Window Shopping
Tonight, in a quiet bar in the centre of Glasgow, I had arranged to have drinks with an attractive - and quite famous - young woman. This woman, it has to be said, works for another radio station and I had suggested we meet well away from any ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ premises for fear that people would get the wrong idea or that her current employers would take the huff. In professional football they call this process "tapping up" and it's against the rules. In radio we call it "gossiping" and it's an industry requirement.
So, in order to get to this bar, I had to get the tube from Kinning Park to Buchanan Street and then walk through George Square. The square has been decorated for the festive season with the kind of carefree style and flair you associate with a drunken binman. Honestly, it's a shambles. A helter-skelter cone sits cheek by jowl with a stinky hamburger hut. Sir Walter Scott's column has been festooned in tubes of red neon and a curtain of fairy lights. In the distance there is a bulky mis-shapen Christmas tree, but you have to negotiate a maze of funfair rides, railings and plywood hoardings to get a glimpse of it. Comparing it to my trip to Belfast the other night I felt a cringe of embarrassment for my native city. It was horrible.
At the bar, I was describing all this to my mystery companion but it was obvious she didn't share my opinion. There was something about that glazed look in her eyes and the anxious way she glanced at her watch that told me this was so. I'm guessing she was saying a silent prayer of thanks because she worked in a place where the boss didn't hi-jack you with his bitter ramblings. Nevertheless, I pressed on.
"You see, when I was a wee boy, " I told her, "My Dad would take me and my sister on late night car journeys into the middle of Glasgow. We'd look at the lights and then go window shopping."
"Window shopping? Are you sure this was Glasgow and not Amsterdam?"
I ignored this and told her how my sister would chase me around the statues in George Square until we were both out of breath. Then we'd admire the nativity scene and the big Christmas tree. After that we'd stroll down to Argyll Street and stare open-mouthed at the glittering displays in Lewis's windows. Simple pleasures.
Funnily enough, it was not long after saying all this that I found myself on those very streets and once again I was staring into shop windows.
On my own, of course.
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