Category: Glasgow

Just about four years ago, I began a series of posts about the experience of relocating from North carolina to Glasgow; this evening, I’m beginning a series of posts about the experience of relocating from Glasgow to Oxford.

So, thing one: Since moving to Glasgow, my admiration for the work of Alasdair Gray has amplified a zillionfold. I’ve posted video about him, photos of his mural in the Hillhead Subway Station; here’s “Eden and After,” a painting in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland (it exists in several other versions as well). I would have used it as a point of reference when I next lectured on Genesis 2-3:

I hate to say goodbye to the city of Gray — a great man in a great city.

All is well in Glasgow, apart from the marking Margaret has to do and an annoying cold (or allergy) that jumped on me last weekend and, not taking the hint, has lingered through the week. We’ve had a truly remarkable run of weather recently. Remarkable, that is, for its unvarying typicality. Starting I-don’t-remember-how-many-days-ago, the high temperature has been 10 or 11°, low 4 or 5°, with variable clear skies and clouds, and intermittent rain. Last I checked, this trend is set to continue indefinitely.
 
Now, this weather is not at all out of bounds for Glasgow this time of year; indeed, I would reckon it’s pretty much the default setting. But the consistency with which it has settled in is eerie. Ordinarily I’d expect more day-on-day variability; a drier, sunnier day here, a bleaker, blusterier day there. But hey, there’s no ice on the pavements, and rain is just par for the course here in Glasgow.
 
Speaking of what’s typical of Glasgow, I’ve introduced Margaret to Rab C. Nesbitt — a sort of Glaswegian amalgam of The Beverly Hillbillies, Steptoe & Son/Sanford & Son, All in the Family, except with a radically amped-up degree of over-the-top rudeness, all in uncompromising Glasgow patter. (I see a number of episodes on YouTube: you can watch the first episode here.) The lead character is a determinedly unemployed waster, resident in the Giro Valley of Govan, who can’t tell you the last time he got blootered because he doesn’t remember being sober. (He gives up drink later in the series. Don’t tell Margaret, she hasn’t gotten there yet.) Margaret more pure of heart than Rab’s gutter humour, but she can’t help herself from taking sidelong glances at the screen and snickering in pained dismay. Nesbitt is not crassly exploitative comedy, though — there’s a very sharp political edge to Nesbitt’s street-philosopher monologues, pointed take-downs of social-climbers and politicians (and especially social-climbing politicians), and an affectionately self-deprecating perspective on scroungers, drunks, and numpties. Still offensive, but not solely offensive.
 
But the precipitating point for this morning’s post arises from the laudable prevalence of compact fluorescent bulbs here. Three cheers for long-life, energy-efficient illumination! In the course of yesterday’s spring spruce-up for the two-room castle here, though, I came upon a burned-out CFL bulb that I’d saved to dispose of safely. I don’t want to contaminate a landfill with mercury, no indeed. So I started looking for Glasgow Council’s facilities for proper disposal of CFL bulbs. After a few minutes of intensive searching, it became clear that the reason it was so hard to find the Council’s policy is that the best alternative Council offers (again, so far as I can make out after diligent searching) is traveling to one of the four recycling centres at the margins of the city. Now, I appreciate the difficulty of disposing of these bulbs — one doesn’t want just to put a bin somewhere and say, ‘Toss your CFLs in here’. At the same time, does someone actually expect me to hop on a bus, ride for twenty minutes or so, alight, walk for ten minutes or more, hand over a single CFL, then return home, at a cost greater than the price of the bulb, having taken about an hour of my time? My ingenious neighbours must be able to devise some more practical alternative. Or, if there’s already such an alternative, spomeone will put it on the Council website.
 

This past winter wasn’t especially harsh, or unpleasant, or anything noteworthy — but I’m very much more eager for spring and summer to come this year than I have been either of the past years in Glasgow. I have no explanation for this.
 

When I moved to Scotland, I was already keenly aware of the vast divide that separates one Glasgow demographic from another: ‘Do you support Celtic or Rangers?’ I resolved to avoid taking sides publicly — I didn’t need to put myself at odds with anyone (I have had more than enough of unwillingly being at odds with people, believe you me). Gary advised me to support the Partick Thistle, which sounded good to me, but I knew without even deliberating that I would not align with one or the other of the Old firm.
 
