Walking in a Weegie wonderland

Up to Glasgow for a long weekend of visiting friends, heroic drinking and consuming a vast amount of deep fried food. I love the city and it compares favourably to other places I have lived recently. It is Edinburgh without the pretty buildings yet more smiles. A drunker yet more inhibited Hamburg. London's slightly cynical, less successful younger brother who is much better to hang out with.

It has a fearsome reputation as a haven for shell-suited criminal hardmen and sectarian football violence. There continues to be some truth in it - a headbutt isn't called a Glasgow kiss for nothing. There was a Celtic-Rangers cup final on Sunday and there was a bit of frisson in the air as I walked by groups of green and white hoops and blue tops, taking care not to make eye contact. And downtown you do see low-level dodgy crims, the junkies, the winos, neds looking for a score.

Yet Glasgow also crackles with creativity, punching above its weight with its artists, architects, writers and indie rockers. Walk around the West End and it is all arty and boho, chock-a-block with vintage clothes shops, funky little galleries, second hand bookstores.


One of my favourite places is Voltaire & Rousseau, a book shop on the banks of the Kelvin. To say it is a shop is a bit of a misnomer because you are not exactly encouraged to shop, but dig, rummage, excavate. The books are in no discernible order, piles about waist high obscure half the shelves, as you can see in the pic (which is also a rare snapshot of the University of Manooth's famed Irish Romanticism scholar and Charles Maturin expert Dr Jim Kelly). Cats scamper about, when you go to pay for books you feel guilty for interrupting the owner's reading time. But it is great, there are treasures if you look hard enough and is somewhere I can pleasantly while away hours, at least until the dust allergy kicks in.