EWITFR....N North Dakota, Montana, Glasgow

The day after waking up in Great Falls was nearly exactly the same day again. Another thirteen hour drive although this time to a hotel in Jamestown. It felt a bit like the film Groundhog Day. And just like the film Groundhog Day, we learnt a lesson by repeating our day again. This time we bought food earlier in the day that we could heat up at the hotel.

Absolutely nothing happened on our drive to Jamestown. But I did see an amazing travel programme just before I left the hotel. It was trying to convince Americans what a lovely holiday destination Glasgow is.

I love Glasgow, but the programme wasn’t really selling it to me. It began with the presenter explaining that there were no special monuments or historical places of interest to go to in Glasgow, and it did this by showing clips of all the interesting places and beautiful monuments of Edinburgh whilst the voice over said,

“There are none of these things in Glasgow. It is an industrial city”

Next, the presenter was in a large shopping center explaining how it was one of the biggest shopping centers in Europe and how people came from all over Europe just to go shopping there. Then she added the disclaimer:

“Not for Americans though, the exchange rate is terrible, everything is VERY expensive here.”

So after clarifying that there were no places of historic interest or beauty, and that the shops were incredibly expensive for Americans, the presenter got into a taxi and asked the taxi driver her to take her to a well-known Glaswegian landmark. He told her that there weren’t any. Next she asked him what was the biggest change to Glasgow he had seen in his lifetime. He said,

“Well, the biggest difference for me is that it’s cleaner now, when I was growing up everything was covered in a thick layer of black soot.”

So to recap: Glasgow has no famous monuments, places of historic interest or beauty, it is very expensive and the biggest improvement it has had in the last 40 years is that it is no longer covered in soot.

I think if I had been in charge of that programme I would have framed it a bit differently. The presenter was very happy with her free hotel room, but that was about it. I would have just shown thirty minutes of amazing music: Belle and Sebastian, The Yummy Fur, Bis, Franz Ferdinand, 1990s, Ureausi Yatsura, Sons and Daughters, We Are The Physics etc. The commentary between the songs would be my voice saying,

“There has never been a bad band from Glasgow, the people here are brilliant. Go to Glasgow and have lots of fun, especially now that it is not covered in soot.”

I think that would have worked better.