Category: Pollokshields

Cheers, Govanhill

Welcome to Govanhill, Glasgow’s weirdest neighbourhood, home to assorted brammers and bodyswervers including Rab fae Torrisdale Street and mad Tracy who torched her flat that time.

A place that’s always changing, from ‘the worst streets in Scotland’ to the hipster apocalypse of coffee and artisan bakeries, as well as muppets, rockets and midge rakers keeping it real.

Marvel at the flapping tongues and slanging rhyme. Find out where to buy brontosaurus cutlets. Learn why New York stole all its ideas from around here. You’ll be reeling at the sheer up-and-comingness of it all.

Cheers Govanhill is a humorous, semi-fictional, lyrical love letter to an endlessly fascinating place and is well worth a wee swatch.

Author Peter Mohan was born and brought up in Glasgow. He lives and works in Govanhill and has never knowingly been to Strathbungo.

Cheers, Govanhill, which includes a foreword by acclaimed photographer Simon Murphy, costs ten Scotch pounds plus a few quid postage. It’s available here:

Cheers, Govanhill

Attack of the 50 Foot Mango

close up of a cardboard sign with mangoes on it in the street outside a shop

Govanhill is the fruit capital of Scotland.

Vineyards, plantations, vast orchards of pistachio, chocolate chip, vanilla.

We like chips and pies but we also love our greens.

Grass, absinthe, limeade, remember?

What I mean is, Govanhill has the best fruit shops in Glasgow.

Kumquats and blood oranges are as much part of our brand as crumbling tenements and stupid trousers.

I agree with fruit, I support it, plums are my friend. Back in the day when I worked in an office I had a fruit bowl on my desk, next to the ashtray, the spittoon and the ejector seat.

These days I wear a big Velcro hat, Carmen Miranda-stylee, with watermelon, kiwi, pomegranate, maybe six cans, in case I fancy a mid-morning snack or some afternoon delight.

You’ll also catch me strolling down Westmoreland Street in my big banana boots, cherry on the end of my nose, belly button pierced with pineapple ring, impromptu coconut shell earphones.

Community acupuncture with ambient beats here I come.

Heavy is the heid that wears the crown but so make sure that Carmen Miranda fruit stack disnae topple over.

Blue velvet, green tambourine, red lorry yellow lorry.

Anyway. What I really mean is, Govanhill is the mango metropolis of north Britain.

June till August every year is Feast of the Immaculate Mango, Our Lady of the Blessed Mango, all over Govanhill and Pollokshields, with boxes of sweet honey mangos imported from Pakistan piled up outside every fruit shop in the area. Night of the Living Mango, Attack of the 50 foot Mango, Last Mango in Paris.

Forget the terrible puns kids, put down those swedgers and try this sweet yellow flesh instead.

Juice on your eyebrows guaranteed.

Cheers.

Go on up the road

photo of a nice row of homes designed by famous architect Alexander Greek Thomson

So I left Govanhill for the first time in years to stroll along the boulevards of old Pollokshields, tree-lined early morning with sunshine and bird song.

I’d been out for a walk, one piece of walk in my exercise yard, these hometown streets I know far too well.  

Tenements and building sites and half-finished bike lanes, road works barriers strewn all over the pavement.

I wanted Govanhill to show me something else.

So I walked to Pollokshields.

I’d been there once before, ages ago, years ago, when I landed in some pub which was closed for the winter.

I say winter, it was September. I say pub, I mean village hall with plastic chairs and cans of beer from the shop next door.

Asked the woman if the pub was going to open.

Aye, she said. In April.

But you know how things look from here in Govanhill, our city on a hill at the heart of the metropolis.

We see the Shields, the Shaws, the Gorbals and Cathcart as the rural idyll, all mountains and meadows and midgies all over your face.

But it’s not, I’m telling you.

I know, I’ve been there.

Detached villas and grand tenements, spacious homes on wide avenues with hedges and trees and a Mediterranean blue sky.

Early morning, no one around, always helps, looking fine.

And then, Pollokhill, after we’ve had our walk, Govanshields, we go home to stay in, lie low, steer clear.  

Do you really need that piss poor overpriced takeaway coffee or to stand at that street corner with four other people?

Go on up the road, eat chocolate, drink wine, masturbate, watch telly, remember a virus and stay in the hoose.

Cheers, or not.