Once I got here, and began paying attention to football, I realised that my resolution was more complicated than it might have seemed. Partick Thistle does not, in fact, play their home games in Partick, which is an affront to the good name of my neighbourhood (as though anyone would prefer to play in Maryhill rather than Partick!). If they honestly called themselves the Maryhill Thistle, I might be able to appreciate their candour and adopt them, but if they want my allegiance, they will have to depart Firhill and put together a stadium in some of the open land in our end of town. So no Jags for me.
 
That leaves Celtic and Rangers, and for my first two years here, Rangers were the decided overdogs — and brash about it, at that. They reminded me a little too much of the New York Yankees (by the way, what’s with so many people in the UK who wear Yankees gear? Are there not many other deserving baseball teams to support? Wearing a NY baseball cap in Glasgow is like saying, ‘I can’t be bothered to find out about a team I might actually like, so I’ll support the best-publicised team’), and the Orioles fan in me felt an obligation to prefer some team other than the overdogs — which meant, Celtic. (Their association with the Catholic community likewise played to my favour; in fact a couple of people have, after asking where my loyalties lay, have told me that I seemed to them like a Celtic supporter, with that circumstance in view.) That worked well enough for the past two years, where the Hoops played well, bettered most of the rest of the SPL, and finished second to the loud and proud Rangers. And in none of this time did I really feel tempted to voice a public allegiance among the Glasgow teams.
 
But at the beginning of this season, I felt as though Celtic had had enough hard times (well, finishing second to Rangers) that my determination was slipping. Two years was long enough for Rangers to dominate the SPL, and when Celtic stumbled to a haphazard start, I began leaning into public Celtic support.
 
And Celtic rewarded my support by turning on a streak of determined football, pulling from nine points behind Rangers to one, then three, then four points ahead. Huzzah! The on-going buzz of news reports that Rangers had been overspending like a sodden hooligan, had been dodging bills and neglecting their taxes, only affirmed my sense that Celtic represented a team of prudence, probity, and grit.
 
But then all fell to bits: Rangers’ financial troubles caught up with them, they’re shedding players and losing points, and suddenly Celtic is alone atop the SPL standings with a twenty-one point lead over second-place Rangers (equal to the distance between second-place Rangers and eighth-place Kilmarnock). It’s no fun to root for a steamroller in a league of Matchbox cars, and my appreciation for Celtic is now shadowed by compassion for everyone else in the league (besides Rangers, for whom my only positive feelings come from Christine (our building’s cleaner) supporting them). So there’s the dilemma. Support the superpower Celtic FC, the new overdogs par excellence, for whom I’ve been building sympathy during their years of (relative) hard going, or just stand off from any allegiance? Or support the Jags?
 
Well, baseball season is nearly on us, and there’s March Madness*, and maybe Celtic will win some games in the Europa League, and there’s the Scottish Cup, and eventually World Cup will start up again…
 

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Another thing we love about living here: Margaret got a personal letter from her GP today, apologising for not having written her sooner about a routine test she recently had. Her GP had lost track of the results, they hadn’t been sent to him, and then one day he remembered that he hadn’t heard back from the lab, followed up, and passed along the nothing-to-worry-about news to Margaret.
 
After thirty years of adult life spent dreading communication with medics and onsurance companies, it’s now a pleasure for us to hear from our doctor. This we love about living in Scotland, and (by the way) this is what the benighted Con-Dem coalition is willing to endanger in favour of having a system more like the US (more costly, less even-handed, with profits for the few). Well, it’s lovely while it lasts.
 

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I’ve been grinding my own coffee and making filtered coffee cup by cup, because I just don’t much like Americano. I suspect that it’s a trick of my imagination — is there really that much difference between filter-brewed coffee and diluted espresso? — but there we are. I prefer my coffee brewed, not diluted, and that’s that.
 
