Category: memory

Ten club king size mate

close up of a mural, two men smiling, one with a beard

People sometimes ask me who the hell I think I am and what the hell I’ve ever done for Govanhill and I’m like ffs, calm doon, I only came in to buy fags.

But let me think about it.

I don’t sit on any committees, it’s true, nor any board, working group, task force, or forum. I was on the panel for a while, but that’s a different story.

I’m not an entrepreneur or a social enterpriser either.

Landlord, stakeholder, partner, investor? Aye, right.

I don’t even like hanging out with my dog, listening to true crime podcasts or baking.

I am nobody, unknown nobody no one knows.  

The only places I’m a regular are the pavement, Celtic Park and my living room.

But I’ve walked the streets of Govanhill more than ever before. I’ve appreciated it, written about it, painted its pictures, sang its songs. Endured it, stood up for it, taken the piss a little.

Also howled at it in the middle of the night, slapping my forehead, gnashing my teeth.

I’ve never shut up about Govanhill, to be honest.

You were always on my mind.

Because I’ve always been here and always will be, for ever and ever, amen.

There was never a different time or a better time, only this time.

I was there back in the day, the old day, in black and white photos of old Govanhill, how clean it looked before car ownership and home ownership, fast food and disposable culture, austerity politics, social media, gig economy.

Remember the wee guy picking his nose and staring at the camera?

I haven’t changed a bit.

I wish my fishmonger were still alive and that mass unemployment had never been invented.

If only the dry cleaners hadn’t closed down and people worked reasonable hours and had nice homes and a pension.

Where is the haberdasher and how come my phone knows everything about me?

I just want to go home.

But you are home.

I know.

In Govanhill.

Yes. I want to go home but I don’t know what that means, where it is, or if it even exists. It must be a place in your head you can always come back to, like a dream or a never-ending story.

Sorry, what are you talking about?

Ten club king size mate.

Cheers.

Welcome home, Govanhill

colourful mural of three cartoon heads on a wall, each with speech bubbles

At home in Glasgow looking out at Govanhill.

Home is a city, streets and a set of buildings. 

See how I’ve changed, see how I’ve stayed the same.

I used to be world famous for heart disease, cancer and house fires, with the lowest life expectancy and highest murder rate in Europe.

But I’m working on it. I’m reinventing myself, like.

Now I’m more into green space, cheap rent, low carbon, hi-tech, social enterprise, vibrant scene.

Home is a set of memories, pictures in your head, someone else’s head.

From back in the days when I was a ghetto, a slum, full of immigrants and crime and bedbugs. An exemplar, I was. The most demonised neighbourhood in Scotland, they said.

But I was still at home, I was always at home.

Look at me now. Staycolders, gentle flyers, reinventionaries, new heavy industry, the Govanhill industry.

But the view outside the window is still the same.

Home is a city that keeps on reinventing itself but where people still die young.

High-density housing, old tenements in poor condition, transient population, a wide range of languages other than English.

Home is a set of colours, football colours for example, food and pubs, churches and trade unions, music and literature, comedy and dislocation.

Maybe things were better in the old days.

Good times, growing up, carefree. Smiling faces in photos from the past.

The city may change, but the place you invented stays the same.

A motor car stopped at traffic lights, pot plants near a window, a conversation across the road.

The city belongs to me.

If only I could leave the house.

Cheers.

No Govanhill, yes

So I woke one morning from uneasy dreams and Govanhll was no longer there.

Gone, girl. Disappeared.

No roads or traffic or trees or people or wind and rain or anything.

Aye right, Gvanhll.

I tried to go outside but it wasn’t the same, it was totally different, nothing was happening at all.

Nae Rab fae Torrisdale Street, mad Tracy who torched her flat that time, vegan young team, nothing.

Aye cheers, Gvnhll.

Where’s Victoria Road and its ever-changing shop fronts selling strange items and trinkets? Tin pot pale face trying to tap you a few bob, slummer with accent and slight entitled air?

None of it there, all of it gone.

Gvnhl, disappeared.

No more stories to write or read.

Not an eye or a pen to neither see nor tell.

Nothing to say, not even a goodbye.

I didn’t know what to do.

I always knew there was something missing in my life. Turns out it’s Gvnl.

Then I remembered that we are dust and to dust we shall return, so I returned home to the dust and shadows to sit on the couch and drink cans. But there was no couch, and no cans either, so I went to sleep and tried to remember those uneasy dreams and bring Gvl back to life.

I heard laughter outside, clinking glasses, a stranger swearing, a motorised wheelchair speeding down Cathcart Road.

An evening class in Mandarin, a night of Lebanese cuisine, knock-off Russian cigarettes.

Vast bellies, slapping flip flops, the smell of baked bread from somewhere overhead.

