Went out for dinner last night. Had cheese on toast with tomato sauce. Or ‘pizza’ as its known in certain parts of Glasgow. In a new place in Hampstead. Very Neopolitain, very Italian, very small. And as ‘the kitchen’ is basically a great big red open oven, it got very warm in there. I thought I was in the Bay of Naples, but with traffic. And I love pizza, though don’t eat it often because if you do you die very young and very fat. I read that in the paper. Pizza = certain death. But surely not a real one, served by real Eye-tal’yans, with fresh basil leaves on it??? Surely that counts as at least 2 of your 5-a-day? Its only pizzas that come on little motor-cycles to your door that kill you, isn’t that so? I read it in the Snobs Guide to Paranoia and Junk Food. Not that its ‘junk’ if served with a genuine Italian accent.

Then from Italian the accents went Scottish as I came home and watched the last bit of the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony ‘live’ all the way from Glasgow. Who knew you could watch something ‘live’ from nearly 300 miles away. What will they think of next? And this may be the last time Scotland are part of the Commonwealth, should independence come their way in month or so, thus it was particularly poignant. The ceremony ran over time, which was fine, there was nothing else to do, and they kept telling us that ‘this was the Opening Ceremony to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow’, in case you thought you’d been watching the next series of Homeland, with Alex Salmond instead of Claire Danes, and The Queen replacing Damien Lewis. Her Majesty spoke words, in English, and I had tears in my eyes. Probably from the chilli oil I hadn’t got off my fingers after the pizza. There were fireworks and dancers and lots of lovely men and women, all wearing dresses. As they do in Scotland. And then lots of other dignitaries came on to tell us how warm, friendly and cultured Glasgow is, and beautiful, and warm, friendly and cultured. So don’t be put off by the herds of drunks with blue-and-white painted faces head-butting each other on the streets after 7pm. That’s just part of the friendly cultured warmth of the region. Celtic Park has never looked so lovely. Mainly because it was pretty much devoid of Celtic fans. And Rangers fans intent on a bit of sectarian ‘warmth and friendliness’ administered with broken bottles. Colourful local culture. The colour being mainly red.

And the games start today. Swimming, diving, cycling, netball, all the usual Olympian type stuff, but without the (bastard) Russians and without the Americans. So someone else gets a chance to win the medals this time. There’s no cricket at these games. Mainly because there’s very few things in this world more dangerous than a Scotsman with a cricket bat. Similarly there’ll be no javelin, shooting or shot-putting. Nothing that can be used as an offensive weapon.

I’m sort of exited. Not normally a big athletics fan, the London Olympics converted me. It was wonderful. And this is ‘almost London’, Glasgow being virtually a suburb. Until it separates and moves over to Alaska.

Happy Commonwealth Games

A xxxx