Scotland entertain England in Glasgow

With Christmas fast becoming a distant memory and work heads firmly back in place the DH Team travelled up to Glasgow to meet with our Scottish counterparts last week.  Sadly Liz couldn’t make it but she’d been busy with Shirley in London earlier in the week presenting to CDOP in Newham.    And so from a cold and dark station in Wigan Shirley (now obviously back from London) and I boarded the train to Glasgow Central.

I’d lived near Glasgow some years ago and so I was keen to see how that great city was getting on.  I wasn’t disappointed.  My own city, Liverpool has fantastic buildings and many ‘jewels’ to visit, eat in or indeed drink in but Glasgow seems even greedier in that sense.  So much on offer!

Anyway enough of the travel guide for a moment.  I have to say a big thank you to Steve, Eileen and Gabby for their welcome, for their company and also for providing the opportunity to put our heads together and look at and reflect on our respective projects.  Working remotely brings many challenges but with the support of our colleagues in Saunderton and with having a team now doing similar work in Scotland, things are made so much easier.

The time we had to take a step back and view our progress and analyse the positives and some of the more difficult aspects was invaluable.  It was also interesting to look at the differences in each area.  One of the features of the English and Scottish development projects is that each location is unique and has its own particular needs with regards bereavement support.

After working through to early evening Gabby, an adopted Glaswegian from Australia, arranged for us to eat at a fantastic little place called The Tiki Bar and Kitsch Inn which majors in delicious Thai food.  A quirky little establishment with many interesting artefacts in the bar downstairs, including a full sized coffin!   After dinner we headed back to the hotel though Steve and I did make a bit of a detour, wandering around Glasgow before enjoying the delights of an old Glasgow hostelry that specialises in whiskey.  We did sample a couple but we were also, somewhat surprisingly, quite sensible and returned to the hotel at a reasonable hour.

We gathered the following morning to conclude our work and log our learning before heading our separate ways.  A great two days which were extremely valuable in many ways and with a nice spot of team building thrown in.  Using my usual football analogy we look forward to a return leg somewhere south of the border at some point in the not too distant future!

Rich