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I’ve had a busy and enjoyable week. It feels like things are getting back to normal, even although Covid is still rife. On Monday, I had my ukulele class, followed by coffee, on Tuesday, I met up with some of my scrabble group for coffee, on Thursday, I had my Bible Fresh Group in the morning and my zoom ukulele class in the afternoon, on Friday afternoon, I met my friends Elizabeth and Margaret for a walk and lunch and on Friday night, Charlie and I went to see 10CC in the Concert Hall. They were brilliant.
On Saturday, I did some research for my second novel in The Uist Girl Series. Chrissie’s aunt lives in Ibrox, so I wanted to have a look at the tenements over there to see where she might have lived. I went by underground as we are trying to cut back on using the car and it was like a trip down memory lane. My granny and aunts lived in Whitefield Road in Ibrox, and we used to go on the subway, as we called it back then, from Byres Road to Copland Road. It was so long since I had been on the subway I wasn’t quite sure how to use my ticket and it reminded me of a poem I wrote for my creative writing course about the first time I did the trip on my own. So, I’ve shared it below. When I read it, I thought how modern and clean the subway is now. Back then the walls used to run with condensation, the advertising boards held horrible pictures of animals being tortured (that’s what it looked like to me), there was a kind of stale eggy smell when you went into the subway and the wind used howled up the stairs and pulled at your clothes. Did you know, it was the 125th anniversary of the subway on the 14 of December last year and that Glasgow was the third city to build an underground railway system after the Budapest Metro and the London Underground? Amazing. I suppose it shows how much Glasgow’s population was expanding back in 1896.
I’ve put some photographs of the buildings I found as I wandered around. Sadly, my granny’s close wasn’t there anymore, nor the close where my family had lived in Govan before moving to Drumchapel in 1956. The most amazing find was a beautiful, curved row of tenement flats and houses in Walmer Crescent, an Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson creation, which sits next to Cessnock Underground. I had never noticed it before, even although I’ve been up and down Paisley Road West many times in the car. It goes to show Shanks’s pony is sometimes best way to see things.
RITE OF PASSAGE
I made the journey to the south,
oh my heart was in my mouth.
Through the tunnel under the Clyde,
no mum or siblings by my side.
The wind whistled and lifted my frock
like Marilyn Monroe in that famous shot,
while my nose was attacked with rotten smells
like boiled eggs in mortar shells.
The walls they cried with condensation
and nightmare images of anti-vivisection.
I shook as that faint growl grew more
and the train arrived with a deafening roar.
The doors opened wide with a false teeth smile
and I sat with legs dangling in the aisle,
my eyes downcast like an eastern bride
sheltered from the strangers on the opposite side.
At last, the train emerged into Ibrox station
and I gambolled off without hesitation.
Like a blowfish, my cheeks puffed out a sigh
as I rose from the darkness to the bright blue sky.
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MARION MACDONALD 