Glasgow (46 page)

9 a.m
.

Christmas is high season for crime, so I am assigned to Store Security (sensitive to police teasing, they avoid the term detective). As security
manager, David Macklin (known among Glasgow's shoplifting fraternity as ‘Carrot') is responsible for everything from ejecting mischief-making children to arresting light-fingered drug addicts. None of this compares with the trauma of having to shut out customers at 5 p.m. on Christmas Eve. ‘Suddenly you're the most unpopular man in Glasgow.'

He encounters every type of criminal, from Dippers (pickpockets) to professional shoplifters who make a handsome living out of store theft. ‘They steal anything of value: from top of the range £300 to £400 suits, down to a £20 bottle of perfume. You can pick the good ones, they'll come in clean-shaven, with a smart suit – perhaps Christian Dior – but you look at their shoes and you know,' he says. ‘Their heels are worn down.' ??? ‘Have you ever tried to steal a pair of shoes?' Then there are the regulars: Shorty, Gumsy – who takes his false teeth out in a vain attempt at disguise – and the Salmon Man, bane of the Food Hall, who only steals tinned fish. In an average day the team spots 30–35 of them on the video monitors, fed by overhead cameras which a surprising number of thieves assume to be dummies. Drug addicts, known as desperadoes, are a major problem, accounting for 75 out of the 180 prosecutions this year. Every store detective dreads having a needle pulled on him.

Not everyone is prosecuted. ‘We've got nothing to achieve by putting 60 and 70-year-olds into court. You could kill a person of that age,' he says. ‘It can cause a lot of bad publicity for the store: “Granny shoplifting takes a stroke and dies – security man last seen heading for the Costa del Sol” . . .'

12.30 p.m
.

I grab my coat and take a tour round the store with Aileen, a former sales assistant who moved sideways into security. Dressed in jeans and an outdoor jacket, she mingles convincingly with the customers, although the regulars aren't fooled. On the streets of Glasgow it is not unknown for them to say hello and offer to buy her a drink.

Since Lewis's insists on three months' training before security staff are unleashed on the shop floor, mine is strictly a watching brief. I listen for unfamiliar accents and keep my eyes peeled for prams (which can have false bottoms), duvet anoraks (perfect for poacher's pockets), big carrier bags and sports holdalls. Amazingly, given this list, they insist they have never stopped a genuine customer. A common trick is for men to take two suits into the changing room and come out with one (embarrassing if you're caught in the cubicle next door, peeking under the partition to see if the suspect is tucking a pair of trousers into his socks). Hiding booty up a jumper is another favourite. (‘You get women coming in and the next time you see them they're nine months
pregnant.') ‘Watch their eyes and their hands,' Aileen advises. ‘Everything else about them is normal.'

Unfortunately, I find it difficult enough to negotiate the crystalware displays and avoid toppling shelvesful of stuffed hippos in wedding dresses without having to spot shoplifters as well. After countless top-to-bottom tours of the store, all I have to show for my efforts is a mysterious ache in my kidneys.

3 p.m.

Christmas Stationery. Underneath a speaker blaring out jazzed-up carols, I am instructed to tidy the card racks. I soon know just how Sisyphus felt. For some reason, no slot contains an equal number of cards and envelopes. In the time it takes me to straighten one row, another three are messed-up. Periodically I am asked if we have a card specifically for a boss/nephew and wife/cousin and husband. I rifle through cards for mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, in-laws – every permutation of human bonding except the one the customer wants.

If by some miracle I find the right relation, the rhyme inside is unsuitable. One woman looking for a card ‘to a special brother and his wife' isn't keen on:
Here's a Xmas wish for you/With more love than before/ To bring you happiness on this day/And throughout the year in store
. I take her point. Still, it's preferable to
It's Xmas, so let's make music together: you shake your maracas and I'll play with my organ
.

I go home to a nightmare about mismatched envelopes and wake with a stabbing pain between my shoulder blades.

À LA MODE, 1990
Roy Jenkins

One of the ‘Gang of Four' who left the Labour Party in 1981 for the newly-formed Social Democratic Party – the others were Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers – Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) won Hillhead from the Conservatives in a by-election the following year. Though he subsequently lost the seat, he retained his affection for Glasgow and when he entered the House of Lords took the title Baron Jenkins of Hillhead. He gave this paean to the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow to mark the city's year as European City of Culture
.

There is only one word of warning that I must give to Glasgow. Glasgow has ridden high on a mounting wave of fashion in the 1980s. It amuses
me to look back over the change in the outside perception of Glasgow during the period that I have been closely associated with the city. When I became Member of Parliament for Hillhead in 1982 I derived a lot of pleasure from surprising people all over the world with the wholly accurate information that my Glasgow constituency was, according to the census, the most highly educated in the whole of the United Kingdom. And I added for good measure that, while it was geographically only one-eleventh of the City of Glasgow, it contained at least fifteen institutions or monuments of major cultural, intellectual or architectural fame. That was all in the days before the Burrell Collection was open. The Burrell (not in Hillhead but three miles away on the South Side), while it is a fine heterogeneous collection, housed in perhaps the best building for a gallery created anywhere in the past quarter-century, adds to what was previously in the Kelvinside Gallery and other Glasgow collections before but does not qualitatively change it. 1982 was also the beginning of the ‘Glasgow's Miles Better' slogan, and before there was much thought of Glasgow being either an important centre of aesthetic tourism or the European City of Culture.

