r/Glasgow Tools

AS the wind whipped through the Barras’ lanes and wynds, a coat-rail broke loose from its bearings, spilling fake furs onto the ground. Three of us ran towards it: one to catch the runaway vessel; the others to fetch up the garments and brush them down. The vendor was a handsome woman, her features marked by kindness and valour. She thanked us all.

“I’m normally chasin’ moonbeams, no’ coatrails,” she told us.

Just round the corner, I catch the tail-end of a conversation which finishes with the observation that their friend has been “punched in the heid too many times”. Another of their acquaintances seemed to have had rather a lot to drink the previous night, but it’s not sufficient merely to say that he was drunk. Rather, he was “walking through a bouncy castle”.

People from around here like to paint pictures with their conversations.

This is my first proper visit to the Barras since my parents brought me here on rainy Sunday afternoons, looking for bargains with what they had left from a mortgage that was beginning to choke them. The place is buzzing and there are echoes of its post-war peak.
Arnold, whose stall sells Scottish memorabilia both old and modern, agrees. “There’s been a bit of a revival, ma man. It’s really starting to pick up again.”

His friend agrees: “There’s a good vibe here, although maybe a bit different from what it used to be. There’s a lot of young hipsters mooching around now, but that’s brilliant too.

“We’re just trying to prepare for that cycle race next week. It’s going to cause chaos round here. We’re more concerned about that than what people think of a few empty shops in Sauchiehall Street.”

Glasgow’s famous weekend street market is the first stop on a walk that took me from London Road in the east end of the city to Byres Road in the west. Glasgow has taken a battering in recent months as dozens of commentators and political actors have suddenly become concerned at signs of decrepitude in the city centre.

So, I wanted to walk through my city at street-level and listen to what the people who live and work here think about the fuss that’s being made about their neighbourhoods by "Concerned of Nuthatch Avenue, Bearsden".

Glasgow is the largest and most important city in Scotland. Almost half of the country’s population live within an hour’s drive of it. It’s been home to some of the UK’s most deprived neighbourhoods for more than a century. Yet, only now, it seems, have the country’s political and media elites decided that it needs their attention. Most of them would get a nose-bleed if they’d to venture beyond the High Street on the eastern approaches to Glasgow.

The threatened withdrawal of late-night bus services and the introduction of the LEZ zone have stiffened the post-recovery challenges of Glasgow’s hospitality sector. The boarded-up shop-fronts of Sauchiehall Street, the city’s flagship boulevard, seem to channel a spirit of decay.

I’ve been critical of how this street has been brought to such a parlous state and so perhaps this makes me part of the hand-wringing pile-on to which Glasgow is being subjected right now. Maybe it’s time though, now to shut the f**k up and cease the narrative that the city has suddenly become a bomb-site.

In families, we’re allowed to criticise our own, but when outsiders dare to do so it’s an entirely different matter.

Starting at Celtic Park, the walk back along London Road towards Bridgeton Cross brings you rewards if you’re prepared to look hard enough. Less than a generation ago, these streets were described in apocalyptic terms: the worst in this category; the ugliest in that.

Now, you’re greeted by rows of well-designed social and affordable homes not dissimilar to those which have transformed the Gorbals over the park and across the river. A group of volunteers are loading racks of school uniforms into the Kindness shop. This is a street team that supports homeless people in Glasgow and Laura McSorley, its founder, is driven by boundless optimism.

“The school uniforms are for families who find the shop prices too steep,” she tells me.

“People round here are so generous, even the ones who are facing their own challenges.

You don’t have to look far to see big hearts in Glasgow. Sometimes I feel we’re too down on ourselves.”

Other treasures, previously unseen become apparent on the way down to Glasgow Cross.
I stop at a copper public artwork by Iain Kettles called Cut From the Factory Floor, which references the patterns used in the old Templeton Carpet Factory across the road.

At an entrance to Glasgow Green, there’s another little landmark I’d previously missed. It’s a paved monument dedicated to Maggie McIver who founded the Barras market. Just beyond it is the People’s Palace.

Have you seen what they’ve done with the landscaping at the People’s Palace recently? It’s magnificent. The old Doulton Fountain is in full spate, making it impossible to light up a cigarette on the benches beside it. Thomas and his family, down from Riddrie, is explaining its history to them: “Who needs to go to London when you’ve got this on your doorstep,” he says.