Two Falls

In my usual clumsy way I fell down a small step at the top of Buchanan Street today. We had popped into the Concert Hall to collect some tickets that we had ordered online, but found that the Box Office is closed on a Sunday. No matter, we set off back down towards our lunch date with Heather and Ewan in Royal Exchange Square. When we passed the statue of Donald Dewar I glanced back at it; I always feel a connection to him because my Mum knew him when he was a wee boy. And that resulted in my downfall - I didn’t even see the step that I tripped on and although I didn’t fall right down, my foot bent outwards at the ankle with a searing pain. I yelled in pain and sat down on the step to recover. Two very nice gentlemen from the nearby “Free Kashmir” demonstration ran up to bring me some water. After thanking them, I managed to hobble down Buchanan Street while leaning rather heavily on James’ arm, and the pain eased off somewhat.
I’m glad to say that my tender ankle didn’t cast a pall on our lunch with Heather and Ewan. It was great to see them both and we had a pleasant lunch in Zizzi’s. We were joined by Alasdair and Andrew, who had enterprisingly decided to join us since the two of them had planned to meet up anyway. So we were a jolly table of six, and we enjoyed hearing about some of Andrew’s recent adventures in Australia.
It has in fact been a rather social weekend. On Friday I went to the cinema with Jackie to see the Downton Abbey film. I was not daunted by the fact that I have seen not a single episode of the popular television programme, because I assumed that the film would be “stand alone” and so it was. Of course the characters would have meant more to the real aficionados who had watched all seven series of Downton Abbey, but Jackie gave me a quick run down of the main characters on our journey to Springfield Quay, and I found it very enjoyable. The setting and the costumes were beautiful and I like a period drama. And then on Saturday evening Marjory, Forrest and Lucy come round for a Chinese meal. It was Chanel’s 23rd birthday and we followed the meal with birthday cake. She and Davie had enjoyed a day out together in Glasgow and then we had a lovely family evening.
After my fall this morning the day strangely ended with another fall, but not mine. We had just been watching an interesting documentary about California on BBC2, including a segment about giant redwoods. We had just finished a cup of tea and were expecting the comedy show Live at the Apollo to come on next, although we were just about to head to bed anyway. But instead, with no introduction, a film started with a masked mob hanging a man in a forest. We were very puzzled and a bit horrified as he plunged from a wooden gibbet down into a hole. But instead of stopping short, the rope just went on and on spooling. We didn’t see the man, just the rope running so fast down into the hole in the forest floor that it was burning a groove in the cross beam of the scaffold. It was so weird. I won’t reveal the ending - it only lasted five minutes - and when it ended there were no credits, and the next programme duly commenced. So needless to say we googled it, and I found a review on the Guardian website which explains that it’s a short film by Jonathan Glazer called The Fall, and speculated as to its meaning. Well, it certainly had us intrigued!