I Don't Belong To Glasgow

It may come as a surprise to some of you that I am not a born Glaswegian. I lived the first 18 years of my life, apart from a rather miserable interlude between the ages of 12 and 14 in a village that owed more to Transylvania than the overspill commuter burg for Edinburgh that it was, in a town called Clydebank.
Clydebank sits on the banks of the River Clyde (no shit!) and although it has a separate identity, has over the years become part of the Greater Glasgow Conurbation. I managed to live there largely without venturing far beyond its borders and into The Big Metropolis. All of my relations lived locally. My parents had been born there and had met while working for what was in it’s time, one of the largest employers in the town apart from the shipbuilders, the Singer sewing machine factory. I went to school and college there and the band (literally, a proper band with guitars, drums and a keyboard with me and my pal groupies and occasional roadies/ backing singers) of mates I was hanging around with, supping cider and blackcurrant and still cadging half fares on the buses and trains even though we were 17, who all lived locally either in the town or the neighbouring area of Old Kilpatrick. It was only when True Love and Employment beckoned that I moved to Glasgow.
Our first proper flat was in the area known as Drumchapel which is just over the boundary line from Clydebank so it wasn’t that much of a move. That wee flat served us well for about a year and despite its reputation, we didn’t have any trouble. Again, we moved to follow work and moved into the 19th floor of a multi-storey block in the Springburn area which is in the north east of the city and closer to the city centre while also being within travelling distance of the Campsie Fells (of which we had a magnificent view). We grew up there, again socialised thereabouts (at one time, belonging to the flat-dwelling equivalent of The Mile High Club, as all of the people we knew either lived in the Balgrayhill flats with us or in the Red Road flats across the other side of the park) and it was in our wee flat on a cold and snowy January morn in 1997 that our wee lass was born (not accidentally – I had planned and fought to have a home birth – another story for another time). Our burgeoning wee family outgrew the flat and just over a week before Xmas in 2000 we moved to our current home, a 3 bedroomed semi-detached house in the east end of Glasgow, within earshot of the roar of Celtic Park (as we were reminded yesterday) and its stadium cathedral for those deluded enough to pay good money to see a troupe of over-paid laddies kick an inflated bladder about for an hour and a half.
One of the main draws for us moving here was the local Tollcross Park. In Springburn we had (go on – guess) Springburn Park and we had spent as much time as we could there feeding ducks, walking and picnicking. The park here doesn’t have any duckponds but does have a children’s’ farm and paddocks with sheep (our first Xmas Day highlight in our new home was petting the ewes in their frosty field – sadly the theft of some of the rare herds during the last foot and mouth outbreak means high fences now), horses and a llama plus the oddl Heilan’ coo or two.
Having lived in the city for more than half of my life though I still don’t feel “Glaswegian” – to ears brought up hearing an accent more akin to the lilts of Dumbarton, Helensburgh and the Trossachs than the grating slurred and aggressive cadence that is more likely to be heard out here. Glaswegians seem to me to be a fairly friendly sort but under that veneer of camaraderie lies a tendency toward mean-spiritedness that would charm the shirt off your back and rifle your jacket pockets at the same time. There seems to me to be a culture of entitlement, of what we use to call “green cheese” – in that you can’t see someone having something without you wanting your share. Parkhead is also where I came across my first experience of gangsters and that strange feeling that I have only found here of people all being related somehow and knowing everyone’s business with there being lines you didn’t cross and people you doffed your imaginary cap to. This comes I believe from this area of Glasgow having been the last vestiges of Lanarkshire toons with more in common with places like Hamilton and Motherwell than say Dennistoun or the Gorbals. Thankfully me and mine have never found ourselves party to any of that.
So, after 20-plus years, am I a Glaswegian? I’d say not, nor am I likely ever to be. I don’t have anything to do with my old hometown (I had a friend for a while who lived in a part of Clydebank that I had spent my first couple of years in and it always felt funny to go back) yet when asked where I’m from I hesitate to say “Glasgow”. My daughter is a Glaswegian having been born and brought up all of her life here and having lived most of that time in the east end and I think I envy her that continuity and stability and feeling of belonging. But home and belonging to me have always been more about who you are with and not where you are and I guess for me, that is more important than geography will ever be x