Easter mini-Interrail, day three: Glasgow

Last night in the communal area, while I was fine dining on another falafel wrap and Irn-Bru from up the road, I made new friends as I joined them at their table to eat. Harry is a plasterer who was on his way down from Arran for work and Ian is a Glaswegian who defected to England but returns from time to time to see friends. Harry provided a bottle of Weston's cider from his seemingly unlimited stash to go with my dinner while Ian provided conversation and stories of travels. I like to think I provided the glamour.

We talked about all sorts until we were thrown out of the lounge at 11pm (quiet hour) and quickly made plans for the morning before going to bed. As the continental breakfast in the hostel is £8, which is quite steep even if it is for an unlimited buffet, it was decided that Ian and I would regroup this morning for breakfast in Greggs – a new experience – and so duly awake and out of bed at before-lunchtime on a Sunday, I wandered up the street to order myself an egg bap and a coffee and sit down to join him for breakfast while it was decided what we would do.

His intention this morning was to go to the Quaker Meeting House for the morning celebration, and I decided that out of curiosity it would be an interesting experience to join him, especially given that the meeting house was just around the corner from the hostel and therefore it seemed rude not to.

Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a Christian congregation whose worship not led by an ordained clergy but by the Friends who meet, mostly in gathered stillness. The silence of the meeting can be broken by anyone present who feels called to say something which will enrich the meeting, which in this case lasted around an hour. It was quite strange, for even though I am quite happy with my own company and am not necessarily one who suffers from sedatephobia, it was a challenging time and I quickly became aware how difficult it can be to remain intentionally quiet.

The first ten or fifteen minutes were the worst as I had a rising panic at the very real possibility I might have to cough, and even a discreet cough might wake the people attending on Zoom. Nobody else had coughed or made any noise and it became quite stressful until one of the thirty people in the room let out an involuntary wheeze which gave me the perfect cover under which to surreptitiously extract a Fisherman's Friend out of my pocket and do my practised-in-youth innocent face to look as if I wasn't doing anything wrong.

It takes just under eleven minutes for a Fisherman's Friend to fully dissolve if you don't move it around or slobber too much. At 11:29, the woman to my right looked at her watch. I know it was 11:29, not because I looked at mine, but because the smartwatch of the man sitting next to her had a permanent display and I figured it was right. At just gone half-past, one of the elders got up to share something she'd been thinking about and then sat down again. I got a tissue out amid the commotion just in case I felt a sneeze coming on. At 11:46, the woman to my left checked her watch.

What I spent the hour doing I'm not sure. I counted the people present a couple of times, just to be sure and tried to get to the end of an ear-worm without humming it so that I could then have a bit of peace and quiet. I wondered what kind of things people might get up to say as very now and then, someone would fidget in their seat and I'd get excited that they were going to get up and speak, but there was only one break to the silence for the whole hour, after which there were some announcements and an opportunity for new people or visitors to introduce themselves. I smiled at the invitation but didn't, later justifying my demurral over a cuppa and a biscuit by suggesting that I already like the sound of my own voice far too much and an hour without hearing it was actually something of a record.

Ian grew up in Glasgow and had hours spare before his evening flight back to London, so was delighted to have some company in a Sassenach to show around. We initially set out to find some street art, and with that done declared culture complete and contemplated food.

As it's Sunday, I suggested I would like to have a more proper lunch than yesterday's gourmet chips and curry sauce, and questioning the necessity of a deep fried Mars bar decided that haggis would be acceptable. A quick Google led us to lunch together in Stravaigin on Gibson Street so that I could have a non-meaty haggis and he could have a proper full-fat one. This decision took us past the Gurdwara onto Argyle Street and then through Kelvingrove park where it seemed the whole of Glasgow was out for a sun-drenched barbecue, apart from the Hare Krishnas who were just having a sing-song and a bit of a stroll. As we ate in the restaurant, a colourful procession of people went past celebrating Vaisakhi.

Post haggis, neeps, and tatties and on Ian's suggestion, I visited the Tenement House in the afternoon, a Scottish National Trust monument to life in Glasgow in the early part of the twentieth century.

Agnes Toward was a shorthand typist who lived with her mother at 145 Buccleuch Street from 1911 until 1965, when she was admitted to hospital suffering from dementia. When she died in 1975, her lawyer and his niece discovered a veritable time capsule as Agnes was a hoarder who had very little done to the property save the installation of electricity in 1960 – a decision that took about seven years – and had left the house much as her family had found it, full of waste not, want not bits and pieces.

The four gas-lit rooms are a fascinating time-capsule of life in Glasgow in the early part of the twentieth century, with things that Agnes had collected and kept; perfume bottles, letters, newspaper articles, endless knick-knacks. In the homely kitchen, there is a large collection of jam jars, some with jam still inside, including a jar of plum jam made by Agnes herself in 1929, and an unopened jar of orange marmalade made by Wilkin & Sons dated 1941. I took photographs of a couple of recipes (onion soup, chocolate cream sponge) for future experimentation. There is a glorious coal-burning range and in the corner, a bed-cupboard where Agnes would probably have slept during the winter months. There was a really nice enamelled bread bin I quite took a fancy too, but we were told not to touch things and they'd probably have noticed me carrying it out anyway.

In the evening after a little power-nap, I had an aimless wander around Charing Cross and stumbled upon The Top Shawarma, purveyor of exceptionally fine falafelly goodness which came with a bonus free-range falafel dipped in hummus because it took a little longer than they would've liked. The wrap contained tahini which upped the umami pleasantly, and the pickled green chillis gave it a certain kick. The whole held together much better than the one from Friday and I was able to eat it all with minimal salad and juice drippage, so I declare it the better of the two. Naturally, Scotland's other national drink was used to wash it down.

On the way back to the hostel I once again contemplated a deep-fried Mars bar, but at £4.95 I thought it a little excessive, despite the calories I've chomped through going up and down Glasgow's hills. In the communal lounge in the hostel, an Australian girl introduced me to a new guilty pleasure: microwaved-to-melting Cadbury's Mini Eggs.

Very naughty.