I’m perfect, you’re perfect, everyone’s perfect, but are we allowed to talk about the past? Will people get angry?
Govanhill is better than it was because when it was bad it was worse, much worse.
The brutalised streets and closed curtains. The soul-crushing air of decay. No getting away from it.
The only music the noise from outside. No pavement but someone else’s dustbin. No colour but a palette of debris and half-eaten food.
Some guy won a tenner at the bookies and bought six bottles of cider and went with his cousin and five mates to stand in front of the two-bedroom flat he shares with his wife, her mother, three sisters, four kids and his uncle who didn’t want to stay at home alone while his whole family came to our street to shout and curse from now until the end of time.
Just as our grandparents did.
But things change.
Now the crowd outside is of hipper people, desperate for a piece of the action over at my place, chez moi, party central, where it’s all happening.
Colouring-in, mindfulness, changemaking. Content creation and editorial support for online brand partnerships and corporate in-house publications.
But things don’t change.
Dear old Glasgow tenements and their back courts, in the1930s, the1970s, this year and next, dancing with rats in the bin sheds.
But we know Govanhill is always still in there, with its jolly wee coupon, salty characters, colourful clothes.
Some say you are whatever we want you to be because you only really exist in our heads. Others say, fancy a pint?
Cheers.
