Like a kid in a toy shop

I've been looking for a wooden mobile for my new little nephew for the last month, but to no avail. I was beginning to feel like the bad Aunty, when a friend recommended Bumble kids toy shop on Nithsdale road, Polloksheilds.

It's an amazing toy shop, they have so many unusual toys, really nice and good quality. The people are really friendly too and gift wrapped my parcel for me.

They also have a website, so if your from outside Glasgow, or you're just feeling abit lazy, you can order on line.

I am now looking forward to my nephew's birthday, so I have another excuse to go back

Link: http://www.bumblekids.com/index.php

They've also got these great Bumble Southside T-shirts [ok I am getting carried away]

Update
Sadly Bumble Kids have closed their shop but you can still purchase toys through their on line shop.

Lost Glasgow

Glasgow Lost - Common Goods

Saturday, if it is nice, we are planning on making use of Queens Parks public and free bowling greens and pitch and putt course. I was just doing a check on the Internet to find out if it has opened for the season and found the Glasgow Lost site and discovered that on the 1st April 2007 the management of all Glasgow's Common Goods (libraries, art galleries, recreation services) moved to a private company.

The site explores the issues surrounding this move and questions if it is a good or a bad thing. It also hosts the above movie. Makes for some interesting reading/ viewing and everyone should visit and make up their own mind.

http://www.glasgowlost.org/

Edit: The bowling isn't open yet. Not sure when it does - think the beginning of May so instead we took some boules to the park and had a throw of them. It was good fun apart from when a dog stole the jack and I had to chase him round the park.

Farmers Market - Queens Park

The Farmers Market in Queens Park is not only an excellent place to buy a second hand farmer but it is also a good place to buy localish produce direct from the farms themselves.

The market is held at the Victoria Road entrance to the park from 10am til 2pm on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month. Their fortnightly visits always confuses me, but hopefully if enough people keep going it may become a weekly market.

In recent times, the market has begun to expand a little and you can now find not only stalls selling delicious, rich, organic veggies and succulent, flavoursome meat but also stalls selling ostrich burgers, duck eggs and nettle shampoo. (Does it sting your eyes?)

Most stalls have taster samples to entice you to buy and it is a very pleasant way to shop, wandering around trying different produce before making a decision to purchase. Prices are pretty reasonable considering the high quality of the goods and you can even buy a couple of freshly roasted beef sandwiches from the food van to keep you going on your walk home.

Considering the low prices supermarkets force upon farmers and the often poorer quality and inflated prices they then pass onto the consumers, its nice to be cutting out the middleman and getting straight to the main source.

Yoga - Downward Dog

I was once a committed Yoga practitioner, practicing at least three to four times a week. I’ve lost my way over the last few years but I am now on a mission to get back into it. I’ve always struggled to find a yoga class I enjoy here in Glasgow. While looking on the net I came across Divya Yoga Scotland, a charity committed to bringing free yoga classes to Glasgow, to improve the health of the Scottish population. Classes are held every night at 6 o clock in Kinning Park and they’re FREE, so I thought I might check them out.

I took Nicole along with me, who unintentionally has become part of SSH. Everyone at the class was really friendly and helpful. The class runs from Monday to Friday so ideally you should go to every class, and not as we did and join half way through. The teacher and fellow yoga goers looked after Nicole and myself, and made sure we knew what we were suppose to do.

If you’re use to yoga classes at your local sports centre, you’ll find this class quite different. The focus is predominantly on the breath [Pranayama]. So during the class we practised seven different breathing techniques, some specifically concentrating on the breath and others, combined with yoga positions. I found one of the breathing techniques quite difficult, but the attitude in the class was just to take a break, if you need one, so I did.

There is a wide range of ages and cultures at the class, everyone was very friendly, and the class itself was quite light hearted. The class does focus on healthy eating, and I found it a little distracting when the teacher discussed this during the class. The class might not appeal to everyone, but I’d recommend you go and try it at least once. I am reserving judgement until I’ve been a few more times, but I have to admit I felt really good after the class.

http://divyayogascotland.org.uk/

please sir, can i have some more?

Last weekend we were very hungry after carrying lots of wood but we couldn’t decide what to eat. We had vouchers for the new Harlequin restaurant at Springfield Quay so thought we'd give it a go.