Now on Byres Road a coffee-aficionado’s haven has opened up, Avenue G, and every now and then we go to give AKMA a treat: my choice of three single-location varieties, fresh ground and filter-brewed. IF you care about coffee and live in Glasgow, Avenue G is the only place I’ve discovered where the coffee warrants a special trip. (We still love S’Mug for its atmosphere, and the tea is fine, but the coffee can’t hold a candle to Avenue G).
 

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* Scotrail uses the term ‘March Madness’ to characterise their reduced-price ticket scheme — ‘Wow, only £2.90 to Motherwell! Let’s have a holiday!’ I think they don’t quite grasp what March Madness is all about.
 

Yesterday morning dawned grey and wet, but nothing would obstruct Margaret’s and my making our way to Pollok Country Park. Why, you ask? (The very question betrays your ignorance of autumn in Glasgow, for everyone who’s anyone will have had this Saturday marked weeks ago.) It turns out that, when Margaret was stranded in Baltimore and felt uncertain that she would ever be accorded the privilege of residence in this realm of Scotland, she and Jeneane fixed their attention on 2 October, the date of the annual Highland Cattle Show in Glasgow.
 

 
Yes, the weather was damp at best (and sodden the rest of the time); yes, the turf was marshy; yes Katie the Border Collie was a novice at herding Indian Runner Ducks, to the frustration of Mark Wylie; yes, Margaret and I made a transportation misstep that entailed an extra four miles of walking. Yes to all of that, but nothing could obscure the glory of a two-year-old Highland heifer waving his her horns a few inches in front of your face. These lovely, massive beasts command respectful attention, and attend we most certainly did.
 
We walked a lot, soaked up a lot of rain, tracked through plenty of mud, but we saw Big Calder (the inflatable highlander), the Drakes of Hazzard, Her Royal Majesty’s prize two-year-old, the World’s Biggest Rabbit, and sundry other attractions. We had a good long walk. We came through the drizzle and rain with our spirits up and our health intact. And Margaret got to see her Highland Cattle. +1 Glasgow.
 

May I say that every day I see men in Glasgow who are stouter than I am, and (although I’m taller than most Scotsmen) often enough see men of about my height? I’m not so unusual in my dimensions, honestly — just a tallish fellow who’s gone a bit round in the chest and middle. But judging from the charity shops, it is only short, skinny men (or occasionally men of about my jacket size, but with short arms) who give over their castoff clothing. Somewhere there must be a vast warehouse overflowing with suits and jackets my size, but for now, second-hand clothing is only for the slender shorter men.

I’ve been scrambling around to put together reading lists for my courses (and my portion of other people’s courses) this fall, which involves interacting with the online repositories of journal articles — an obligation that rivals for sheer ecstatic titillation such enviable pursuits as root canal surgery without anaesthesia, writer’s block, and listening to Vogon poetry. Not only are the interfaces for the various vendor packages all different; not only does each permit or discourage different ways of browsing; not only are they discontinuous with one another, so that if your library’s subscription to Transmodernist Hip-Hop Quarterly via JORTS expired in 2007, you have to navigate over to the Humanities Periodicals Database to pick up the 2008 issue for which you were browsing; not only do years sometimes disappear mysteriously from the range of “subscribed” volumes; not only do the URIs represent case studies in absurdly overcomplicated information design (here’s a no-kidding actual URI I was working with today: http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&docId=A224406300&source=gale&srcprod=EAIM&userGroupName=glasuni&version=1.0); but (as Tom diligently reminds us) these soi-imaginant founts of knowledge operate principally so as to prevent access — first of all to the total outsider, but also to the academic subscriber who seeks knowledge in the wrong way (that is, a way that the database manager didn’t foresee, or foresaw and nixed), and then to the academic subscriber who’s in the wrong place (at home, rather than at a campus terminal), students likewise. In short, the role of the periodical-database companies is to prevent pretty much everything that a print librarian facilitates. Welcome to the awkward zone between the beginning of the digital transition and the time rationality sets in.
 
Anyway, my point wasn’t that I was disheartened by my travails with digital periodicals’ interfaces, but that despite the frustrations attendant upon such endeavours, I have greatly enjoyed my day in the office. I can’t overstate my deep satisfaction with my staff neighbours, with my students here, with Glasgow, with my work of teaching and administering and planning and researching and writing.
 
