Something For Easter

The Clyde Arc - known locally as The Squinty Bridge

Okay, I won't bore you with details of the delayed flight, the change in check-in times at the hostel I was booked into, the fact that I nearly missed the flight home despite being seated by the correct Gate for nearly five hours or the fact that it took me longer to travel the 28 miles home from Southampton Airport than it did to fly the 400 miles from Glasgow Airport to Southampton Airport. Instead I want to say what a great place Glasgow is.

The first person who spoke to me at Glasgow Airport was a bus driver who called me 'Pal' - I'd arrived in Stereotype City, Scotland! Aside from the football match (see separate post) I was completely bowled over by the place, not just the astonishing levels of poverty that are evident but the beauty, the architecture, the friendly people, the slightly bizarre Saturday night rituals and the sense of solitude on Sunday morning (Easter Sunday).

Saturday night on Argyle Street took me back to my youth. I went to Pizza Hut for something to eat and ended up in the first floor restaurant directly opposite the traffic lights at the junction of Jamaica Street and Argyle Street, for people watching I was in P1 (as they say in Formula One circles). Wave after wave of pretty young things sashayed their way down the street in ever decreasing amounts of clothing, Glaswegians obviously share a blood type with Geordies and believe that there's a direct link between anticipated alcohol intake and clothing.

McDonald's was the place to meet by the look of things but to get there you first had to cross one of two roads and an awful lot of people were playing chicken on Saturday night, I saw one person get hit by a taxi and another by a bus, neither were hurt and seemed to regard it as part of the 'game'.

After eating I went to a sports bar to watch Barcelona play Recreativo de Huelva (the oldest club in Spain by the way). Any resemblance between the match I saw at Ibrox and the one in the Nou Camp was purely coincidental even though this wasn't Barca at their best. I sat watching with four Spanish lads who also happened to be Barca supporters and who applauded every good move, the only downside was that they also applauded Hleb when he came on - still, nobody is perfecto as they say. Once the football was over the bar transformed itself into a night club and I found myself, a nearly fifty something, sat with a pint of French beer listening to some rather loud Euro Techno - sometimes you have to get out of your comfort zone!

I have no idea what time I went to bed, I know it was still Saturday, I'm not as young as I was and I had been up since six! Anyway I was woken at three by a group of Scotsmen singing seven floors below me on the Glasgow streets.

On Sunday morning after an early start I walked around the streets of the city and discovered that I had most of it to myself from about seven thirty through to around nine. All those places I'd seen on Taggart: Blythswood Square, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow Cross, Glasgow Green - they were all mine. Walking back through the pedestrianised centre of the city I couldn't help noticing the closed shops, the shops that were closing down and the empty and derelict buildings - something that London or Paris wouldn't allow to happen.

The river walk along the Clyde from Glasgow Green to the Science Museum isn't quite up there with the Thames or Seine walks but it is still interesting. The riverside areas reminded me most of London's Docklands during the late eighties, early nineties. I remember sitting in Tobacco Wharf when it first opened and it was still surrounded by East End rubble and Glasgow has that same feel, the big difference is of course is that London was developed at the start of a boom, Glasgow has the space, the will and the imagination but it is at the start of a bust.

The bus trip from the centre of the city to the airport took less than twenty minutes, and once you are inside an airport you could really be anywhere. As for the weekend well it wasn't one of those 'tick box' moments - I had after all planned to make this journey five and a half years ago, I'd love to go back but my next city break is Paris and the end of the Tour De France in July.