The blissful energy of a second hand sandwich

Photo of a shop in Govanhill called Cheap Shop

I try to be awesome, I really do. Smiley face, flowery writing, milky feelgood pom poms.

But I’m not sure it’s working, especially when I read this kind of thing.

“Food functions as a medium through which to engage in the significance of both social ritual and of the everyday, in the value of community, tradition and home.”

Sorry, but it’s screaming out at me here. How this needs a dose of gritty realism from G’hill’s mean streets. Cops, robbers, hookers, hustlers, pushers, punks, pimps, mods, rockers.

But I won’t. It’s too obvious, too Govanhill.

Aw jeez, they’re at it again.

“Fellow creators and brave doers, magical safe spaces where people gather, share tables, break bread. Joyful eating, a vibrant community where generosity will thrive.”

I mean, there’s big red lights flashing all over the shoap here. Barefoot kids begging on the pavement, maybe a burned-out sofa in the backcourt.

It’s an open goal, isn’t it? Pretentious youth, high on their own importance, bringing it to our streets.

Maybe I’ll finish with a crack about street food being a half-eaten sandwich on the ground. Not to be confused with street art, which is a pool of vomit on the pavement.

Enough clichés for us all there? Happy now?

Cheers, Govanhill bingo.

Otis, Jimi, Beach Boys, Doors

A collage of eyes, with different coloured lenses

Memory’s great, isn’t it? I remember this, I’ve forgotten that, this used to be here, that was over there.

Memories, remembrances, come from the past, mainly. But whose past and whose memories? God, I don’t know. Wish I’d stop asking stupid questions.

Mooching around the flat the other day listening to the radio. Hit songs from yesteryear, back in the day, the days of yore.

Otis, Jimi, Beach Boys, Doors, Beatle bones n smokin stones. Great songs, memorable ones, classic tunes, legendary music, all from the past, those formative years, sixty six, sixty seven, sixty eight.

Them must have been the days. Post-war economic settlement in its prime. Welfare state, full employment, national health, council housing, public services, nationalised industries, trade unions, counter culture, civil rights, anti-war, black power, better music, better drugs, more sex.

And what a football team we had back then too, the most charismatic side in Europe, revered across the continent for their genius manager and the verve and skill of the players.

At last, a past you can believe in.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember it.

But where are the pigeon binoculars?

some shopping trolleys lined up outside a supermarket

Weekends are when I really let loose. I might read a newspaper, wash the dishes, bite my toenails.

Sometimes I visit the supermarket to look at the totalitarian blur of colours and shapes and numbers and dreams.

I can’t really shop anywhere else because I only get jealous. A quid for satsumas, one brand of shampoo, the thrill of the unexpected.

Oh no, what’s this, I don’t understand. They’ve gone and changed the layout.

I can’t find the owl wings. Why is the glass soup where the camel baps should be?

This is madness.

Passed an elderly couple on the way out. He had an inflatable cactus under his arm and she was carrying a diving suit.

The woman was giggling like a teenager at some private joke between them, the old boy with a satisfied look on his face. She was always his best audience, and he was always the funniest person she knew.

Wish someone would laugh at my jokes.

Anyway. That’s now a couple of stories about the best supermarket in Govanhill.

Any chance of some sponsorship here? Maybe a lifetime supply of bison dungarees?

How about it, Lidl?

Didnae think so.

Hello, is that Aldi….?

People make better smiles, Glasgow

mural showing some glasgow people and some street scenes

Look, hipsters. I know you’re probably from Canada or Edinburgh or Strathbungo or somewhere, but this is Glasgow, working-class Glasgow.

Cheeky chappies, rough and ready, in your face. Aggressive friendliness is our speciality.

We start talking to you in a shop or a café, on the bus or down the pub, and we know what you’re thinking.

Who is this guy with the bad skin and the red nose and why hasn’t he told me I’m awesome yet?

Our bony, nicotine-stained fingers. Virtually no teeth. Face covered in chib marks.

Too many post-industrialists in love with the knife of Stanley.

But just wait. Any minute we’ll start with tenement tales of mean streets and hard men and razor gangs, outside toilets and our ma throwing jeely pieces to us in the back court.

People talk about cosmopolitan Glasgow. Finnieston, west end, Merchant City.

But I tell thee, go into a pub in the Glasgow of Govanhill and the Gorbals and the Gallowgate and the Garngad, especially on a Saturday, especially after a game, and it’s Spanish and German and French and Scandinavian, all taken with the easy interaction, the clatter and the noise, the singing and the laughter and the rumbling.

People better make smiles, Glasgow.

Why shoulda, Buddha?

abstract shapes, squares, in a red and green and blue grid

It’s a crowded place, the moment. Everyone’s trying to live in it.

Me, I get distracted too easily. The shouting from the flat across the landing, the burst pipe from the guy upstairs.

I’d love to improve my relationship with the universe. Happier, more creative, less anxious.

But how coulda, Buddha?

Can’t really see me floating up out of my body and looking down on myself from above. Or ever understanding that suffering is caused by ignorance and desire and every living thing possesses the same eternal soul.

Why woulda, Buddha?

I should try to reach enlightenment, nirvana, or the Champions League group stage at least, because that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it, where everyone wants to be, among the best in the world, playing the biggest games. Glory, victory, an end to this gnawing sensation that you’re just a burst bag of meat and gas and bones floating in this deathless, colourless universe.

So that’ll be three lager, a vodka and coke and one for yourself yes please thanks mate cheers.

