An early start to get to Glasgow in good time for the launch of the Independent Asylum Commission Recommendations.  I made my lunch last night: three rolls and a boiled egg, individually selected orange.  Fragments of my speech are rolling around in my head as I study my briefing: from Berwick to Edinburgh I make my notes, from Edinburgh to Glasgow I cherry-pick recommendations.  It's encouraging that in the grey light of a Scottish morning they make good sense.

From Queen Street Station I ask my way to St Mungo's Museum.  As I walk I think of Iona and its historic link with GlaSgow poverty.  [Reader, I'm having trouble with my lower case 's' - if I continue to have problems, I'll offer you an archaic 'f' inftead, or a capital 'S'.  I fuggeSt you take the capital.]   I think of Ian FraSer, who taught me what Liberation Theology waS before the term waS invented and of Geoff Shaw who lived in a two-roomed flat when he ran Strathclyde Council - and of the Silver Sand of Iona. 

I'm the first one there.  Jonathan and Hiratche arrive to set up.  Jaqueline from UNHCR (on-board observer) comes later.  Jonathan takes me through what the Scottish press are saying.  There's such a different feel here; they want to do the things we are calling for. They want to end 'dawn raids' and have virtually succeeded in doing so; they insist on an end to the detention of children; they are getting asylum seeking children and young people into Further and Higher Education (the numbers are small, but the Scots have always valued education); they want to close Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre ('that little bit of Scotland over which the Scottish Executive has no control' as the Minister pointedly puts it).  Linda Fabiani MSP has arrived early to be with us for the whole session.  It's not her portfolio, but she's interested, committed, and among friends.  She promises that the dialogue about implementing our recommendations in Scotland will go forward.  It becomes ever clearer that the Scots will run with what we have said (pointing out where they are ahead of us, as in the assigning of a 'lead professional' to all vulnerable families).   From this distance, England looks tawdry.  The star of the show is 18-year old Glaswegian, Amal Azzedin, who makes a storming speech in support of aylum seekers.  She'll go far.

Sitting at the table, I accept free water.  For lunch I eat my rolls.  

A quick look inside the Cathedral, which has a steady flow of visitors.  I note a Muslim family, Japanese and Italians.  Entry is free.  I'm impressed.  Without thinking I put the suggested £2 in the box.  But if I didn't have £2 it wouldn't have mattered. 

On the train to Edinburgh I sit opposite two girls.  One eats (unfragrant) chicken bap and chips, and doesn't offer a chip to her friend.  Is this by mutual agreement?  From Edinburgh to Berwick the menu for the seat opposite is chicken and ham sandwiches, spring onion crisps, two pork pies and a chocolate bar.  Does it cross his mind that I am hungry?  I drift off to sleep to be woken by phone ring fortissimo and my neighbour bawling 'Hello, Dad.  I'm in the Quiet Coach so I'm not supposed to be talking to you.'  My family would say I go looking for them.

Back at the ranch, I halve the remaining spaghetti.  I've learnt to fry up a third of an onion in spread (which seems to evaporate), to add black pepper and tomato splodge.  I'm careful not to overcook the spag, and notice I'm liberal with the salt, because the spag is bland.  Now, it's really tasty.  Then I eat an orange - which is so juicy it's a bit out of control, but in private I can cope with that.  Tea is sweetened with first-class sugar totted from National Express last Monday. 

I settle to think over the day, with my eyes closed.  Two hours later, I turn to Kim: 'All hours of the twenty-four are alike to Orientals', comments Kipling sagely.  Like Afro-Caribbeans I suppose - who generously take the night shift so the white man can sleep off the fatigue of his burden.  Kim and his lama join the River of Life on the Great Trunk Road (no borders - it makes you think).  They observe a meeting between father and son, who embrace 'as do father and son in the East'.   Like the parable of the prodigal.  The other side of Orientalism.

Spent so far on food: £4.79.  On extras, £3.46, with a mad moment in Glasgow Cathedral.