back to life

At the beginning of March I jetted off again to bonnie Scotland for orientation for volunteering at the Commonwealth Games. I have been accepted into the medical team and will work as a first aider at the opening ceremony and rugby sevens event.

These are the twentieth Commonwealth Games and the third time that they have been hosted by Scotland. I am one of 15,000 volunteers known as Clyde siders.

I was part of the first group of volunteers, there were 4500 of us in the Emirates stadium in the east end of Glasgow, where the badminton will be held. The orientation extravaganza was hosted by sports presenter Hazel Irvine and Capitol Radio’s Des Clarke.  Although it was a very entertaining 3 hour spectacular it didn’t really enlighten us about what to expect in the coming months.

We did however get to see our uniforms, I must admit I have been a bit worried about these since seeing a mustard coloured top in the volunteering centre when I went for my interview.I don’t think a colour that resembles vomit looks good on anyone and would have put a damper on the whole experience for me. So imagine my joy when visions in red and grey were modelled for us and we get quite a lot of kit.

It goes without saying that I am very excited about the whole thing and can’t wait to get up there in the summer and do my thing.

After the orientation event I had quite a bit of time to kill in Glasgow so I made my way via Scotland’s very efficient and cheap rail network into the city centre. As a fan of Charles Rennie Mackintosh I made a bee line for the Willow Tea Rooms for my lunch.

This little gem came about as a result of a collaboration between the Art Nouveau designer and Catherine Cranston, between 1896 and 1917 he designed and restyled all 4 of Catherine’s tearooms in Glasgow. The building was originally a 4 story warehouse and in it’s hey day it had several different dining rooms. Mackintosh designed not only the exterior and interior, but the menus, cutlery and even the waitresses’ uniforms.

Now I’m afraid to say it looks a little tired, they is only one dining room on the first floor and the ground floor is taken up by the gift shop. But the food was very nice and reasonably priced.

I have another role specific training to attend in June and I hope I’ll have more time to wander around and explore this lovely city some more.