Music from Scotland, to Scotland the world. And revisiting old Glaswegian haunts

Full playlist at the end of this essay. click the arrow above to play the show free via Mixcloud

Pollokshaws is on the south side of Glasgow, and it’s where I grew up from the ages of one to seven and then 17 to 21, staying on both occasions at 1425 Pollokshaws Road. My dad had a dental surgery there, initially in one room, and when the family moved to Troon it expanded into the entire ground floor, leaving the upstairs as a self-contained flat. When I went to university, that’s where I stayed. The sound of screaming – from drills and humanity – permeated my childhood and student years.

Afterwards, there was the usual dalliance with the west end (a Highburgh Road two-bedroom flat that cost the princely sum of £10,050 in 1978) then uneasy moves to Lanarkshire and Dumbarton before heading back to Auldhouse Road in Newlands via Norham Street in Langside. 

And lots of other restless Glaswegian residences, too. A tumultuous and unhappy time: a dodgy bedsit in Queen’s Park amid the criminal and the deranged. Scotstoun, an even more awful  bedsit in Athole Garden; Decent digs in Pollokshields and Wilton Street (that time the floor-sanders sanded right through the joists…) and an interlude in Summerston which ended with me defaulting on a mortgage…saved only by my esteemed lawyer Colin, for which I never thanked him enough.

And then salvation via Shetland.

Now Glasgow’s south side is once more the fulcrum of non-Zetlandic activity. We have a wee flat in a Nethertwee retirement community, one son and family is nearby, and my daughter has just moved to Shawlands.  

I wasn’t prepared for the Proustian effect of geographical proximity: there’s my dad’s bank; where the old Ho Wah and Noor Mahal restaurants were. Vanished Woolworths in the Shawlands Arcade, where I bought The Who Sell Out from their stock of American cutouts. Newlands Park, where I nearly died, having fallen asleep in sub-zero  conditions while trying to recover from a Christmas works party. The eternal Heraghty’s, that mad lost deli the Cookery Book, replaced now by literally dozens of trendy food outlets, all crying out for online influencing. Skirving Street, once home to the poshest gospel hall in Scotland, now hosts a clutch of culinary businesses,  ranging from a vegan bakery to two competing pizza joints. The Doune Castle, where Johnny and the Self Abusers played their first gig, is now (I think) Oro, a glittering Italian bistro. A wine shop called Beau Jollys  (see what they did there?) has long vanished. As has the Shawlands Hotel, the Pollokshaws baths, the whole Shawbridge Arcade, and the high flats I saw being built as a child.

There are vape and charity shops galore, but there is also Godshot, a shop so perfectly stylish it’s impossible not to be seduced by its Zentastic charms. (Blackwing pencils, all the extreme V60 filter papers you could want, enough Japanese stationery to move me to tears, and the best cookie I have ever tasted).

I haven;t seen any Cadillacs, yet, but there do seem to be quite a few Porsches. I’ll keep looking.

The Pollokshaws Cadillac, volume two: playlist

This Flight Tonight —  Nazareth

What You Do with What You’ve Got — Siobhan Miller

 Vegetarian Restaurant —  Aberfeldy

We Almost Made It —  Foy Vance

 Fun Patrol —  James King & The Lonewolves

 Running to the Light —  Runrig

 Broken Love — Vivien Scotson

Lowdown — The Primevals

I Would Never — The Blue Nile

The Darkness Ends — The Hazey Janes

Writers Of The Present Time — Idlewild

The Midas Touch — Michael Marra

Homeboy — King Creosote

Cut the Cake — Average White Band

Tell Me — Kevin McDermott

Rebecca — Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fow

Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway — The Humblebums

You Shook Me All Night Long — AC/DC

Danse Profane — Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat