GLASGOW INTERVIEW BLUES

“I’m not sure we ought to be sitting in here,” said the lady with the bicycle.  “All these people are going past us and getting on at the front.” 

Something clicked in my memory.  I checked my watch.  It was nine ‘o’ clock in the morning. 

“They split the carriages,” I yelled. “Once the rush hour is finished, they split the carriages.  We’re in the back half of the pantomime horse.  We’re going nowhere.” 

Frantically, I grabbed up my papers, my overcoat, my scarf, gloves and cap, and made a lunge for the door.  It wouldn’t open – the driver hadn’t released it. 

“What do we do now?” the bicycle lady said. “I’ve an appointment in West Regent Street at 10 and I can’t be late.”

“We shout for help,” I replied, without a hint of irony. 

Fortunately, almost immediately, a member of staff came down the carriage to see if anyone was locked in the toilet and we made it out in time.  I settled down in my seat in the front carriage (I was taking no chances) and read some of the competency questions I was likely to be asked at the interview.  They seemed very difficult to me.  Some contained four questions in one.  By the time I would be asked the fourth, I would have forgotten the first three, so I would have to fall back on my tried and tested method – long drawn out euphonious waffle.  With any luck, the interviewers would forget what they had asked in the first place when I submerged them in vital but totally irrelevant detail. 

The skies had cleared completely as I stepped down onto the platform at Glasgow Queen Street, but the morning was still witheringly cold.  I had time enough to walk to the quixotically named Hydepark Street, which, on the Google map I had downloaded and printed off in colour, looked about ten minutes’ walk away.  Unfortunately, these Google maps miss out most of the minor street names, so one has few markers en route to help one find the right address. 

I was soon hopelessly lost.  Glasgow City Council has mischievously avoided putting street names on the ends of many out-of-the-way streets so as to make them even more devilish to find.  In addition, the M8 cuts right through the city, and that disorients the casual visitor even more.  One suddenly finds oneself in a concrete wasteland of pillars, underpasses, flyovers, footpaths leading to nowhere, dark subways and bridges, all to be navigated with the aid of a single scrap of paper containing a map which might just as well be of the city centre of Accra, if such a thing exists.

The minutes ticked by and I started to perspire, despite the cold.  Eventually, I found myself on Finnieston Road.  I asked a man with a walking-stick at a bus stop near the junction with Argyle Street. 

“Can you please tell me where Hydepark Street is?”

“Sorry mate, ah’m fae Paisley,” he replied.  

Altogether, I asked eight people, none of whom had a clue where Hydepark Street was.  This octet included a startled young woman with a tangerine face who was striding along listening to an i-pod, if not an i-pad, and a van driver who told me: “Ah doan’t knaw whaur Hydepark Street is but I can tell ye ye’re in Minerva Street the noo.”  It wasn’t on my map either. 

In desperation, having walked back and forward past the same Citroen dealer’s at a place they called ‘Skypark’ at least four times, I collared a smart mature lady with a stud in her nose, walking timidly past some dismal factory units.

“Ah’ve heard the name,” she said, ‘An’ it’s aroond here, but Ah couldn’t quite put ma finger on whaur it is.  Ah can tell ye, though, that this is Elliot Street.” 

Eureka!  I had struck pay dirt.  Elliot Street was on my Google map.  The mature lady and I studied the map for a few seconds.

“Hydepark Street’s only twa streets awa’ – east, towards the Broomielaw!” she said triumphantly.  “Ah thocht Ah knew whaur it was.”

I almost genuflected to her in offering her my thanks, and shot off to my destination.  I made the building with seven minutes to spare.  Two nice women interviewed me, and treated me quite gently, asking only three four-part questions, which I successfully straight-batted in a welter of words.  The seven additional single-part questions were urbane enough and I found I could answer those in a reasonably perky and amiable fashion. 

On the stroke of midday, we all shook hands and I left the building.  They said I might have to come back for a second interview within the week.  I will have to make sure that the mature lady isn’t away, for I’ll need her to be on hand to direct me when and if I come back again.