Now, if only I had time to do it all.
 

 
I love Glasgow.

I love Glasgow. The bathroom scale in my flat reports my weight in kilograms and stone, but not pounds, so I can pretend that my weight bears no relation to the quantity of pounds that I know I really ought to weigh.

• I’m really enjoying living here. It’s another grey, damp day, but the plain fact is that Glasgow is sunnier than we admit, and it’s green, and friendly, and home.
 
• Margaret and I have been fascinated and impressed by seeing urban foxes, but the news over here for the past few days has been dominated by the story of twin girls who were attacked in their nursery by a fox. The fox evidently came in by the patio door, climbed the stairs, and attacked one of the twins. (Don’t worry, Margaret and Pippa, it was in London.)
 
• Aware that Margaret is fascinated by crime in general and Glasgow’s gangster culture in particular, I saw the following placard the other day as I was running errands:
 

 
Of course, I didn’t buy the paper; I figured I’d watch the BBC or look it up on Google news. But despite my persistent attention, I’ve seen not a byte of information about this story online. So — is this the result of the UK’s outlandish slander laws? Or was the placard perhaps just plain wrong? Remember, we’re talking about Scotland’s Number One Gangster; if he’d been a dancer or a model or a celebrity stranded in a desert oasis, we’d never hear the end of it.

When I was small, our family had a copy of Maurice Sasek’s This Is Edinburgh in circulation:
 

 
I don’t remember if there was a specific reason, apart from our vivid consciousness of Scots ancestry, but I read through that book countless times. I bring it up now because I had so internalized the images on those pages that actually going to Edinburgh, all the way to Edinburgh (as Ian Hunter might sing) not stopping at Haymarket, was like entering a a physical representation of my imagination. It was that strange and intoxicating.
 
Relative to the “Glasgow and Me” theme, nothing I have done since I moved here underscored as much as this that I actually live in Scotland, and that I live in Glasgow-as-distinct-from-Edinburgh. I loved visiting Edinburgh, and I can’t wait to take Margaret and Pippa there. I’ve said before that I feel at home in old places, and Edinburgh is significantly older (in architecture and even in most streets). Add to that the experience of discovering what you had seen and known before (in my imagined, childhood, Sasek-inspired version of Edinburgh) and it was a truly spectacular afternoon.
 
I love ScotRail.
 
Now, as to the visit to Edinburgh itself: I arrived at Waverly shortly before midday. I fist explored Princes Street; there’s a branch of the Pen Shop in Jenner’s there, and I went up to encourage the staff by purchasing a bottle of ink remover (didn’t really need any more ink, and I tend to steer away from contemporary pens — speaking of which, I should do some pen posts again soon, maybe after I write out what I was thinking about hermeneutics and moral theology and so on). I had finished reading a book I’m reviewing on the train ride, so I felt a rush of satisfaction and accomplishment; a pen accessory seemed like a modest reward. On the way to Jenner’s, I took a photo of the Scott Memorial.
 

 
There was a kilted piper busking on the pavement; I declined to photograph him, but I’m sure there was such a figure in the Sasek book, so I felt as though I’d gone through the Wardrobe into fantasy-Edinburgh already (much stronger than seeing locations I recognize in “Taggart” episodes). The message of the Scott Memorial: “We’re serious about honouring people who boost the stature of Scotland!”
 
I crossed Princes Street Gardens and headed to the Royal Mile in search of the hotel where I’d meet Holly later that afternoon. That accomplished in short order, I began meandering. Sisters and brothers, Edinburgh is a city made for meandering. All the closes — hidden byways and plazas without obvious immediate street access — and bridges and alleys make for prime meanderage. Meandritude. Meanderosity. In one of the staircases, I discovered that some Edinburghians evidently had a low opinion of George II.
 

 
I had coffee at a pleasant juice bar, wandered some more, clambered up to the castle (didn’t go in),
 

 
looked in at the Writers Museum,
 

 
and ended up at one of the cafes in which J. K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book, The Elephant House. There’s a lovely windowed back room there (would be exactly what MArgaret’s looking for, but the commute would be rough), with a great view of the Castle Rock, but I sat out front with a smoothie.
 

