Just around the block...

So, today, I got up and did my four hour work shift and then I had to go and enjoy some random and ever so slightly (just slightly) pointless flat viewing which led to one of the most random and rewarding afternoons in a long while.

We're at the first flat, finishing up our viewing and the estate agent guy kindly points out that we have another viewing all the way across town so he offers to give us a lift and soon we're in an area of Aberdeen which is just beyond that which I often see but which somehow seems exotic (well, more like gothic) and new. So as my penchant for random exploration of cities kicks in (I call it Urban Rambling) I end up leading us on a walk through areas of the city both familiar and strange, down to the river, the famous (and never before visited by me) Duthie Park and it's exceedingly cool (albeit rather hot, actually) winter gardens.

I love places like that, where you can enter into a nice enclosed environemnt and experience some other part of the world. Here I was surrounded by tropical plants and trickling rivulets filled with the unusual combiantion of copper coins and gold-fish. I became acquainted with a vast selection of bromeliads (like the poor emaciated example of such that sits on our flat window ledge and goes - well photosynthesises - by the name of Prometheus) some of which grew decadently out of the trunks of other plants like some sort of tropical sculpture.
There was an attractive japanese garden filled with paving slabs upon which traditional haiku were rendered powerless in perfectly structured rhyming english.
I was particularly taken by the coniferous forest section. Ferns rock! I'm not quite sure why (perhaps, simply because of convetcion currents) but they do. For a moment I could almost imagine I was in a vast primeval forest somewher that was else, other, foreign, exotic, enticing, the antithesis of home and all of the less homely things that stands for.

As I said, I love places like that. Aquariums, parks, little secluded sections of woodland or overgrown garden, coves, caves and even quiet alleywaya looking out onto some other part of the city you've never seen before. I suppose its because of such places, or the tantalising possibility of such places, that I end up going on these random rambles from time to time. And equally it's trying to create places like that of my very own, that I write.

Now, time to eat and sleep.