San Francisco seems like a distant memory now but stumbling across this picture doesn't bring out nostalgia (which is always a return to a place that doesn't exist), what it brings out is a reminder of how cultures live together, side by side. And even though this picture looks like two sides of the same road it isn't really, its a high melting pot of a city that I absolutely adored. Like my home city of Edinburgh and my adopted city Brighton. But I have seen it elsewhere too, New York, London, Paris, Sydney, Brisbane, Madrid, Barcelona, for I have travelled widely. And I will travel more but as I think about that I am also thinking of a line written by Bob Dylan, 'I pity the poor immigrant, who wishes he'd stayed at home.' Our intolerance of others and otherness, and theirs of us, is probably the biggest blight on the human race. The things done in the face of racial, religious, sexual and any other intolerance is surely a great waste of humanity. Its a pity there isn't a cure except common sense, which doesn't seem to be shared by everyone. Still, its easy to despair and I don't, what has to continue is those of us who posses tolerance have to keep spreading the message and trying to overturn the bigotry. If I had a message to my sitting Prime Minister it would be this - ignore our quiet voices at your peril, if Scotland taught us anything last night, it is that its time to really start paying attention to the many and the few, not just your chosen - here's tae us, wha's like us - well that's my ten minutes worth after fifty years of living it.