This bus stop kills fascists

a poster on a bus stop with 'Brits First' graffiti

Graffiti at a bus stop on Victoria Road recently.

Is this the new-look, post-Brexit, rebranded First Bus?

Maybe Brits are first in the queue because they have the correct change.

Or is it Britt Ekland? She starred in the Wicker Man, a film about closed minds in an obscure death cult on a small island.

So aye. Could be.

Or is it Brit pop? A Jeremy Clarkson-inspired rock ballad, Boris Johnson on vocals, Jacob Rees-Mogg on maracas, with an oiled-up Tommy Robinson – real name Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon – dancing in a cage?

Is that what you want, Brits First?

Cheers anyway, Brits. Cheers for the racism, stupidity, ugliness and dishonesty.

Cheers for the German-Greek head of state, and the divine right of kings and lords and ladies and earls and dukes and princesses and barons and viscounts.

Cheers for Ann Widdecombe, too.

Cheers for the football team you support, the websites you visit and the newspapers you read. Cheers for knowing nothing about yourself, like all empires.

Because we’re all immigrants here, especially mongrel Brits.

Wasn’t even me who ripped it off the poster. So cheers, Govanhill.

And get it up ye, Brits First.

Red wine, tonic wine, or a classy drink like sherry

Close up photo of a bottle of Buckfast tonic wine, on a window ledge with tenements in the background

Govanhill wants me be a better person. Jesus does too, probably.

Make the change, be the change, spare some change.

Be less like myself, that’s what to do.

I could cut back on things, that’s always a good start.

Drinking? Grow up. Smoking? Aye, right. Internet? No way. Swearing? Push off. Blogging? You wish. Women? I wish.

Doesn’t leave much, does it. That’s all my bad habits right there.

Need to start somewhere, I suppose. I could promise not to hang wet clothes on traffic lights. Try not to wear slippers made out of pet hamsters. Stop injecting crystal meth into my eyeballs.

But I’ve never done any of those things so it would be too easy, like shooting fish in a barrel. I could stop shooting fish in a barrel.

I should take up new hobbies, that’s it. Drink more wine perhaps, red wine, tonic wine, or a classy drink, like sherry.

Discover the new me, a fresh I, a rip-roaring, revved-up re-imagined me on an ever-improving quest for non-stop perfection, a glittering, hollow-eyed example to the rest of the universe, yeah?

Aye. Let you know, Govanhill.

Years later, here we are

Photo of the city centre in the evening, with people going home from work

I have a job, a steady job, as a slave, a wage slave.

Before that I had other jobs, sometimes none at all.

Every day we clock in, walk through, open plan, nowhere to hide. In the mirrored lift we’re left staring at ourselves stretching into infinity.

I complete tasks in a certain order and in a certain length of time. When I finish with this here I fill in doing that there.

Sandwich gridlocked at your desk, cigarette break next to the weeds outside.

Here we are, years later, still there, every day, what a place, oh no, same seat, same hair, same coffee, first thing, every morning.

Nothing ever changes, ever. Nothing.

Every morning, first thing, same coffee, same hair, same seat, oh no, what a place, every day, still there, years later, here we are.

The specific form of labour characteristic of bourgeois society, wage labour, corresponds to the most profound form of alienation.

But at least we get to wear jeans on a Friday.

Cheers, historical materialism.

Paris, Berlin, Auchenshuggle, Carntyne

Photo of an abandoned, rusting ship

Sometimes I wish I had enough money to afford a better flat, in a nicer part of town. Milton, Possil, Wine Alley.

Maybe buy a car, or a bike, some electronic devices or nice clothes.

I could do with a holiday too, a few days away, long weekend, city break. Paris, Berlin, Coatbridge, Merrylee.

Do me good, give me time off from sitting in a room with nothing to think but my thoughts.

Maybe book a wee cruise round the pond in Queen’s Park.

Get my inoculations beforehand, obviously. Anti-melancholia pills, anti-sleeping tablets for when it gets too rowdy.

Buy my holiday gear too. Flip flops, shades, fur coat and nae knickers.

Learn a few stock phrases to get by. Do you sell super lager? Why is it all so quiet? When’s the next bus home?

Watch out though, north Atlantic, icy depths, ducks or not.

Mainly fair, more or less. Occasional rising, miles ahead. Decreasing slowly, slight rain. Showers later, except good. Body variable. Becoming cyclonic.

Cheers, recent reports from weather stations.

That water reaches almost to my knees.

Refugees welcome here

Photo of two guys with their trousers well above the ankles

They come here for a better life, with their exotic languages and distinctive customs.

The noise is unbearable. Quiet discussions about vegan sausage rolls, knitting all through the night, putting the kettle on.

And their dogs, Jeez, tiny things with their invisible shits and silent barking and nosing around clean carpets all day.

They look different too. Ironic moustaches, beards they’re too young for, hanging around street corners in big shapeless coats and pointy woolly hats waiting to nick slates off the roof for dinner plates.

Or foraging for food in the back courts, tearing open bin bags. Please, leave our truffles alone.

Crowds of them picked up near the supermarket every morning and driven to work in fruit farms, meat processing factories and distribution warehouses in Midlothian, Inverclyde and North Lanarkshire.

I try to curate my life too. The right, sustainably sourced brand of cockroach (German), the proper levels of dust in the flat, and if the music upstairs doesn’t kick off at midnight and last until 4am then I will not be happy.

I guess I just like nice things.