The Glasgow Gallivanter

Anabel Marsh is a 60ish retired librarian from Glasgow in Scotland

 

Do you remember starting school? I do. Before then, I had spent my time playing with my friends and my little sister – now I was constrained. I remember feeling, though I couldn’t have expressed it, that I would never be free again. Well, I have news for my 5-year old self! That freedom comes back with retirement. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed my education and my career, and I’m still a responsible person who commits to whatever she takes on, but now I have far more choice over what I do.

I also have more time to blog, although I don’t consider myself a retirement blogger as such. The Glasgow Gallivanter started life in 2011, the year before I finished work, and was originally titled – very unimaginatively – Anabel’s Travel Blog. Essentially, it’s my way of keeping a diary of everywhere I visit, and some places I have visited in the past, lavishly illustrated by my husband John’s photographs. So I’m my own number one reader – I want to be able to look back when I’m 90 and enjoy all these places again – and at first I regarded it as a bonus if anyone else stumbled across my posts by accident. Now, although I still write for myself primarily, I find it’s so much more fun when you reach out to other people. I really feel you get to know people by commenting on each other’s blogs, and sometimes that can spill over into real, as opposed to virtual, life. I’ve met four blogging friends so far, and had a great time with each one.

So what will you find on The Glasgow Gallivanter? Foreign travels such as our trip to Budapest in the Spring, and our upcoming trip to the Canadian Rockies. We love to hike, so expect some great views! I haven’t done so well with retrospective posts lately, but last year, I wrote a series about our visit to Tibet in 2000. Not many people come home from vacation with snaps of road digging equipment, but we did – flooding trapped us between a landslide in one direction and a swept-away bridge in the other. That’s the only time I truly feared I would not get out of somewhere alive.

I also write a lot about Scotland, and Glasgow in particular. I’m very proud of my home country and city and I love to tell people about them. I always seem to get more readers for my Scottish posts than for my globetrotting ones and I’m very happy with that. This year, I instigated a monthly round-up post, Glasgow Gallivanting, in which I include smaller events that wouldn’t make it into a full post, and I usually like to end by teaching my readers a new Scottish word. In that spirit, I will now say that you have probably had enough of me blethering and it’s time to haud ma wheest.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief introduction to The Glasgow Gallivanter, and I invite you to gallivant with me.

Anabel

Glossary
Gallivant: to go about in search of pleasure; gad about
Blether: to chatter; gossip
Haud ma wheest: be quiet (roughly equivalent of holding my tongue)

The Glasgow Gallivanter

From Retirement Reflections: Thank you to Anabel for introducing herself here and inviting us all to go gallivanting with her. I highly recommend that you take her up on this offer. I know that you won’t be disappointed. Want to live your life more fully, and follow a bold plan? Please, join us next Sunday when we welcome Guest Host, Joanne Sisco.