Day 460: Worldly West End

28/10/2022

Tuesday morning, Lachlan was celebrating as Eloise returned to her second day of nursery. For lunch, we ventured to the Riverside Museum, sadly CG was not about the place and his ship was closed. There were all of Lachlan’s favourite vehicles to show the grandparents, he was darting about again.  

We may of only had one child to mind, but sometimes watching Lachlan feels like watching ten children at once while blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back so we resorted to locking him in a bubble, this backfired as Lachlan loves bubbles.

With no Big Sister, Lachlan had first dibs at all the buttons and screens.

For the very few of you that are interested in UK politics, “Rishi Sunak has pledged to fix “mistakes” made under Liz Truss’s leadership and warned of “difficult decisions” ahead, in his first speech as prime minister… His speech outside No 10 came after he was appointed PM by King Charles”.

Wednesday morning, the kids cracked out one of their Halloween carving pumpkins, it was time to teach Grandpa how to carve.

In the evening we all jumped on the train with Lachie’s best pal to Partick Station. Liam was disappointed to see that the 2014 Commonwealth Games murals had been painted over by some wizard rubbish.

We made our way up Byres Road, it was still fairly early, but we found it difficult to find somewhere that was not packed for dinner.

After a good feed at trusty Nando’s, the kids were battling to stay awake. For the best part of a year, we have accidentally been saying GlasGlow instead of Glasgow, at risk of this happening again we were heading back to the annual light show. This year’s theme was ‘The Land that Time Forgot’, which meant one thing, dinosaurs! The kids brought their new matching Triceratops to keep us safe.

We made our way through and around the various dino displays. Dad was a little scared, but Eloise was a big brave girl and dragged him through “no worry Dad, no be scared, just pretend dinosaurs, see just pretend”.

There was a baby dino nursery and we managed to find a small triceratops. We thought the kids may want to reunite their dinosaurs with Mumma Dino,  but they were a little unsure, they looked realistic.

There were lots of lights, however, we think there were only half as many as last year which was a bit sad. This probably shouldn’t have been a surprise seeing as power prices have increased 60% since a year ago.

We are a little disappointed by how the kids react to large animatronic dinosaurs, they have seen them all over the UK so don’t seem phased by them, they are pretty neat.

The kids had managed to make it through the light show, they loved it. It was perfect for Lachlan now that he was that one year older. We were all tired but Eloise made sure that we did not break our GlasGlow tradition, next stop Loop & Scoop, although Lachlan did fall asleep on the way there. Perhaps our skin is getting thicker, Kirrie mentioned “who would have thought that you would be eating ice cream outside in Glasgow in October?”.

Eloise fell asleep on the way back to the train station while holding her ice cream which she eventually dropped down the inside of her wellie, they were so tired.

Thursday morning we headed all the way up to Loch Lomond Bird of Prey Centre. There were plenty of birds for Eloise and Lachlan to check out. Over the past month, one of Eloise’s favourite books from the library has been Owls Are Cool, a story about a burrowing owl. She could not believe her luck when she spotted one and had to tell the grandparents all about how they run really fast and cannot fly.

Similarly to the kids outing to the Scottish Owl Centre, the main event was the flying display.

We made our way to the exit to move on for lunch but Lachlan was more than happy and did not want to leave.

We had to show the grandparents to our favourite lunch spot, Duck Bay, there would be no swimming this time though. Grandpa tried his first modern haggis but sadly did not sing to it.

This morning the kids were off to Kelvin Hall Gymnastic with Emma to see if the grandparents could keep up with the running and the tumbling. The perfect place for Lachlan.

After an hour of bouncing off the walls, we made our way across the road to Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, one of the prime Glaswegian attractions.

Just after midday Dad and CG had caught up with us. The kids were excited, mainly for CG’s grand entrance with the organ playing.

We were getting peckish so Dad steered’ us all to his beloved Gyros.

The West End marathon continued as we powered up to the University of Glasgow to show the grandparents the Harry Potter-like buildings.

Eloise was in the mood for ice cream as we made our way back down the hill, there were none in sight but CG saved the day, guiding us to Tantrum Doughnuts.

After a quick swing by CG’s crib, it was back to the train, well after a wild playground appeared.

Dinner tonight was with Eloise’s pumpkin as the centrepiece.