The Glasgow Borders Iliad

We went to Glasgow today on a quest for the Iliad, which was reputed to reside at the Borders Bookshop. While there we took in a City Sightseeing double-decker bus tour (just over an hour), ate some Indian food and went to the Glasgow Police Museum.

I'm glad we took the sightseeing bus because the sights of Glasgow are spread out, very few of them seem to be downtown. If we hadn't taken the bus we might have left Glasgow with the impression that there wasn't much to see but a bunch of pedestrian streets featuring your standard global fare of shops. For example, we would have missed the University of Glasgow in the west end of the city, which looks exactly how a university ought to look if it possibly can.

Between taking the tour, eating lunch and going to Borders (on one of those pedestrian streets I've already dismissed), we only had time to actually go in one of the tourist sights, the Glasgow Police Museum. Fortunately it turned out to be a good choice. The museum is comprised of 3 rooms, two following the history of the local police force since its initial (aborted) beginnings in the late eighteenth century through to today. The police force was permanently established in 1800, making it the first police force in the U.K. (This needs to be taken with a grain of salt as the Scots are liberal with their use of adjectives like first, best, biggest etc.) The third room showcased uniforms and badges from around the world, including of course the RCMP. Badges were also displayed from the Ottawa Police and Sudbury Police amongst other Canadian forces. The most impressive though were a uniform from the Palestinian Police and one from the new Iraq force. The museum is the passion of two men, one of whom told us many stories about the acquisition of artifacts and about crimes mentioned in the displays. He'd been at the scene of many of the 20th century crimes when he was in the force himself.

BTW, all museums in Glasgow are free.

But back to the quest. Unfortunately the demo Iliad at the Glasgow Borders was busted. The staff kept reassuring us that it was broken only because of the abuse it received at the hands of staff and customers, but in the end we returned to Edinburgh without one. We saw the busted one and it is a lightweight eReader with a nice big screen, but the price is still a little pricey. It remains the only ebook reader that lets you annotate what you read, however, so I may end up buying one in the end, but not today. Incidentally the Glasgow Borders has to be one of the most beautiful Borders in the world. It's housed in an old bank with sand stone columns and a large domed ceiling.