Wet Christmas in Glasgow

Wet Christmas

I made a rare sortie into Glasgow for a Christmas lunch with old work colleagues. It was wet, wet, wet but the streets were buzzing in a way that I had not seen since the pre-Covid era. Tills were ringing, Apple Pay was buzzing and the pedestrianised areas were festooned with Deliveroo electric bikes creating more mayhem than Imelda May. The back streets were acting as emergency urinals. The meal in the Merchant City was surprisingly good and the patter even better as half a dozen retired denizens of past Glasgow glory days regaled each other with tales that had grown legs. 

We had finished by 4 p.m. so I took the opportunity to buy some presents and saunter around the streets that were alive with revellers on their way to after-work parties. Do they know it's Christmas? You bet. The streets were humming with Wham and Kirsty McColl. Climate Change means Bing Crosby is no longer crooning White Christmas as umbrellas have replaced gloves and hats. It was a feelgood couple of hours before I had to catch the electric bus home. The journey home allowed me to reflect on my time in Glasgow.

Christmas has changed over the years. At my first Christmas in Glasgow in 1973, we were allowed to leave work at 2:30 p.m. after a Christmas lunch in a local pub. After spending a couple of hours doing all my Christmas shopping in Sauchiehall Street, I drove down the old A74 to Lancashire in my ageing Morris Minor for Christmas Day at my parent's house. I drove back to Glasgow late on Christmas Day. Boxing Day was not a public holiday in those days. Christmas was not so much a festive season, more a day trip back then. 

Glasgow was my home and place of work for 18 years, during which time I witnessed its dramatic decline and depopulation in the early 1970s and was involved in the regeneration from the mid-1970s through the 1980s. A revival had occurred as Housing Associations refurbished the tenements, investment in transport and public services flourished and the city centre was revitalised with commercial, cultural and event venues together with housing investment. It attracted the Garden Festival and became the Europen City of Culture in 1990. Education facilities improved from schools to Colleges and Universities and new businesses and community involvement gathered pace. Since the emergence of the Scottish Parliament, it has become a poor relation to Edinburgh, which has soaked up an ever-increasing share of Scotland's public and private investment. Glasgow's renaissance appears to have lost its momentum, it's maybe why the regeneration of Dr Who from the Tardis in Buchanan Street emerged as a Bear, not a Bull.

It has hosted events like the Commonwealth Games in 2014, the European Cycling Championships in 2018, COP 26 in 2021 and most recently the World Cycling Championships. They have largely succeeded because the people of Glasgow love a party and always provide a warm welcome to competitors and fans. On the other hand, the city has suffered from a decade or more of collapsing public services as government grants have been reduced, council tax frozen and its major new hospital, the Queen Elizabeth has staggered from crisis to crisis, a hospital too big to succeed despite its enormous cost. The city centre has lost many of its retail outlets as the car-based shopping centres at Braehead, Silverburn, Clyde, The Forge and Fort do not have the extortionate parking charges of the city centre and are blessed with public toilets and pedestrianised malls. 

Glasgow has allowed its public domain to deteriorate as roads and pavements become dangerous and many of its buildings fall into disrepair. Recycling and cleansing have never been a strong suit and the streets are littered with overflowing wheelie bins. The city is held together by the vitality and humour of its people as its fabric rots. In the past year, even public transport has become more of a lottery offering. 

It irks me that the liveliest of cities has suffered in this way. The brief encounter on a wet Christmas evening gave me some confidence that the underlying spirit of Glaswegians will prevail. The Scottish Government and the City Fathers must grapple with the fundamental problem and give wings to municipal enterprise and innovation that is essential to provide succour for its people and businesses to restore justice and pride to the dear green place.

Glasgow's version of a regenerated Dr Who 

Going Home for Christmas