A DAY IN STIRLING

I’m sitting in the Focus café in a building called the Albert Halls, in Stirling. I’m waiting for a meeting to begin in the Council HQ at 1230. I’ve some time to kill. It’s twenty to twelve. The attractive, husky-voiced waitress told me that the Council building is ten minutes away, on foot. I’m the only one in here. Staff therefore outnumber customers by two to one. Soul music is playing gently in the background. The wooden chairs are ‘primitive chic’ and uncomfortable. The circular table is oak-fumed and pleasant to write upon. From the window, I can see a fork in the road. The left fork snakes up towards the Old Town and the castle, the right leads to the shopping mall and the Council HQ.

It’s a glorious late autumn day with a slight, fresh breeze playing about one’s face and riffling one’s unkempt hair. The sun shines down beatifically, highlighting the russets, pinks and golds in the dying leaves. The trees look as if they are clad in magic garments, subtly woven with delicate threads, in rainbow shades of red, yellow and green.

I had walked up from the industrial estate where I had parked my car free of charge, and had climbed up the steep approach to the town centre. The freshness and crispness of the air and the clarity of the light lifted my moribund spirit and changed my mood from torpid sullenness to something approaching optimism. I’ve been to Stirling before of course, attending lectures with the dear and deaf Dr Wally Georgeson at Stirling University back in my MA days of the late 1990’s. I enjoyed those desultory experiences, where I made slight friendships with fellow-students, all with a common goal and a thirst for knowledge. I remember one glorious day when we all sat on the grass in the campus, eating our piece, setting the world to rights whilst gazing upon the artificial lake. Newcastle lost a cup final against Arsenal that day. I listened to it as I drove the sixty miles home.

I should have caught the train today, for the station here is wonderful and as it was a hundred years ago. Ten platforms for a town this size! I didn’t catch the train – instead I drove so that I could stop off and see steam at Bo’ness. Flukily, the McIntosh ex-Caledonian Railway 2P 0-4-4T was in steam – a publicity stunt for the benefit of Network Rail, who were holding an exhibition of a new type of track welding technique. I didn’t mingle with the various dignitaries on the platform, so I left as quickly as I had arrived. It’s a fine-looking engine, number 52044. Painted in two rich shades of blue, it represents Victorian engineering at its finest. The chimney is especially elegant, yet some of the class were fitted with ugly stovepipe affairs that quite ruined their graceful lines.

Time to go time. I need to find the Council Headquarters and meet my colleagues for lunch. Some of them are worth meeting, some of them are not. I shall confine myself to those that are.