What has changed since then has been that for three or four years everybody has come to accept these earlier facts without the previous surprise, while for me the sad fact amongst them is that Hillhead has ceased to be my constituency. My warning is that fashion is a fickle jade. Glasgow has been tremendously
à la mode
for the past five years. But
la mode
, by its very nature, cannot remain constant. Last week, for the first time in my experience, someone said to me that he thought Glasgow had achieved an exaggerated reputation, and went on to add that he thought Edinburgh – admittedly he lived these – was the cultural as well as the political capital of Scotland. I rocked on my heels in amazement. No one had said such a thing to me for years.

I do not happen to believe that it is true. Edinburgh has of course great cultural assets, the Festival, the National Gallery of Scotland, the Portrait Gallery, and the copyright library, but they are none of them strictly indigenous. They come from outside or by virtue of capital status rather than arise out of the life of and work of the inhabitants of the city itself, as is the case here. None the less, I think Glasgow must be prepared for the going to be a little harder in future. Having caught and mounted the horse of fashion in the early eighties and dashingly ridden it for seven years or so, Glasgow must be ready for its vagaries soon to take the horse veering off in another direction . . .

When in 1982 I first came to know Glasgow well, and in particular its West End, what most struck me was not so much the warmth as the quiet self-confidence. It was not a complacent or narrow or
inward-looking self-confidence. It was not based on a desire to keep strangers out, or I would not have been made nearly so welcome. What it was based on was a consciousness of the contribution which this strip of river and hills had made to the advancement of civilisation throughout and beyond Britain, and on a feeling that while it was desirable to go outside the West End from time to time it was as good a place to live as anywhere in the world. It was based neither on complacency nor on any sense of compensating for inferiority, but, as true self-confidence always is, on a desire to learn of outside things accompanied by a contentment within one's own skin. That is the dominant impression that I retain of Hillhead and of Glasgow as a whole.

A PINT OF TENNENT'S, 1993
Bill Bryson

Ever wondered what it must feel like to be an alien in Glasgow? Or an American? That's the impression one has of Bill Bryson, who arrived in Glasgow towards the end of a tour of Britain in 1993. Not only did it feel foreign, it sounded it. This was not his first visit. He had been two decades earlier, when no one beat a path to its door. In the intervening years, however, it had been transformed, or so it appeared. Grimy buildings had been sandblasted, Princes Square had been built and the Burrell Collection had been opened. Moreover, ‘In 1990, Glasgow was named European City of Culture, and no one laughed.' What hadn't changed was the
argot.
Apologising to a taxi driver for not speaking Glaswegian, Bryson was told: ‘D'ye dack ma fanny?' Later he got lost in the Gorbals and decided to seek refuge in a pub. There have been worse ideas, but not many
. . .

I wandered along a series of back lanes and soon found myself in one of those dead districts that consist of windowless warehouses and garage doors that say NO PARKING – GARAGE IN CONSTANT USE. I took a series of turns that seemed to lead even further away from society before bumbling into another short street that had a pub on the corner. Fancying a drink and a sitdown, I wandered inside. It was a dark place, and battered, and there were only two other customers, a pair of larcenous-looking men sitting side by side at the bar drinking in silence. There was no one behind the bar. I took a stance at the far end of the counter and waited for a bit, but no one came. I drummed my fingers on the counter and puffed my cheeks and made assorted puckery shapes
with my lips the way you do when you are waiting . . . I cleaned my nails with a thumbnail and puffed my cheeks some more, but still no one came. Eventually I noticed one of the men at the bar eyeing me.

‘Hae ya nae dook ma dooky?' he said.

‘I'm sorry,' I replied.

‘He'll nay be doon a mooning.' He hoiked his head in the direction of a back room.

‘Oh, ah,' I said and nodded sagely, as if that explained it.

I noticed that they were both still looking at me.

‘D'ye hae a hoo and a
poo
?' he repeated. It appeared that he was a trifle intoxicated.

I gave a small apologetic smile and explained that I came from the English-speaking world.

‘D'ye nae hae in May?' the man went on. ‘If ye dinna dock ma donny.'

‘Doon in Troon they croon in June,' said his mate, then added: ‘Wi' a spoon.'

‘Oh, ah.' I nodded thoughtfully again, pushing my lower lip out slightly, as if it was all very clear to me now. Just then, to my small relief, the barman appeared, looking unhappy and wiping his hands on a tea towel.

‘Fuckin muckle fucket in the fuckin muckle,' he said to the two men, and then to me in a weary voice: ‘Ah hae the noo.' I couldn't tell if it was a question or a statement.

‘A pint of Tennent's, please,' I said hopefully.

He made an impatient noise, as if I were avoiding his question. ‘Hae ya nae hook ma dooky?'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘Ah hae the noo,' said the first customer, who apparently saw himself as my interpreter.

I stood for some moments with my mouth open, trying to imagine what they were saying to me, wondering what mad impulse had bidden me to enter a pub in a district like this, and said in a quiet voice: ‘Just a pint of Tennent's, I think.'