Water lilies on the canal

Yesterday we needed to get the cooling gas in our car’s air conditioning topped up. This mundane but necessary task took us over to Kwik Fit at Anniesland and meant that we had an hour to kill. At James’ suggestion we crossed over Crow Road and walked up to the Forth and Clyde Canal. I haven’t visited this part of the canal before and I thought that it was very attractive; lined with trees which made it feel much further from busy Anniesland than it really is. The surface of the impressively clear water had large areas of water lilies, which had yellow flowers. It even had a pleasant little pub beside it with lots of outdoor seating. 

We walked along as far as the Kelvin Aqueduct, where the canal crosses over the River Kelvin, a magnificent feat of late 18th century engineering. When we looked down onto the Kelvin we could see a heron standing proudly on the buttress of an old bridge. 

Back at the car we were delighted with our properly functioning air conditioning. However now that I come to think of it, the cars we have owned haven’t had air con until fairly recently. I realise that it’s not a new invention and dates, in various primitive forms, right back to the 1930s. But I’m pretty sure that the first car that I drove with air conditioning was our hired car in Tuscany in the mid 1990s, which struggled against the overpowering heat outside the car even when cranked up to its highest setting. It wasn’t until the 2000s that it began to be more standard in cars in the UK. So until then we had to wind down all of the windows on a hot day, and hope that the breeze would cool down the car as we drove along. I think I remember my bare legs sticking uncomfortably to the leather (plastic?) seats when I was a child in the 1960s and 70s, and when I eventually learned to drive the steering wheel could be unbearably hot to touch if the car had been parked in the sunshine in summer. I suppose that you don’t miss what you’ve never had, so we just took hot journeys for granted, but now James and I are so used to air conditioning that when the coolant gas runs out we are most dissatisfied!