Up in Glasgow this weekend (no, I promise you,
it's not for that reason, though I have been spending a bit of time in sunny NE Glasgow entirely coincidentally).
Actually I am up here for a gig. Well, if you count playing at the European Fellowship of Girls' Brigade Annual Conference a gig...which, I rather sheepishly admit, that I do.
It's the first time I've played publicly since
shattering my finger over a year ago, so it's been quite enjoyable as well as something of a small achievement.
God knows what it sounds like, mind you, but I am banking on the fact that a roomful of what seems like teenage girls and middle aged Girls' Brigade leaders is not going to be the toughest and most critical of audiences to play to. If it is what may be best described as
"a pile of old pants", it's unlikely that someone is going to tell me outright.
Anyway so in between leading the worship (and rehearsing), I've had a bit of time to kill. We are staying in a rather nice hotel in the city centre where the conference is taking place, and rather than sit in the conference sessions learning how I can be a great young (female) leader I thought I'd go and waste a few hours in and around the shops in town.
As previous visits to Glasgow have proved, a trip around the shops can be almost enjoyable (well, as enjoyable as
any sort of shopping ever can be for someone like me), so long as you avoid
your partner taking you shopping for kilts. I make the mistake of stepping outside of the hotel and immediately browsing in the neighbouring shops. Nothing wrong in that, but it seems that the two neighbouring shops are fancy lingerie boutiques where the young ladies of Glasgow can come and purchase all many of frillies, seemingly the skimpier the better.
As most males will tell you, it may sound like a rather happy diversion to stand out the front of a knicker shop, but in reality, in the cold light of Glaswegian day, it's actually deeply embarrassing and uncomfortable for most of us. I am suddenly overcome by that awkward feeling that I always seem to get in Boots that no matter which way I turn my face will always end up being about 6 inches from either a display of tights and other hosiery or a selection of sanitary towels. For those who were
"brung up proper, like what I was" it's something that you mentally and physically feel you should run away from.
And when I say
"brung up proper", I obviously mean
"brought up to be emotionally scarred by anything relating exclusively to women or women's inner workings" .
So onward from the lingerie shops and into Buchannan Street, past two more underwear retailers on the way (naturally) and
the man on the horse with a traffic cone on his head (unnaturally). One thing I love about Glasgow city centre is the sheer number of street entertainers on the surrounding streets. These tend to vary from the incredibly good to the incredibly bad.
For example, there always seems to be an Austrailian street entertainer based near the bizarre Tardis which sells drinks and nibbles (no, I don't know either, but maybe the Doctor has simply fallen on hard times and has decided to run a sideline business to help make ends meet?) doing a particularly good turn. Not the same Australian entertainer btw. I have been here a few times and it seems that this spot always seems to have a different entertainer but invariably good, and invariably Australian. The one moan I have about these Australian entertainers (aside from the fact that they seem to have reclaimed this spot of Glaswegian heartland as a little piece of their homeland) is that they seem to do an unwavering line in attacking the English. I am sure that this passes for humour in some parts, you know, the
"ha ha ha, let us laugh at the English with their silly accents, sensibilities and endless cups of tea" but being English it gets a bit tiresome.
Then again I'm probably just miffed because I really really like tea. :-)
And it is with this bit of right on anti-xenophobic rhetoric in my head that I a take in some of the other entertainers on offer. A young Eastern European footballer (I am guessing Polish, but seeing as I don't speak Polish - or any other Central European language, I have to admit it's a guess) doing all manner of keepy-ups and clever tricks on the pavement, surrounded by a massive crowd. A man in full kilt and Scottish tribal attire playing the bagpipes - though, sadly, not managing a rendition of
Do Ya Think I'm Sexy as made famous in the wonderful Mike Myers'
So I Married An Axe Murderer movie.
From here, I have to say the standard of entertainer seems to drop off a bit. Yes, I am impressed by the man playing
"street bongos", even if he has chosen to do the splits and play them inbetween his legs like they are a pair of giant testicles. But a bunch of ladies of a certain age dressed in luminous pink and yellow lycra doing a turn outside a bank cashpoint, strikes me of the sort of desperation that suggest a spot on the next series of Britain's Got Talent is all but a phone call away.
