Window Wanderland started in (I think) Bristol in 2015 and has now spread worldwide. It’s a scheme in which communities brighten up winter by transforming their streets into an outdoor gallery. We visited one for the first time in Strathbungo on the south side of Glasgow, and loved it. We came back with over 100 images of windows so you are getting off lightly with the selection below! I particularly liked the ones where the theme was continued over several storeys.

The Lighthouse

The Lighthouse (Scotland’s Centre for Design and Architecture) is always worth visiting, and currently has an exhibition about the life of Nelson Mandela (closes 3rd March, hurry along if you can). I don’t think I’ve ever come out of an exhibition snuffling quite so much. He was a unique human being.

Glasgow had a special relationship with Mandela. It was the first place in the UK to bestow Freedom of the City on him in 1981 (though for obvious reasons he wasn’t able to visit in person to receive the honour until 1993). In 1985 a year-long picket began outside apartheid South Africa’s consulate in St George’s Place, which was renamed Nelson Mandela Place in 1986. How it must have galled them to use that address! The Nelson Mandela Scottish Memorial Foundation is currently raising money to erect a statue near where the consulate stood until it closed in 1992. Follow the link to find out more.

I also loved the Three Legged Stool exhibition by design workshop Still Life. There was a collection box for recycling plastic bottle tops and some examples of what they could be turned into – stools and trays. The impressive wall hanging is Care by Poppy Nash, which highlights the feelings of over 50 people about living close to someone with a long-term health condition or disability.

The last bit

Much of February has been spent catching up with old friends over coffee or lunch, mostly in Glasgow but also in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, where John and I met as students in 1979 (story here). John still has connections with the University of Sheffield and visits from time to time, but I hadn’t been back for about 25 years until this month. There will be posts on the wonderful weekend we had in due course. In the meantime, enjoy this photograph which one friend produced and which we’d never seen before: it look as though we didn’t even know it was being taken. I’m particularly impressed by our luxuriant hair, and the fact that John is wearing a Christmas hat in public without apparent coercion.

Finally, to my Scottish word of the month. In December I chose bùrach, Gaelic for complete mess – specifically referring to the ongoing Brexit bùrach. Well, guess what? As I write, the UK government is still footering about in a complete guddle. To footer: to bungle or botch. A guddle: a mess, muddle, confusion. By my next Gallivanting post we are meant to have left the EU. It’s anyone’s guess what will happen. Happy March …