Early morning. Spring. Except for the weather. A good old Scottish haar. Grey, cold and rather depressing. On a train to Glasgow Queen Street. Queen Street tunnel closed so circumventing
the city prior to arriving at the Queen Street Low Level Station. A meeting at 11. A smart, sassy woman named Jenny Kilcline and
a solid brainy chap called Steven something – can’t remember his surname. That
will be almost the end of the road for my journeys across the length and
breadth of Scotland. I’ll miss them,
especially as I’ll be desk-bound in an open-plan office, where the distractions
are many and the rewards are few. I’ve got this job on my mind. It won’t let go. It irks me.
It shakes me. It bothers me. I’ve only three months left of my contract,
and there’s a wheen of work I’ve left to do that remains undone. I hate loose ends.
Here’s a shaft of sunlight! The morning is clearing! We’re past Falkirk High and the sheep look up dully at me, as if to say: ‘You think you’ve got it bad – what about us? Only grass to eat and all we have to look forward to is the butcher’s knife.’
We pass a yard full of yellow earthmovers, idle beasts waiting for a factory to demolish. I’ve finished my Scotrail coffee. It tastes mainly of mud, but in fact it’s quite refreshing. The clouds continue to dissipate as we roll along and cheerful sunlight shines in the window over my left shoulder and rests on the page upon which I write. Here’s Croy, the last stop before the long, slow crawl into Queen Street Low Level. “Crothaidh” says the station name board. All the station names in Scotland are written in both English and Gaelic, a language very few people speak, Gaelic that is, though some people's attempts at English seem equally lamentable.
We speed through Lenzie at fifty miles per hour. The carriage pitches and rolls like a yawl in a force eight gale. The diesel engines throb and hum busily. We fly past rows of stationary white highway maintenance vans in a pound with nothing to do except ignore all the potholes in the roads.
The scene is one of grey harled houses as we slow down through Bishopbriggs. How drab they look! Now starts the slow diversion around Glasgow. A plethora of high-rise tenement buildings fleck the landscape as we pass Eastfield motive power depot. Many of the trees along this section of the line have been brutally chopped down. I regret that, for don’t the Greens say that trees are our lifeblood?
Through tiny and strangely-named suburban halts now – Ashfield, Possilpark, Summerston. The litter by the line is as plentiful as confetti at a society wedding. Maryhill Station comes and goes, with a grand view across a valley crammed with modern houses and huge twenty-storey flats high on a hill on the other side, guardians of the lesser dwellings down below. Here’s Kelvindale, with its two glorious Victorian gasholders, both redundant now and in sore need of a fresh coat of battleship grey.
On this section of the line, new concrete sleepers are held in place by inverted yellow ‘u’ clamps that look like animal traps waiting to be sprung. Silver birch trees sway in the breeze. We roll tardily past Anniesland, a much larger station. We pass Gartnavel hospital, where I journeyed the other day – a behemoth of a hospital the size of a small town with buildings of various ages, designs and in various states of repair.
Some workmen are painting an electricity supply box beside the line – grey on grey. They should have a go at the gasholders. We pass through Partick station and we’re almost home and dry, whereas, at the start of the journey, I thought we’d be home and wet. A huge crane towers over a half-built office block. The River Clyde is on my right and I can see the giant silver carapace of the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre. I’m in familiar territory. I worked in these environs for a year, back in 2012.
I reach for my outer garments. I recall that I am unsuitably dressed if the sun remains out. I have my long black trench-coat with me and my homburg hat, which makes me look like Tony Hancock patrolling the streets in his new guise as a special constable.
Here’s a shaft of sunlight! The morning is clearing! We’re past Falkirk High and the sheep look up dully at me, as if to say: ‘You think you’ve got it bad – what about us? Only grass to eat and all we have to look forward to is the butcher’s knife.’
We pass a yard full of yellow earthmovers, idle beasts waiting for a factory to demolish. I’ve finished my Scotrail coffee. It tastes mainly of mud, but in fact it’s quite refreshing. The clouds continue to dissipate as we roll along and cheerful sunlight shines in the window over my left shoulder and rests on the page upon which I write. Here’s Croy, the last stop before the long, slow crawl into Queen Street Low Level. “Crothaidh” says the station name board. All the station names in Scotland are written in both English and Gaelic, a language very few people speak, Gaelic that is, though some people's attempts at English seem equally lamentable.
We speed through Lenzie at fifty miles per hour. The carriage pitches and rolls like a yawl in a force eight gale. The diesel engines throb and hum busily. We fly past rows of stationary white highway maintenance vans in a pound with nothing to do except ignore all the potholes in the roads.
The scene is one of grey harled houses as we slow down through Bishopbriggs. How drab they look! Now starts the slow diversion around Glasgow. A plethora of high-rise tenement buildings fleck the landscape as we pass Eastfield motive power depot. Many of the trees along this section of the line have been brutally chopped down. I regret that, for don’t the Greens say that trees are our lifeblood?
Through tiny and strangely-named suburban halts now – Ashfield, Possilpark, Summerston. The litter by the line is as plentiful as confetti at a society wedding. Maryhill Station comes and goes, with a grand view across a valley crammed with modern houses and huge twenty-storey flats high on a hill on the other side, guardians of the lesser dwellings down below. Here’s Kelvindale, with its two glorious Victorian gasholders, both redundant now and in sore need of a fresh coat of battleship grey.
On this section of the line, new concrete sleepers are held in place by inverted yellow ‘u’ clamps that look like animal traps waiting to be sprung. Silver birch trees sway in the breeze. We roll tardily past Anniesland, a much larger station. We pass Gartnavel hospital, where I journeyed the other day – a behemoth of a hospital the size of a small town with buildings of various ages, designs and in various states of repair.
Some workmen are painting an electricity supply box beside the line – grey on grey. They should have a go at the gasholders. We pass through Partick station and we’re almost home and dry, whereas, at the start of the journey, I thought we’d be home and wet. A huge crane towers over a half-built office block. The River Clyde is on my right and I can see the giant silver carapace of the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre. I’m in familiar territory. I worked in these environs for a year, back in 2012.
I reach for my outer garments. I recall that I am unsuitably dressed if the sun remains out. I have my long black trench-coat with me and my homburg hat, which makes me look like Tony Hancock patrolling the streets in his new guise as a special constable.
