I Belong To Glasgow

I spent last weekend in Glasgow watching tourists climb my parents’ mountains of Easter Eggs. I think the Easter bunny must at least have a holiday home in my mum and dad’s garden along with all the baby Easter bunnies, and their cousins, aunties, uncles and step children twice removed. Mum’s lounge resembles Willy Wonka’s present cupboard.

She has no discipline whatsoever when it comes to chocolate so eats her Easter eggs straight away while dad usually leaves his for a few weeks till she’s finished and then teases her by eating his very slowly in front of her. She got her own back last year by eating his eggs from the back, apart from the small visible bit that pokes through the cardboard at the front. She had glued that in place so that he wouldn’t suspect.

The Scots have a tradition I haven’t seen in England of rolling hard bloiled eggs down a hill on Easter Monday and then eating them, and I’m surprised it hasn’t become a delicacy in Scottish restaurants to remind us all of childhood – Bolied Eggs Froid served with Grass and Broken Shell and the odd bit of Dog Poo.

There’s something strange about going home to the area where you grew up and remembering long forgotten traditions. Football pitches where I kicked a ball, and trees where I once climbed, now look much smaller of course, buildings have sprung up and roads appeared that weren’t there before. But what I really noticed this time was the pace of life was so much slower and more relaxed. London, without warning, seems to have turned me in to a speed freak where actually just doing nothing hasn’t been an option for a long time.

Sure, people drive more slowly in Glasgow, but I think there might be a reason for that. The roads there resemble the floor of a badly maintained quarry that has been bombed and then attacked by an army of tarmac eating ants with pickaxes and hungry bellies. Forget going to Alton Towers or Disneyland. You want a bumpy, screaming, rollercoaster ride? Drive on any main road in Glasgow. You can make it more exciting by flying the flag of England and weaving in and out of traffic shouting “Bring Back Maggie”.

But this slower pace of life thing is more than just speed on side streets. People take time to talk to each other, even strangers.

Beside me at the supermarket, the checkout girl looked at the woman behind me and said “That’s a load of stuff you’ve got there. Having a party?”. The answer was “No, it’s pie day.” Now pie day was not a tradition I remembered at all but it seemed a great idea – every one gets a shortcrust treat for their dinner, maybe a nice steak and kidney followed by an apple and blackcurrant? As I listened closely it turned out that I simply hadn’t adjusted to the dialect yet. This woman confessed she gets “pied every Friday as Friday is pie day”, and it was then I realised she meant “pay day”. But I still think pie day is a better idea.

As my mum and dad are a bit hard of hearing, their TV has the subtitles on permanently and whoever invented speech recognition software for television certainly wasn’t a Scotsman. As one Glasgow reporter with a broad accent asked the Prime Minister if the election was all about “the cuts”, the subtitles informed us it was “all about the cats” which, again, seems a great idea. Watching football on Sunday the commentator shouted “Celtic and Rangers are desperate for goals” but the subtitles told us they were “desperate for golf”. And the accent is catching. I have come back to London sounding like the love child of Susan Boyle and Kenny Dalglish.

While my garden in London basked in tropically hot, sunny weather over the weekend, I was enjoying the tradition of cloud and a bit of rain in Glasgow, and it may sound that with the clapped out roads and the rotten weather I wish I’d stayed home in London. But no.

For all its faults Glasgow will always be home, and if I eventually move back there I’m going to set myself up in business as a road repairer. That way I’ll have enough millions in the bank not just to escape to somewhere warm on holiday, I will be able to buy the sun outright and rent it out.