The Clockwork Orange

 For those regular readers who have been wondering where the hell I've been, I have to report that I have been completely flattened by a bad cold which has not yet bid me goodbye. Like an irritating visitor, I await his departure with bated breath. And as a mark of how much it is stopping normal service being resumed, I slept 12 hours last night! And I do appreciate the irony of being much more affected and disabled by the common cold than the less common blood cancer. 

However, service will resume now-ish. You remember I was on an adventure with my friends Eamonn and Catherine for a few days on their yacht in the Hebrides? Well on the way back I spent two nights in Glasgow to visit relatives and play music, and I also had time to wander a bit and to reacquaint myself with the wonderful Glasgow Subway, which is sometimes referred to as the 'Clockwork Orange' because the cars have always had some orange in their livery and the line is just a single continuous loop. 

Now Google will give you all the proper details, but I know that even some people who live on our shores will be saying "Glasgow has a subway? When did that happen?" To which the answer is, rather surprisingly, 1896! It is in fact the third-oldest underground Metro system in the world after London and Budapest (yes, that one surprised me too). It was built as a single loop line, with an inner and outer circle heading in opposite directions, so like one of those old basic train sets, it has basically been going round and round like a carousel for 129 years! And I think some of the original rolling stock was still in use until the 1970s.

The rolling stock has recently been replaced by these lovely, dinky modern trains, which are in fact driverless.

(now)

But in reality, the trains are not all that different from the originals and their 1970s successors (below)

(1970s)

(1896 version)

Now I am not going to make any generalisations about my pan-celtic stock and the matter of physical height, but I have to say that I do feel sorry for Dutch or Slovakian tourists using the train, with their average heights of six foot or so. I had no problems with the dinky carriages and all I'm saying is that many of my Glaswegian fellow-travellers were in the same boat. The fact is, the ceilings are rather low, and sitting down is definitely the preferred method of travel. I have attached a short video here to show the Clockwork Orange in action.