This morning, I’m listening to the sobbing of gulls outside the window, but I’m not at the seaside. I’m in the heart of Paisley, which is a few miles west of Glasgow, though there’s no longer really any gap between the two. My friend Lara has kindly lent me a bedroom in her flat there while I’m working in Glasgow.

City life is certainly very different. To get to work in the morning, I take the train into Glasgow Central, then walk twenty minutes or so to Shamrock Street. The work is also very different from what I’ve been doing. It’s odd because I had occasionally (and rather regretfully) thought I would probably never do surgery again as I was unlikely to return to practice, but here I am, doing surgery all day from nine in the morning until five in the evening. It’s very intense. On Thursday, I did four cat castrations, three dog castrations, two cat spays (one midline) and a bitch spay. I’d have done the same yesterday, but two of the cats didn’t turn up, so my day was marginally easier.

There are benefits however. I only worked three days this week: Monday, Thursday and Friday. So Tuesday and Wednesday were all my own. I started both days with a walk with Triar to It’s Noe Coffee, where I bought a latte and drank it on a bench. The second day, the bench was near Paisley Cathedral, which is when I took the photo at the top of the page. There are lots of fascinating old buildings scattered around the town centre. It’s obviously been a very rich place in the not too distant past. This enormous building is the town hall, though (criminally) I managed to miss the top of the clock tower out of the picture.

There are oases of green, even in the centre of the town. This little patch of parkland, with its carefully laid out flowerbeds and palm trees is where I take Triar in the early morning before I go out to work.

Triar seems to be universally loved wherever we go, which gives me huge pleasure. Lots of people stop to say hello to him. He has also adjusted incredibly fast to city life, though sometimes he’s so distracted by all the smells and stains that he almost forgets to pee and poo. The little patch of parkland in the photo is covered in pigeons in the early morning (Merlin tells me they’re Rock Doves) and Triar loves to send them flapping into the air with a lunge and bark combo. I think the locals have been trying to protect Queen Victoria from them (or maybe were just getting into the spirit of the World Cup) because she is wearing a traffic cone, though not one of the traditional orange and white design.

There’s another little passageway called Meeting House Lane that intrigues me. It’s quite steep, hemmed in by buildings on one side and a wall and trees on the other, and cobbled all the way down. It’s nice and shady, which is good right now as it’s been very hot.

Anyway, I’m going to be staying here, on and off, for the best part of a month and a half and it feels like the beginning of an adventure. There’s so much mor to explore. I want to go into the cathedral and look round. It’s Noe has some amazing looking feta pastries (as well as spinach, potato, leek and tomato and onion filled versions) so one day, I’ll have to try those.

White Cart Water (a major tributary of the Clyde) runs through the centre of town and there are some bridges and banks to explore, though this photo, on the surface, makes it look more upmarket than it really is nowadays. On closer inspection, the buildings on the left are boarded up and one of the beautiful old houses has trees growing from its windows and graffiti downstairs.

Yesterday evening, after a long day and 13,000 steps, I decided to go and enjoy a beer in one of the local hostelries. The Bull got a good write up for being dog friendly, so we stopped in there on our evening walk. Triar enjoyed greeting the locals and was given a bowl of water and two treats. He repaid the poor barman by spilling his water all over the floor. I think he quite enjoyed the whole experience though.

Anyway, back on Tuesday, mindful of home, I went to IKEA and bought a chest of drawers. Much as Paisley is drawing me in, today I’m going back to Dumfries to restart the clearing of my bedroom and hopefully put the new drawers together, so I suppose I’d better get organized. I’m not working again until Thursday, so I have a few days of much needed rest. I will leave you with a photo of one of the painted Scottie Dog statues that I walked past on the way to work. Like Queen Victoria, he was wearing a cone, though his was at a very jaunty angle.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a good week.