polite that they say sorry even if I am the one standing in their way! When I get out of their way they smile pleasantly and say a gleeful ‘cheers’. In my 4 months of stay here, I have grown so much accustomed to saying sorry that I accidentally greeted a friend with ‘sorry’ instead of ‘hello’ (This is not an exaggeration!).

I love walking along the Kelvin River. The view is so breathtaking and serene that I almost always lose track of time. But then there is the natural pointer when it starts getting dark around 4pm. That’s when I realise how tired I feel after walking so much and how much I require a hot mug of coffee. I rush back home and make myself coffee. The chicken curry is still on the table and the Cadbury on my bed. I promise myself to take care of it first thing tomorrow morning and laugh at the probability of that actually not happening.

After a quick dinner, I watch a nice movie, read my book and call it a day.