I find the Quay quite a strange place. It's all chain restaurants, crappy retail park buildings which turns its back on both the river and Paisley Road West. They are currently completing a strange multi storey car park thing at the corner beside the cinema, which looks pretty hideous and completely blocks off any chance to allow pedestrians to wander down from Paisley Road West and the surrounding area. This lack of pedestrian access results in the Quay being for cars only, and as anyone who has visited it during a busy time knows, that can make it a bit of a nightmare. Fortunately that night it was pretty quiet and it only took us three circuits to find a parking space.

As we were about to enter the Harlequin place, we noticed a sign for another restaurant upstairs - called the Panda Buffet and offering an all you can eat deal for £9.99. This we thought was an excellent idea as we both felt like having a good mix of starters and on second thoughts, didn't really fancy spicy food.

Upstairs, the restaurant was reasonably spacious and the staff were very friendly. Even in the face of some rather rude customers - especially the girl’s football team, who made fun of the waitress’s accent when she brought a normal coke instead of full fat. The restaurant is spit into two with one area for the people having proper food off the menu, and another for the plebs like us, looking to stuff our faces from the buffet’s selection of classic Chinese cuisine.

On this night though I was happy to be a plebe and was rather excited by the concept of all you can eat. I didn't even sit down before heading for the grub. All looked very tasty and thankfully looked to be pretty well protected from rouge customer sneezes. We ladled up our plates with a mix of starters (chicken for me, veggies for ann) and headed back to the table.

The girl’s football team were not the most athletic looking bunch in the world, particularly one girl who had parked her chair in the aisle completely blocking our way. Rather than apologise, or indeed move, she just stared at us until we took the much longer route around their two tables to our seats. It was interesting to note that while most of her team were eating an assortment of tasty looking Chinese dishes - she was eating a big plate of chips. I think she must be the goalie.

After the meal we wandered over to pay and had a chat with the extremely friendly owner. He told us, the restaurant had only opened a couple of weeks ago and that so far things were going well. We told him we were pretty stuffed and this delighted him. We were getting on so well, I toyed with the idea of advising him that his ice-cream sucked, being mainly ice and very little cream. But I decided that maybe the machine had malfunctioned and we will give it the benefit of the doubt and will see if it’s tastier next time.

Glasgow Freecycle

I’ve just discovered Glasgow Freecycle, well actually I’ve known about it for a while but this is the first time I’ve posted. Freecycle is an internet site, on which you can post wanted and offer notices, for goods you either want or things you want to give away…for free. It’s fantastic…So if you have something your planning on getting rid off but it’s in a reasonable condition, post a notice on the Glasgow Freecycle site, interested parties will e-mail you and then come around and collect your unwanted items. The only rule being that you post an offer first, before you post a wanted notice.
My Mum and I have a running joke about a brass lamp, I personally don’t like it much but my Mum gave it to me….and also the guilt, that it was the last thing my great aunt ever gave to her. Now I can’t throw it out, not only because of the guilt [my aunt probably didn’t like it either, after all why else would she give it to my mum] but because it’s in really good condition, it works and more importantly we have to stop consuming and wasting so much stuff. Freecycle is the answer. Someone out there will love this lamp not only because they’ll actually like it, but because they need a lamp and they got it for free, and I’ll be grateful because I haven’t put a perfectly good lamp to landfill…and the guilt? It’ll go with the light…hopefully

Link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/glasgowfreecycle/


The original Glasgow freecycle is now called, Glasgow Freeshare this group has over 9000 members and is based in Glasgow. So you may prefer to use their service instead, it's up to you.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/glasgow-freeshare

Holmwood House

My friend Nicole and I visited Holmwood house, in Cathcart , on Saturday. For those who don't know Holmwood house was designed by Alexander 'Greek' Thomson, and regarded by many as the finest example of his work.

The house is owned by the National trust, so if your a member you get in free, and is the only Thomson building which is opened to the public.

Saturday was a beautiful spring day in Glasgow, and myself and Nicole decided to do a walk from Muirhead train station, to Holmwood house, then through Linwood Park, and into Langside and finally through Queens park, before we finely had dinner at Little India on Kilmarnock Road. It was a most enjoyable day, and our favourite part, was definetly Holmwood house. It was the opening day of the season, so we were lucky as we hadn't checked. The house is really very impressive. It's a work in progress and they're still uncovering and restoring much of the house. The guides were great, very friendly and helpful.

The house also has a small gift shop, which incidently has no Macintosh goods for sale, and a tearoom.

The House is open from the 30th of March until the 31st of October, Thursday to Monday 12-5

From time to time they also have special events - plays etc

http://www.greekthomson.com/
http://www.ntseducation.org.uk/students/case-holmwood.html