Glasgow

Hello, I'm back! I'm disappointed with myself, but I have to say that I have found nothing in Glasgow to culture-shock me. Maybe I shouldn't be: I haven't lost powers of observation, it's just that anything shocking comes from not knowing the place, and anything amusing happens when I'm in one place, not rushed, for long enough. A three-day stay in my second home has neither element.

Well; while I took my parents to see beautiful things in lovely museums, and bought second hand books, and chocolate from brands I cannot buy in Spain, I saw street ads with one thing in common. "kids die because there aren't enough organ donations: donate". "kids get worse treatments because there aren't enough murses: become one". But wait, the kids are always little girls. Always.

Is it because female children look more pityworthy than male ones? Let's see. I don't think that the UK as a whole treats its girls very kindly. The alarming rate of teenage pregnancy tells me that parents and educators don't bother teaching them sexual education, or self-respect, to say nothing of the boys who make them pregnant (no, I'm not taking any responsibility away from the girls but to get a 14 year-old pregnant you need at least six people to have made mistakes: two sets of parents and the teenagers involved). Children finish school two or three hours before the usual adult time for finishing work, so either kids or parents have to make a compromise about what the children can do those hours in the day. Those are just two facts I'm very familiar with. But still, if you want to get pity in order to sell something, nothing beats a blond female under ten. Ah, tha paradoxes of the modern world.