A mere stone's throw away - and no I didn't try throwing a stone to prove the point, though given the absurdity of the performance I was about to witness, I probably should have attempted it, aside from the severe lack of stones on Sauchiehall Street making that slightly unlikely - was a ragtag of old men singing odd worship songs. The sort of
"If You're Happy And You Know It" stuff that was a staple of holiday clubs in the 1960s (and is, coincidentally, also one of the major reasons people dont go to holiday clubs any more). Three men, two of whom have bobble hats on despite in being one of the hottest days Glasgow has seen in recent months, and a third sans bobble hat looking heartily embarrassed at the whole thing whilst trying to get rid of as many tracts as possible. I get the horrible feeling that perhaps these three men made a pact at their church in the 60s that they would do this every Saturday until they had either got rid of all their tracts or until the Lord Our Saviour (LOS for short) returned, whichever came first.
I then thought the main difference (aside from about 40 years of musical progression) between these, probably well-meaning and hopefully harmless souls singing their
"worship" songs and me singing mine was that I chose to do my singing indoors with a generally affable audience and they chose to do theirs outdoors with a generally hostile audience. A few inches of concrete and a handful of people is all that separates me from being seen as slightly disturbed
"eccentric". With this in mind, I hurry along and make a mental note to destroy all my bobble hats, just to be safe.
From the sublime to the ridiculous. A man with a diablo. For those that don't know what I am talking about I am talking about a man with a bow-tie shaped toy that he throws up and catches on a piece of string held tight by two handheld sticks - and not a man summoning up the devil, although that would have proved an interesting juxtaposition to the previous performers. I say a man throwing up a toy and catching it on a piece of string, but it seems that this guy is more a throwing it up in the air and then not really catching it on a piece of string sort of diablo performer. I don't mean to be harsh, but I really genuinely think I could have done a better job juggling it - and I have never used one before. I rather felt myself being cast in the Ant McPartlin role when being faced with the man who claimed he could beat the World Record for eating Ferrero Rocher in a minute (7, in case you are wondering) but ended up failing miserably and being beaten by the previously Rocher tested geordie presenter. I mean the kid with the harmonica who occasionally whistfully blew a muffled series of notes when the feeling took him, might have been crap but at least he had youth and cuteness on his side. This diablo man really took the biscuit. Or Rocher I should say.
Actually, on a related subject, one of the careers my wife may apply for after she finishes her degree may well be in the diplomatic service. This is something I have often thought would be a fantastic job, but I have probably left it too late to apply (as well as probably being criminally underqualified). Nope, to be a
"diplomat's wife" as we call it, would be far more enjoyable and rewarding. I can imagine being married to an ambassador gives you plenty of spare hours to practise trying to break that Ferrero Rocher eating World Record. Watch this space, I say.
Feeling all entertained out, I sit down on a piece of
"urban street furniture" (or
"seats" as we used to call them) and decide to read my book. Happily watching the world go by, inbetween chapters, I am only interrupted by people trying to offer me cheap telephone calls to overseas destinations. I find the only way to get rid of these people is by asking them how much one of these calls (say to China, for example) would cost and how their business operates. I soon find that info about the business doesn't actually seem to have filtered down to the people who have been tasked with selling it - I am told to ring the number on the flyer to get more information, and immediately wonder whether this will be an overseas call which would have been cheaper had I been using their business in the first place.
Aside from that, I am undisturbed. Although I notice that nearly all the people who sit next to me are English. That's not uncommon, I guess, but I had made the assumption that most people out shopping in the heart of Scotland might actually be Scottish. Maybe it's just that I attract English people to me like a flower may attract bees to it, I'm not sure. Maybe it's just that sitting down in a busy street watching the world go by is a pretty English thing to do? I have no idea. But if my small if unscientific experience today is anything to go by (and it isnt) then English people seem to do a lot more sitting in Scottish town centres than anyone else does. In fact the only Scot who sat next to me was a young-ish girl (i.e. between the age of 20 and 30) who was on a break from working in a local jewellers where they had made her a cheese toastie on a china plate with proper cutlery. I decided at this point that should the Ferrero Rocher thing not work out and I had to work in a jewellers, then it should be a jewellers that made you cheese toasties on china plates for your breaks.
I admit it's not much of a dream, but for now it will do.
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Labels: Girls Brigade, Glasgow, scotland, shopping
One of the things that recent days and weeks have brought home to me (especially a few days away from the internet, newspapers and the politics of politics) is how bored I am of political blogging at the moment.
