'This is really a magic place we live in.' See all these hills and mountains in the distance? They've all got wee paths leading up to them, with mounds and big stones marking the way ... the paths are invisible now, but you can still find them. We're the only ones who know where they are.'
Wee Son thought this was great. It was better than Goldilocks any day.
'Now, I'm going to teach you the names of the hills', I said,'so if you ever have wee boys and girls of your own, you'll be able to tell them all about this.'
'See that hill away on its own in the distance? That one's called Tinto. You got that, son? Tinto Hill.'
'Tin Toe Hill,' he repeated knowledgeably, his round face unusually solemn beneath the fringe of his home-made haircut.

I named as many as I knew and manoeuvred him round to face each one in turn.
'The blue hills in the distance are the Cowal Hills, the green ones are the Kilpatrick Hills; that one like a basin upside down is Duncolm. . . come on and I'll show you Ben Lomond.'

'That's it there,son, the big one away at the back. We could have seen it from the top of the stone if it wasn't for the new Health Centre.'
Wee Son was listening intently, his head cocked to one side. For a boy of six his concentration was remarkable. This is how it all began in the Stone Age, I thought . . . a man teaching his boy on the hillside.

'Can you remember the names of any of the hills now?', I said.'Any one at all.'
Proudly I watched, as eyes blackbird bright he scanned the horizon. How wise he looked, radiant with inner knowledge and secret smiles, a living repository of ancient wisdom.
At last he spoke.
'Daddy, is that an ice cream van?'

From somewhere on the outer limits of human hearing, a few faint bars of music floated up the hill, bringing me back to reality. I handed over the money for two cones and Wee Son was off and running to the tune of the William Tell Overture. Civilisation was here at last. Last year this was a bare hilltop - this year we've got ice cream vans. The landscape was changing fast. As we ran downhill, past neat rows of new houses, I made a mental note to bring a camera on our next visit.
(from Glasgow's Secret Geometry, 1984)

www.geocities.com/alignedsites/

It was my birthday and computers had discreetly registered the fact in undertaker's offices throughout Central Scotland. I had reached the point in life when "pay for your funeral now" circulars outnumber the birthday cards.

Wee Son, now Big Man, back from an exchange year at Kansas University had invited me out for a meal. We sat pair-bonding in the roadhouse restaurant wearing matching grey sweatshirts with 'Kansas' printed on the front in blue slab serif lettering outlined in red . . . I was reeking of duty-free aftershave.

He seemed very evasive about where we were going after the meal . . . my curiosity was aroused when he turned off our usual route home and stopped at a newly-built office block not far from the same hilltop we had been to all those years ago.

We went into a ground-floor office, blinking under the fluorescent lights, and crossed the room to a computer console. He switched it on and it flickered into life. Silently I watched, as eyes blackbird bright he scanned the screen, radiant with inner knowledge, a living repository of hi-tech wisdom logging on to the Internet.

'Off we go, Dad', he said as the words Glasgow Network of Aligned Sites appeared on the screen.
'Click this button here'.
A photograph of a hill shaped like a basin upside down gradually built itself up from a pattern of little squares on the screen. . . Duncolm!

'Now on to the Hypothesis section' he said, deftly tapping the keyboard. 'I've taken some of the photos from your book and scanned them in - you can add the text yourself later. . . .'

And that was how my online education began . . . with a son teaching his father on the hillside.

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