Not gone, Gl.

Pictures, sounds, impossibilities running through my head.

Still here, G.

Hope I wake up soon.

Chrs.

Word of foot

multi-coloured polka dot thing that looks like a ball with green grass and trees and a blue sky behind

Immigration enriches a place, refreshes it, reminds a culture of its own neglected parts.

Things people used to do but don’t anymore.

Street football, street food, hanging around street corners.

Remember that was us? Immigration brings us closer to home.

Kids from Romania, Kurdistan and Somalia playing football on the basketball court in the park, just as we did when we were young, a Mitre 5 or a plastic job from the corner shop, black sannies or a pair of your granny’s wellies.

Sacred working-class knowledge passed down through word of foot.

We always played football, especially as adults, a game with the brothers every Saturday in the park, whatever the weather and whatever the hangover, then back to the cluttered house swirling in smoke with the endless stream of visitors and friends, relatives and neighbours, the hiss of beer cans opening and voices raised in drunken discussions about politics or Celtic and dad shouting at us to keep it down.

And now a fool like me is kicking a ball around with kids at the end of my street.

The global language of keepie-uppie, noble pastime, a pastime straight from the gods.

An Iraqi boy, fourteen, good player.

Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, head, chest, both knees, even that catching it on the back of the neck thing which always annoys me because you can never do that in a game but I let it go man, he’s only fourteen.

Then he passes to me – what, with my hamstrings? – and a clown’s hooter sounds or a comedy trombone starts up as I stumble and flap in mid-air and the ball bounces from my face to a car bonnet and out to the main road and as I run to retrieve it I’m nine years old again, a bus driver beeping his horn and shaking his fist, me giving him a cheeky wee wave. Hope he doesn’t call the fuzz.

So cheers Kurdistan, Romania and Somalia, for reminders of the old city, city that’s always changing but where a good first touch always remains.

We belong to Glasgow.

Drink, smoke, football, die. That’s what we do.

Cheers.

Govanhill doesn’t really exist

Tenements reflected on a car window, with other tenements in the background

Govanhill doesn’t really exist.

I invented these streets, built these tenements, paved these roads. I serve in the shops, pour the pints, empty the bins.

It’s me who keeps the lights on in MyGovanhill.

Invisible me walking the streets of my imaginary city.

I walk these streets but I don’t really know where I’m going.

Bouncing from sky to pavement and back before standing, standing looking out to the horizon or the end of the road at least.

There may be other places but I haven’t been and I can’t think what goes on there.

Clockwork through these streets instead, catching only my own reflection everywherever I go.

Businesses on this main road, some local, some global, pop-up, closed down. More empty shops than you might think.

Hip wee dogs with English accents, owners’ white skin prickling outside a bakery.

Forget the bakery. The bread tastes like tarmac. Govanhill doesn’t really exist. Leave your tote bag at home, check out these streets I invented instead.

Where nobody knows your name.

And they’re never glad you came.

Forget the bakery. Try queuing outside the pawn shop, the bookies, the chippy. Or the pub, repository of ancient knowledge passed down through the generations by word of mouth.

Bevvy, warmth, companionship, sometimes a guy who’ll throw up on your shoes.

Hings happenin in the streets I paved. Magic.

Tap dancers and pure rockets are singing my songs. Utter bampots and total madmen painting my pictures.

Because I’ve always been here, lived and died round here many times over.

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t here.

Might try writing a sitcom about it.

Set in a bar in Govanhill where a group of locals meet to drink, relax, and socialise which runs for 275 half-hour episodes across eleven seasons.

Cheers.

Grandpa’s Vietnamese dumplings

Empty cans in a rubbish bin, with one at the front named Che Guava radical lager

The virus has improved my sense of taste.

I don’t mean my pink pantaloons and platform boots, bleach blond beach bum hairstyle, or my engaging content on social.

I mean I can taste Govanhill everywhere I go.

Grandpa’s Vietnamese dumplings, Errol and his hot pizzas, Dracula’s favourite deli. Mushroom paratha, fish pakora, chicken on the bone from Yadgar, priceless, secret Yadgar, the lowest-profile legendary restaurant in Glasgow.

Essential taste from a takeaway joint with a table at the door, maybe a hatch and a plastic screen. Multi-coloured flavours on the roof of your mouth, the back of your tongue, the heat on your forehead from the chillies.

Eggless Turkish pastries, Indian sweets and chai.

The brown taste of coffee. Flat black long. Milk café too.

The city’s best fruit shops. Limes, dates, pomegranates, tangerines or aubergines. And graps, appels and plooms, as we say in Govanhill.

The shop with no signage and a queue of white people outside is a bakery.

The big shop with the Govanhill queue inside is Lidl, the busiest Lidl in Scotland.