 
Then it was time to go meet Holly, with whom I shared a wonderful drinks-and-dinner, reminiscing and updating and talking about the cashmere business and academic life. Holly impressed the staff by speaking to them all in fluent Italian; I nodded vaguely, and at one point the “foreign language” center of my brain emitted a pointless “Danke.” We called it a relatively early evening; she had to wake up at six, and I had the train ride ahead of me. The hotel was stylishly crepuscular, so there wasn’t much chance of a well-lit photo, but a kind desk clerk agreed to give it a try. Of course, no single frame caught both of us smiling. . . .
 

 
Great to see you, Holly, and thanks again for the terrific dinner! Great to see you Edinburgh, and soon I’ll bring Margaret or Pippa!

Quick notes: I didn’t hear any fireworks before last night, and I didn’t hear the fireworks that went off last night either (having fallen precipitously asleep at 11:30); Margaret assures me that there were fireworks aplenty, from more than one location. I imagine that the subzero temperatures have diminished the inclination of amateur pyrotechnicians to venture out at night and practise their art, but still, the contrast with the weeks around Guy Fawkes Day is remarkable,
 
We went to see Sherlock Holmes at the local cinema (only one walkable movie theater in the West End, so far as I know). We enjoyed it immensely — very spacious, comfortable seats, with handsome wooden trays between every pair of seats. We saw another couple bring in a bottle of wine and glasses. Now, we can hardly wait to go back. That’s movie-watching with class.
 
I would wish for Margaret a chance to see Glasgow in warmer, sunnier weather (no, we didn’t go to George Square for Hogmanay), but it’s still making a good impression on her. I hope that her fondness for Glasgow increases from her current feelings in proportion to the length of days and the increase of degrees Celsius.
 
It occurred to me recently that a large part of my difficulty in making out a Glasgow accent derives from the very wide variety of accents I hear here. Glasgow being a center for academic, industrial, and general migration, one can easily encounter a great many variations of English accents, many south Asian accents, many accents from other parts of Scotland, and many hybrids of these with Scottish and Glaswegian speech. So I hardly ever know whether I’m hearing a (relatively) pure Glasgwegian accent, or some other regional or hybrid pattern. Still, I’m having less trouble than I was warned that I would.
 
Waitrose may be “upmarket,” but Wednesday, when Margaret and I went shopping there, we found a very good number of vegetarian-friendly options (too many, in fact!). Moreover, when Margaret asked an employee about gluten-free foods, he promptly led her to an end cap replete with g-f staples, and offered her a print-out of everything that Waitrose ordinarily stocks that meets her dietary needs. He then went and printed a copy of it and looked around for her to give it to her. That, my friends, is customer service. Even if Waitrose is justly labelled “upscale,” we will shop for groceries there as long as they have a good supply of foods we can eat, and they demonstrate such readiness to connect us to it.
 
 
Plus, everything that I like about Glasgow is vastly more wonderful while Margaret’s here.

In the course of my holiday shopping (and — let’s be honest — self-indulgence shopping), I’ve had occasion to stop in at numerous Glasgow antiques shops. None had any fountain pens, and I gather that this is the normative condition of such vendors in Scotland (alas). My point this afternoon, though, is that it seems a typical business practice for Glaswegian antique and used-goods merchants to make huge archaeological tells of random goods, of which only the surface layer is functionally accessible. Couple this anti-sales strategy with exceptionally narrow aisles and fragile goods sitting precariously atop these mounds, and you have a strong disincentive to pick up anything that isn’t already on the surface. Thus, all the sub-surface goods that the dealer has invested in are a dead loss; they might as well not be there, except that if they weren’t there a buyer might be able to move more freely through the store, or pick up and examine closely the items he or she can now easily reach and lift.
 
My proposed business plan: offer a vintage-goods dealer a flat fee to remove all the hidden junk, then re-sell it in a store with decent visibility. No need to pay me an upfront fee for putting this into practice; just send me a portion of the massive profits you’ll reap. Plus, if you do find any fountain pens under there, let me have first dibs on buying them.

As I was walking home from the laundry yesterday, I looked around and realized that Glasgow doesn’t feel exotic any more. It’s just a place. I live here.