Sometimes at lunch time I take my sandwiches to the Botanic Gardens and watch the world go by.  It is a great place for people watching and all of life is there - children squealing with delight, the laboured footsteps of old age, students planning parties and occasionally canoodling couples (from which of course the ministerial gaze is averted).  There are also birds and animals.

Today I watched a little grey squirrel doing what squirrels do at this time of year.  It was searching for nuts to bury and scampering around the grass in the sunshine.  Then it ran up a tree before coming back to see if I had anything interesting for it to eat - my crisps were evidently not appealing and off it scuttled.  The significant thing was that little squirrel had lost most of its tail.  Whether by accident or mutation or disease I have no idea, but rather than a bushy balance aid it had a little stubby runt of a tail.  The way it had adapted - still able to run up the trees apace - was clearly evident.

I wondered how many people noticed the squirrel, and of those how many that it was different.  This part of Glasgow is teeming with 'different' in every sense of the word.  Sometimes it's good to be reminded of that.