And pubs. Closed pubs, dry pubs lying in wait, ready to swing open and spring back to life. A warm gust from an open door, laughter and music from inside. Memories of a past, a past we still hope for because all we have is the future.

Until then it’s the world cups of lockdown beer, some Polish, some Czech, Mexican or Japanese. Craft ale, real ale, pretend ale. Wild cards like Jamaican tonic wine, or the Buckfast your granny drinks to cure her brutal Baileys hangover.

But the greatest thing, the ultimate taste, in Govanhill or not, is hot buttered toast and a mug of tea.

Right there, wherever you are, any time of day. Of course it is.

White bread knocked stupid, ideally. Milky tea, crisp toast, melting butter, marmalade, lemon and lime from a barrel-shaped jar, a jar of memories, lifted down from the shelf at home.

Friday nights, family nights, uncles and aunts and parents and kids, singing and laughing and talking about football, politics, football again over cans of pale ale and bottles of whisky then a game of cards and some tea and toast.

Nights that make you feel you belong. The safety, strength and love you need to endure. Because it’s cold out there, even in the sunshine, and especially when you lose your sense of direction coming home to an empty flat.

Powerful thing, belonging.

I know, Govanhill.

Govanhill stories: Total football in Torrisdale Street

A football pitch at an angle on the side of a hill

Every kid dreams of playing for Celtic. I know you did.

That strip, that stadium, those floodlights.

We lived on football, you and I.

Chasing a ball around city open spaces, Pirrie Park, Dawsholm, Tollcross, Kelvingrove. School playgrounds, red ash, black ash, slide tackles, broken glass.

A corner of green fenced off, maybe a swing park, a grassy verge, a grassy knoll. Long kicks, heady kicks, three and in, seven-by. A five-elevener or a ten twenty-oner.

We used to hang around hoping to join in the older boys’ games and even at that age you were always the best player on the park. So relaxed it was like you had your hands in your pockets. It’s like you were born old.

The kids in my backcourt dream of playing for Celtic too, I can tell.

I look out at them from the kitchen window. Concrete grass and uneven slabs, washing line and rubbish bags, goal posts marked out on the fence.

These kids play the game the right way, the Celtic way, so the ball never goes above head height and there’s never a window broken. Total football next to the bin sheds. Every player comfortable in every position, from the boy wearing his maw’s shoes to the wee lassie pretending she’s a commentator.

You were some player, it’s true. A swivel of the hips, outside of the left foot, a forward pass into the penalty box. You made it look so easy.

Remember you were signed by the boys’ club after playing for the school team and hitting four goals in a semi-final, one direct from a corner? The ref made you retake it and you still scored.

After the age of 14 we never played with you again because the club didn’t want you to get injured. We couldn’t believe it when you got a passport at 15 and started going to cities all over Europe. Rotterdam, Dusseldorf, Valencia.

Man, these kids in the backcourt are loud. League winners, quadruple treblers, European champions of noise. Even two floors up and at the other end of the flat, with the creaking and the groaning and the coughing, it’s still all I can hear.

But you got injured, didn’t you, had to give up playing when you were 16. Broke your ankle during a game, no one even near you, just fell awkwardly running for the ball and that was it. From the only thing you knew, to nothing at all.

I didn’t see you for a while after the doctor said you’d never be able to run again. But I remember meeting you in the street one day and I knew something had changed. You had a black eye too and I asked what happened but you said you didn’t want to talk about it.

Wonder where you are now. Wonder if you’re in a flat just like mine, where things stay the same and what’s broken isn’t replaced.

Maybe the kids in your backcourt are just like mine too. A drag back here, a stepover there, nutmegs, lollipops, hand stands, head spins.

Maybe you’re watching telly, the same BBC4 documentary I’m watching right now, the one with the ponytailed asshole playing guitar in a recording studio. Maybe he has to turn it up to eleven because of the noise from the kids outside.

So cheers, backcourt kickabout weans.

Cheers you, for showing us how to play.

And cheers, total football in Torrisdale Street.

Always there or thereabouts

brightly lit windows on a tenement block at night

Here now at dusk in Govanhill and places just like it tenements are glowing through tea time windows with curtains open and sitting room lights on.

City winter early evening comfort chair. Pub, restaurant, nightclub, cinema, shopping mall, football stadium and holiday resort right there, at home, in your flat, on the couch, in your slippers.

Our past is written in those windows. You, me, we, all of us. We know these places, and places just like it. We were always there or thereabouts.

We sat in closes with brothers and sisters, friends and enemies, away from the house with the clutter and shouting and never enough space.

We kicked a ball, cracked a window, stained glass, broke a tile, wally dug, aw naw, ran away. We scratched our names into the walls, got caught winching or tasting cheap booze.

