Thursday Looking Up Again
Translator’s note: in due deference to the Committee for Public Morals, this column will now be sanitised by government-approved Decency Operatives; henceforth a list of words including but not confined to “f--k”, “s--t”, “c--t”, “p---k”, “a-----e”, “b------ks”, “sn----------es” and “z------p” will not be permitted to appear in their full forms. We will also be removing the word “but” wherever possible – it is short and ugly and with so many alternatives available continuing to sprinkle the text with it would surely demonstrate a limited vocabulary. Please note this is a temporary state of affairs necessitated by the War on Expletives (currently at puce alert) and will not affect other writings by this author - your co-operation is appreciated.
Yeah, about that ship.
Completely slipped my slightly hazed mind yesterday. So, backtracking now….
Looking up round town is a curiously rewarding pastime in Glasgow (always assuming you time it carefully in relation to things like traffic and crossing the street). So much of the city’s history is above habitual eye level. So tip a glance upward, beyond the internationally homogenous ground level frontages of this high street brand and that, this coffee franchise or the other, this or that link in yet another ubiquitous restaurant or retail chain. Rising over all this, like drowned mountain ranges rearing out of some recently globally warmed ocean of consumer frenzy, you can see the dressed-stone splendour of the city Glasgow once was.
You can see, for example, if you look up on the corner of George Square opposite Queen’s Street Station, a gilded globe set on a spire, itself topped with a fully-rigged merchantman running before the wind. Turns out that building used to belong to an association of marine insurers, and their enduring legacy is still up there for all to see. Nor is this an isolated example – all over town, you can tip your head back and see statues, bas relief figures, exquisitely sculpted ornament and of course the elegantly worked red or blond sandstone Victorian architecture of the buildings themselves. Central Station towers and crenellates (no, that’s not an obscene word, Linda C – you’re thinking of m--------es) between Hope and Union Street like some pale outcrop of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. The Mitchell Library looms in domed and regal splendour like some Austro-Hungarian imperial palace set atop the dark, corrugated concrete wall of the M8 motorway underpass where it gouges through the heart of the city to the river. And everywhere, above the broad, glass-windowed bars, restaurants and retail outlets that were once banks, Glasgow’s Victorian facades rise with assured imperial elegance, testament to a time when this was Britain’s Second City of Empire, the gathering point of unparalleled wealth traded (and, ahem, looted) from all over the world.
If, as Anne Michaels says in Skin Divers, There is No City that Does not Dream, then Glasgow has plenty to occupy its fitful hours of REMsleep. But those dreams must be a curious mix. Because this is still the murder capital of western Europe, and still home to some of the most appalling social deprivation stats in the developed world. There are as many gangs here as there are in London, a city with nearly six times Glasgow’s population. Knife crime is rife, junkies and stumbling alcoholics are on the streets in force. And somewhere out there in this city’s dark dream of Friday night, an ornate blond sandstone portico built by once-upon-a-time Tobacco Lords is giving shelter from the driving rain to a small group of bone-thin, pasty-skinned fifteen year old boys as they wait for the opportunity to stab, slash or otherwise f--k up some completely innocent passer-by. They will have no reason for this random act of violence, not even robbery – the forces driving them are as remote from their understanding or grasp as the history of the city which gave birth to them and whose rain-drenched streets they haunt. They are lost in the labyrinth, and it’s doubtful if they have ever looked up in their lives.
Now, I ask you – who could give all that up, just for unlimited Spanish sun and one of the finest and most varied culinary cultures on the planet?
Not, it appears, a foul-mouthed, noir-addicted author. Not yet at least. --Richard Morgan
Linda P on July 10, 2008 at 01:54 PM
The problem with your musings, Mr. Morgan, is that one sometimes has the need to dig out the dust-covered dictionary.
And the f--k did not work: I managed to say the word in my mind, which completely ruined the whole idea of using "--". However, I don't know what m-------es is, nor can I figure out what "sn--es" or "z--p" is. This isn't fair--I want to know.
Juha T on July 11, 2008 at 06:18 AM
Brilliant preamble! Gave me a good chuckle. Thanks Richard.
Linda P: I'm assuming m-------es rhymes with crenellates and involves superstitions such as going blind. As for sn----------es and z------p, it looks like I'll have to expand my vocabulary. One can never have too wide an arsenal of swear words, I've always thought. I wonder if Linda C will continue reading to further fuel her offence.
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