Off-at-a-Tangent: SMILE - YOU'RE ON THE CAMERA(S)

Cameras are everywhere in our lives ... and no more so today than in the city of Glasgow. Mairi drove the children and I into the city centre to take advantage of Doors Open Day when the city lays on guides to various buildings and establishments to let you look around places that are not normally open to the public.

We had a great time in the Police Museum before we moved on to George Square and the Glasgow City Chambers building full of Victorian carved marble from the days when the city traded in tobacco, sugar, cotton and other things that people don't teach you in the history lessons.

Here are Alastair and I at the foot of one of the Great and the Good who adorn the main square of the city.

After they headed off I took advantage of the open access to the city's traffic control department. That is the place which monitors - all day every day - those cameras that are used for speeding checks; bridge, motorway and tunnel traffic flow; information signs; all traffic lights both road and pedestrian, The staff make adjustments to ease congestion and help buses (which are linked to a satellite) to keep to timetables by adjusting light changes.

The biggest screen in the room above was looking at something that was happening in the city centre and which happened to be, literally, right around the corner.

What is going on? Halle Berry is in town ... they have blocked off this (hilly) street to allow filming of the film "Cloud Atlas" for which this bit is supposed to be San Francisco. (The traffic people said that the blocking off of this particular fairly quiet area caused more congestion in adjacent areas than they had anticipated.) Can it really be economic to film half way round the world and not in California? (Brad Pitt was here a month ago ... weird!)

However ... I was fascinated to see the big American cars brought in for props, also a half-ton Chev truck and some sort of armoured vehicle, all of the 1950s or 60s. (Heavens! I used to drive one of those cars,.. oh yes, and Chev half-ton!) I mean ... do they ship these things in for the filming? Really?

So great numbers of camera crew are gathered - along with the public behind a barrier - to make the shoot. They even had water spraying up in the air. It must have been about the only time it wasn't actually raining!.

When Alastair first went to Canada he spent some time in the States working on the animation for Halle Berri's film "Cat Woman". I did see her in the distance, Ali, but I did not get close enough to say "Hi"!

And here are newspaper boxes with San Francisco newspapers "for sale" and another big black car used for the film - maybe it is for the bad guys.

So this is me taking pictures of people ... ?paparazzi? ... taking pictures of people taking pictures. Poor Halle Berry ... what must it be like lying on top of a "crashed" car waiting for the cameras to roll .... with zoom lens - both official and unofficial - homing in on you from every direction!