We were there when it was somewhere to hide for a desperate guy being chased by the polis or a mob from some other scheme. Or a nice spot out the rain to tan your wine. Might as well have a pish while you’re here, eh?

We were there or thereabouts.

In dark pubs with dim light and strong drink and bare walls and sawdust floor and wooden seats and flat cap, gap tooth men.

In corner shop and sweet shop, with multi-coloured chews and gums and balls and plooms and kubes.

In open space around high rise blocks, landscaped emptiness and public art, bookies, offies, jakeys.

We were there or thereabouts. Our parents and grandparents too. Folk fae roon the corner, families up top, people down by, everyone, all of us, we were there.

And then as now, years ago and at this moment, when the sky clears anything feels possible.

Breathe more deeply, see more clearly our brothers and sisters on the street beside us, all of us together, part of a whole, of something bigger, ourselves and each other, always together.

So cheers, Govanhill.

And places just like it.

Govanhill stories: What’s in your pocket today, Mags?

a tenement block in morning sun, with trees and a hedge to the left

Mags was a fierce wee wummin in a fur coat with a supermarket trolley that took no prisoners, a walking stick she brandished at litter on the pavement, and windows she banged when anyone came near her close.

But her legs are going, especially her knees, and now she hardly gets out at all, not even to the pensioners’ club at the community centre for a cheeky wee sherry with Betty, Jean and big Babs.

Now she pads around the kitchen in her chunky blue cardigan with pockets at the side, from armchair to TV and back again, trying not to think of what might have been.

What’s in your pocket today, Mags?

Condensed milk for my morning coffee, son.

Her daughter comes by once a week to help with shopping, driving in from Hamilton or Motherwell or Bellshill or somewhere.

Mags said she doesn’t even know where Lanarkshire is and I said I think it’s near Paisley.

What’s in your pocket today, Mags?

Biscuits I baked for the great grandweans, son.

Mags moved to Govanhill after her husband died and the house got repossessed and she lost her job when the department store she worked in closed down.

I didn’t think I’d end up here, son. I wanted to travel, go to university, maybe become a lawyer. I worked in a shop and had a family. I thought I’d have a different life.

What’s in your pocket today, Mags?

Two bottles of whisky, sixty Temazepam, and a bag of weed my grandson left.

We had a lot in common, me and Mags. Sometimes we swapped tips on catching mice.

I use a hammer, son.

What?

Only joking. Peanut butter, on a trap.

We both lived in the same kind of place, recognised our neighbours by their coughing, knew the guy upstairs’ favourite music, tried to ignore the bin bags on the landing.

What’s in your pocket today, Mags?

Govanhill, son. Your home is in your head, so why not your pocket too? Govanhill is my home, but it’s changed. The noise, the rubbish, people who look nothing like me. Maybe it used to be better, maybe it was always like this. People remember whatever they like. I remember wanting to travel. Now I just want to get out the house and see my pals.

What’s in your pocket today, Mags?

A set of golf clubs. In case you find yourself dressed like a twat and have nothing to do.

I might go to the shops. Want anything?

Get me some peanut butter, son. Cheers.

Always cheap and super hip

A tenement reflected in a puddle, with blue sky behind

We grew up in Govanhill, or places just like it.

We didn’t move here in our twenties because of cheap rents and cool places to hang out.

You and I were always cheap and super hip.

We went to school round here, played in these streets, got chased, kicked a ball, climbed trees, got chased again.

We grew up in confined spaces, living on top of one other, side by side, above and below in sandstone blocks on tenement streets. Eight flats in a close, two or three apartment, four bods in every bedroom.

Everyone annoyed the neighbours, everyone got fed up with the noise through the walls. The electrician from Poland, the teacher from the Western Isles, wee Mrs McGlumpher who always gave you money.

And who among us hasn’t found a drunk man mumbling in his sleep at the back door of the close at some point in their life?

We went to the chippy round here, the fruit shop, the paper shop, were sent to get our dads out of the pubs, even the bookies.

We played in the backcourts, jumped across dykes, fell over and cut our heads. Knew the places not to go, the bams to avoid too.

Wee Rab dropping one of his smelly turds on Torrisdale Street.

Wee Tracey playing with matches, setting fire to her dolly’s clothes.

Because we grew up in Govanhill, or places just like it, and our memory is longer.

You and me, us and them, families, strangers, children, grannies in crowded apartments with leaking pipes and creaking floorboards and permanent struggle like every person in every building everywhere.

We carry this city around with us, on our shoulders and inside. A city not built on coffee and bread, but broken teeth and ill behaviour.

Twenty-year-old students come and go, our long memory remains.

Govanhill or not Govanhill, Glasgow is the question.

Cheers?

Cheers.